St. Francis Xavier's College (Liverpool)
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St. Francis Xavier's College is a Roman Catholic secondary school and sixth form college located in Woolton, Liverpool. At present Year 7 to Year 11 are male only, whereas the Sixth Form (years 12 and 13) are coeducational.
The College is currently under the trusteeship of the Brothers of Christian Instruction. Their mission is that of their founder, Jean Marie de la Mennais, ‘To make Jesus better known and loved’.
The school is a specialist school for Mathematics and Computing, and was the first school in Liverpool to gain specialist school status in that category.[1]
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[edit] Origins and History
The college was founded in 1842 by the Jesuit Order in association with Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. It was located in Salisbury Street, Everton, until 1961 when it transferred to its present attractive twenty-six acre site at High Lee, Woolton. In 1990 it opted out of local-authority control and became a grant-maintained school. The college was granted Technology College status from April 1996. In September 1999 it became a Foundation School. In 1992 the college became coeducational in the sixth form and in September 2000 the De La Mennais 6th Form Centre was opened.[2]
[edit] Choir
The college is renowned for it's very successful boy's choir, set up in 1994, which holds the Guinness World Record for being the first choir to sing for a service in every Cathedral in England and Wales (49 in total). The choir has also sung in a private audience with Pope John Paul II.
[edit] Controversy
In December 2005, Keith Knowles, a music teacher at the school and choirmaster, was arrested by police on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, and was bailed pending further enquiries.[3]
Knowles was suspended from his teaching post at the school and in April 2006 was charged with 15 counts of making and 8 counts of possessing child pornography. [4]
In November 2006 he was found guilty at Liverpool City Magistrate's Court of all 15 counts of making child pornography and 6 out of the 8 counts of possessing it. The Liverpool Echo reported that the 15 images were of young boys downloaded from the internet, whereas the others were of an ex-girlfriend when she was much younger.[5]
