Bournville School
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| Bournville School | |
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| Motto | "Where learning leads to great opportunities." |
| Established | 1953 |
| Type | Comprehensive High Performing Specialist School |
| Religious affiliation | Secular |
| Headteacher | Ruth Harker |
| Specialism | Sixth Form Centre Music College Business and Enterprise College |
| Location | Griffinsbrook Lane Birmingham B30 1QJ  England |
| Ofsted number | 103515 |
| Students | 1,250 |
| Gender | Co-educational |
| Ages | 11 to 19 |
| School colours | Navy blue (and Black or Grey) |
| Website | Bournville School Website |
Bournville School and sixth form centre is a coeducational, state comprehensive school, with Specialist Business and Enterprise College and Music College status, for students aged 11-19 years, located on Griffinsbrook Lane, Bournville, Birmingham in the United Kingdom.
Since 2002 Bournville has been classed as a High Performing specialist school and there are around 1,200 children currently on the roll, including a thriving sixth form of around 200 students.
Before Bournville became a Comprehensive School in the 1970s it was previously two sibling schools Bournville Girls Grammar School and Bournville Boys Technical Grammar School.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Beginnings
Originally designed and built as two separate schools, the first to be opened was Bournville Girls Grammar School on a greenfield site adjacent to the A38 Bristol Road South, just south of Bournville village in the autumn of 1953, housed in a modern 'state-of-the-art' school building.
Two years later, in September 1955, Bournville Boys Technical Grammar School was also opened at the top end of the same site, backing on to Hay Green Lane, together with the separate and brand new two-storey dining room facility and a purpose built technical block (containing two engineering metalwork shops, two woodwork shops, and a pottery/ceramic workshop, together with a technical drawing design studio) both located between the two school buildings. The twin schools shared the main playing field with timetables arranged so that activities of the two schools did not clash. The tennis courts were under the control of the Girl's Grammar school and were not available to the boys school, unless by special arrangement at the weekends.
The establishment of Technical Grammar schools was a government initiative in the post war years under the Tripartite Educational System, originally mapped out in the Education Act 1944 to encourage the development of skilled senior and middle management engineers, scientists and technicians that were by then desperately needed by UK industry and science, to replace those lost during World War II. The new specialist schools were intended to form a bridge between the academic and classical learning practised by traditional grammar schools and the the more practical and vocational training that formed the basis of the secondary modern schools.
The new school's timetable ensured that through years seven to nine the traditional academic subjects were fully covered, while in years ten onwards academic studies reduced and more time was spent on the more technical subjects of chemistry, physics, woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing. Despite encouragement by the government, few cities were prepared to undertake the expense of establishing the new technical grammars, however Birmingham did grasp the nettle and formed six of the new style schools. Bournville was one of the first in the UK and established one of the highest levels of entry qualification. The boys' school forged close ties with local industrial and scientific concerns and, in return for cash sponsorship of materials and occasional teaching support by their specialists and foremen, those engineering businesses benefited by a first call on the highly qualified pupils when they left school.
[edit] Segregation
During the early years there were no female teachers at the boys' school and only two male teachers at the girls' school. Great efforts were made by the teachers of both schools to keep the boys and girls from becoming distracted by interacting with each other. Lunchtime timetables were arranged so that the girls had the first two sittings and the boys were not allowed into the dining room building until it had been vacated. Sports activities on the sports field took place at different times and even at the end of the school day the girls' grammar school was dismissed fifteen minutes earlier. The only joint activities during the 1950s were occasional joint theatrical and musical productions and an after school ballroom dancing society in the boys' school hall, all of which were closely supervised by the teachers.
The situation began to relax in 1962 and 1963 when the girls' school started to host joint Friday night dances that featured live music from local rock and roll bands made popular since the advent of The Beatles and the beat music revolution in pop music. One of the bands who played at the school during this period was 'Denny Laine and the Diplomats'. Denny Laine went on to chart stardom as a member of The Moody Blues and Paul McCartney's Wings. Diplomats' drummer Bev Bevan was later a member of chart topping bands The Move and Electric Light Orchestra.
