Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School

Bishop Challoner Catholic Federation of Schools is a Roman Catholic secondary school and sixth form, located in the Shadwell area of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, England.^[1] In May 2015 the name of the schools formally changed from "the Collegiate" to its current nomenclature of Bishop Challoner Catholic Federation of Schools.

The school is a voluntary aided federation of a boys' school, a girls' school and a coeducational sixth form. The school is administered by Tower Hamlets London Borough Council and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster.^[2] In 2016, around 50% of the intake was Roman Catholic. Whilst the pupil profile at Bishop Challoner is diverse, Bangladeshi children are very significantly underrepresented in comparison to Tower Hamlets as a whole and the schools receive few applications from Bangladeshi parents. Nevertheless, in 1992, local parents unsuccessfully challenged the admission policy to Bishop Challoner RC Girls' School in the House of Lords (R v Governors of the Bishop Challoner Roman Catholic Comprehensive Girls' School ex parte Choudhury and Purkayastha).^[3] Tower Hamlets Borough’s high levels of child poverty are evident in the high proportion of children entitled to Free School Meals (FSM) which in 2011 stood at 57%.^[4]

Architecture

The Learning Village project, was a collaboration between the Department of Education, the Diocese of Westminster and Tower Hamlets Council. Building work first began on the Learning Village in 2006.

The architects were Perkins Ogden. Sapa Building Systems wrote that, "The design brief for a building can be complex and influenced by many issues.Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School presented us with the unique challenge of preserving the view of an historic church from the perspective of a modern school building...Bringing defining modern architecture to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Bishop Challenor School features an elevated section to meet this requirement and includes Dualframe 55 casement windows,Elegance 52 ST curtain walling and 202 entrance doors." Perkins Ogden wrote that "The inner city site is extremely constrained. The new building responds to this by bridging a public highway to access further available land. This zinc-clad elevated block forms an ‘inhabited bridge’ containing general teaching accommodation. Shared specialist facilities are arranged at the street level frontage, reinstating the historic urban grain using a traditional London Stock brick."^[5]

This project comprises new and upgraded accommodation for a recently created federated school for 1700 students, situated on the inner city campus of an existing girls’ school. It includes boys’ and girls’ secondary schools, a sixth form centre for 16-18 aged students, and a community centre.

Recent History

The Federation was established in September 2001, as a result of the decision to close the nearby Blessed John Roche Boys’ School and open a new Boys’ school under the governance, leadership and management of the successful Bishop Challoner Girls’ School. The concept was that of a joint or federated school with boys and girls taught in separate buildings from 11–16 years, but sharing some specialist facilities and most teaching staff. The Collegiate School also included a mixed 6th form and will eventually have an overall complement of 1700 pupils. The Collegiate and Learning Village names remained in use until May 2014 and the schools were known as Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School. In May 2015 the name formally changed to its current nomenclature of Bishop Challoner Catholic Federation of Schools.

A project allocation of £30.1m was approved by the DfES for an extended campus based on the concept of a ‘learning village’, to be developed on a phased basis whilst maintaining existing facilities in use. In the long term the learning village will provide a combined campus for the education of boys and girls from ages 3 – 18 by integrating the establishments already on the site, namely:

• The Catholic Primary School – The Boys’ and Girls’ Schools – The current joint Sixth Form
• The local Parish Church
• The Learning Village

The ‘learning village’ was to be a partnership between the Collegiate School, the Church and the local community to provide educational, cultural and recreational resources for the local community. It would also represent a significant regeneration initiative bringing many economic, environmental and planning benefits. Even though it has since changed its formal name to Bishop Challoner Catholic Federation of Schools this mission remains relevant.

The Patron of the School

The school is named after Bishop Richard Challoner, a leading figure of English Catholicism during the greater part of the 18th century. On the left of this page is a photographic image of a rare artefact. It is an engraving of Richard Challoner (born Sept. 29, 1691, Lewes, Sussex, - died Jan. 12, 1781, London). The engraving in the right column is from a small collection stored by the British Museum but little seen.

On 22 January 2010, at the official opening of the Federation, in post emancipation England, Bishop Stack, Chairman of the Diocese of Westminster’s Education Commission spoke "these profound words to those gathered on the site of steel, zinc and walls of glass":^[6]

“In 1946 the remains of Bishop Richard Challoner were transferred from their burial place in Milton, Berkshire, to a new tomb in Westminster Cathedral. It was fitting that his body should be brought back to Central London where he had been a bishop for 40 years…”

Curriculum and Standards

Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School offers GCSEs and BTECs as programmes of study for pupils, while students in the sixth form have the option to study a range of A Levels and further BTECs.^[7]

Headteachers and Executive Principals

Catherine Myers, OBE

The Collegiate "Learning Village" project was the brain-child of Catherine Myers,^[8] the Headteacher of Bishop Challoner from 1992 to 2010 when she retired. Born in Glasgow in 1945 Mrs Myers "transformed [the school] beyond all recognition... as its first lay head after an era of nuns".^[9] Myers made many changes to the systems and leadership, but "besides these structural revolutions, however, her greatest challenge [was] to oversee a complete reversal in the school's culture." Joining Bishop Challoner Girls School in 1992, having been a deputy head at St Joseph's School in Blackheath, Mrs Myers planned beyond just this one school. By 2001, "the nearby Catholic boys' school Blessed John Roach had failed its Ofsted inspection and was closed down and Mrs Myers pushed through the idea with the Diocese to transform Bishop Challoner into the country's first federated school - a girls' school, a boys' school and a sixth-form college, all run separately, but under the control of one executive head."^[8]

In July 2009 Myers was named London's 'Headteacher of the Year' reported the East London Advertiser newspaper. She earlier received an award from the Lithuanian government for her work with pupils coming from the Baltic republic.The Catholic publication The Tablet wrote in 2010: “You could call Catherine Myers a mutation in evolutionary terms. When in 2001 Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School in east London was appointed the country’s first federated school, she became the first of a new species of executive head teacher.” In 2009 she was shortlisted for the 2009 Secondary School Head of the Year at the UK Teaching Awards.^[10]

In early February 2010 Myers was appointed to the Papal Order of St Gregory the Great, becoming a Dame of St Gregory (DSG). In 2008 she was awarded a national honour (Order of Merits to Lithuania: ‘UZ Nuopelnus Lietuvai’) by the Lithuanian Government for her services to education for the Lithuanian community."^[11]

References & External links

Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School official website