Liskeard School and Community College

Coordinates: 50°27′18″N 4°28′34″W / 50.455°N 4.476°W / 50.455; -4.476

Liskeard School and Community College
Motto Achieving More Together
Established 1550; and then re-founded in 1979.
Closed 1834, but re-opened, and then later merged.
Head Teacher Alex Lingard
Location Liskeard School
Luxstowe
Liskeard
PL14 3EA
 Cornwall
Staff 200
Students c. 1100 Students - Including Sixth Form
Gender Mixed
Ages 11–18
Website www.liskeard.cornwall.sch.uk

Liskeard School and Community College, or LSCC, is an educational secondary school and sixth form with former engineering specialist status, located in Liskeard, Cornwall twenty-one miles from Plymouth, England. Liskeard Grammar School dates back to 1550, when it was founded during the reformation by the Protestant King Edward VI, who ordered a grammar school be opened in every town in England. In its most recent incarnation it was originally known as the County School, and was built by the Cornwall Education Committee. It opened in Old Road, Liskeard in 1908. The school song reflected its location "at the foot of Cornish Moorland". In 1945, its name was changed to Liskeard Grammar School. It closed in 1978. Travers was the headmaster in the 1950s and, from about 1960 to 1976, the headmaster was John W Lingard.

History

The first school in Liskeard was founded in 1550 on Castle Hill, later site of a Civil War battlefield. For a time it was maintained by the Earls of St Germans, but it closed around 1834 due to a decline in numbers and financial difficulties. From 1835 a series of private schools existed in the borough, until 1908 when Cornwall Education Committee built the County School at Old Road. From 1945 it was known as Liskeard Grammar School until September 1978 when it became the Lower School site of Liskeard School, following amalgamation with the town's secondary modern school.

Liskeard County Secondary School received its first pupils on Monday 12 September 1960, and was formally opened by the Minister of Education, Sir David Eccles on 7 July the following year. Costing £100,000, it was built to accommodate around 500 pupils on the site of the current school at Luxstowe. Its glass and steel structure made "free use of fresh air and sunlight" according to local newspaper reports, whilst other modern features included a well-equipped gymnasium, automated central heating and synchronised clocks across the school, operated from the secretary's office. A new block was opened by the Right Honourable Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1974, following the raising of the school leaving age from 15 years to 16, two years earlier. Like many similar secondary schools in Cornwall, from the late 1970s it housed the Upper School (3rd Year / Year 9 upwards), when it merged with the town's grammar school to create a split-site comprehensive school.

Today, with increased pupil numbers requiring many to be taught in temporary buildings, the need for improvements to Liskeard's secondary and primary schools was being raised in Parliament. By the late 1990s, Liskeard School and Community College had been extended at Luxstowe Site, and the Old Road site closed and redeveloped for housing. A further multi-million pound technology facilities were added in 2002, and the original buildings were completely updated by 2011. Formerly Cornwall's only school with an engineering speciality, it now caters for approximately 1100 students aged between 11 and 19, and employs around 200 teaching and non-teaching, full- and part-time staff. It also has an advice and information service, a centre for children with autism and a Sixth Form College offering A-Level's and Level 3 Qualifications. The current headteacher is Alex Lingard, who took over from Donna Bryant in 2014.

In 2017 the school began the process of establishing a Multi-Academy Trust with other schools in South East Cornwall. They will convert to an academy trust on the 1st April 2017.

Notable former pupils

References

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