[edit] Sport and recognition
Boys of all ages, including the sixth formers, were required to wear a school uniform cap when travelling to or from school and on school trips. The caps were initially plain dark blue with a school badge. Once awarded house colours for sporting excellence a new cap was worn that featured quartered piping of a colour representing the house (Red, yellow, blue or green). Any boy additionally awarded school sporting colours had a metallic silver-coloured braided tassel added to the cap, that dangled down from the central button. Changes to caps were also reflected in different striped school ties. Team sports played were Rugby and Basketball during winter months and Cricket in the summer. School teams competed in the Birmingham grammar school leagues at all age groups and were highly successful. The girls' grammar played Netball and Hockey in winter and Tennis in the summer.
To help maintain general fitness both schools held an annual cross country race from the school site, around the streets and parks of Bournville to a finish line at Rowheath Pavillion. Entry was compulsory for all pupils, who also had to complete at least three after-school practise runs over the full course in the weeks preceding the race, with teachers placed on every corner to ensure nobody dropped out or took shortcuts. On the day the girls race took place in the morning, with the boys race following in the afternoon.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s several imaginative school sports trophies were actually designed and made by the pupils in the on site engineering metalwork, woodwork and ceramics workshops and awarded annually at the Prize Day ceremony.
[edit] When the bell rings
After school there were a large number of school clubs and societies organised and run by both teachers and senior pupils and everybody was encouraged to join at least one or more. Every night of the week the extra-curricular activities took place in classrooms all over both schools. There was a historical society, chess club, ballroom dancing society, geography club, film society, drama club, choral society, science club, astronomy society and the poetry club. The girls' grammar additionally had knitting and sewing clubs, cookery club, a small string orchestra and a ballet society.
[edit] Two schools become one
Entry to both schools in the early years had been by Eleven plus examination with both schools only selecting those pupils that had achieved the highest scores in the area's feeder schools. However in the late 1960s a Labour government led educational reform, through several ministerial directives and eventually the Education Act 1968, that was accepted and implemented by Birmingham's local education authority, scrapped the 11+ examination and with it the segregated three-tiered strata of grammar, technical grammar and secondary modern schools.
Bournville Technical Grammar had barely managed to deliver ten years worth of school leavers into the Birmingham employment market when the brave new experiment had come to an end, something close to 850 boys and hardly enough to even begin an assessment of the success or failure by the short-lived system. Even at its height less than five percent of UK children were educated at Technical Grammar schools, with twenty percent at traditional Grammar schools and seventy five percent at Secondary Moderns.
The Bournville schools combined and became a joint comprehensive, switching to coeducational mixed education in 1971. The twin schools' teaching faculties combined under a single management structure with a single head teacher. The original Girls Grammar school building became the 'lower school' facility and the Boys Grammar at the top end of the site became 'upper school'. The combined School has continued to maintain a reputation for excellence in the Selly Oak, Bournville and Northfield catchment areas. In recent years only first choice pupils have been able to be granted a placement due to the pressure of demand by parents.
[edit] The school today
September 2008 will mark the school's 55th anniversary. Bournville School is now a Specialist Business and Enterprise College and took on the second specialism of Music College as recently as 2007. They have established a relatively new Sixth Form Centre that benefits from its own separate common room and study areas.
The number of pupils attending the school is currently recorded as being 1,243.
The school has managed to maintain an attractive site with good quality buildings coupled with extensive playing fields and sports facilities.
Since 2004 the school has been classed as a High Performing Specialist School, due to the progress the students have made over the five years of compulsory education in years seven to eleven. Formal evaluation of the recent Sixth Form results has shown that they have established and maintained excellent teaching standards that have led to equally high levels of progress. The school is proud that most of its students have chosen to stay at the school for the on site Sixth Form to complete their studies.
[edit] OFSTED assessment
"Strong leadership and management have set a high priority on providing a safe learning environment which contributes to students’ good personal development and well being." - Ofsted Report 19 June 2007.
[edit] School badge
The school's badge depicts a Griffin (or Gryphon) segreant, wearing a mortarboard cap and brandishing a rolled Academic degree and draws its imagery from the school's proximity to the nearby traditional watercourse of Griffin's Brook, sadly now piped underground for most of its length.
[edit] Notable alumni
- Ian Lavender, actor, who notably played Private "Stupid Boy" Pike in the long running BBC TV comedy series Dad's Army.
- Mike Skinner, better known as The Streets
