Oldbury Wells School
Encyclopedia
Oldbury Wells School is a comprehensive school
Comprehensive school
A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...

 in Bridgnorth
Bridgnorth
Bridgnorth is a town in Shropshire, England, along the Severn Valley. It is split into Low Town and High Town, named on account of their elevations relative to the River Severn, which separates the upper town on the right bank from the lower on the left...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The 2010 Ofsted
Ofsted
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills is the non-ministerial government department of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools In England ....

 inspection lists the school as "the best school in shropshire" having 1,034 pupils, 224 of whom are in the sixth form. The school's motto
Motto
A motto is a phrase meant to formally summarize the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization. A motto may be in any language, but Latin is the most used. The local language is usual in the mottoes of governments...

 is "Towards Exellence." The school is popular among primary school students, with competition occurring when a child progressing into secondary schools wishes to enter.

History

The buildings in which Oldbury Wells School is today based were originally two separate schools. What is now known as the East Side was opened as Bridgnorth Boys’ Modern School in 1958; the West Side opened as Bridgnorth Girls’ Modern School in 1959. The two schools merged to form Oldbury Wells during 1973/4. This gives the school its somewhat strange characteristic of being split over two sites separated by a quiet cul-de-sac.The gymnasium facilities for the separate sexes still remain on their original designated sites; east for the boys and west for the girls.

The school's intake covers a wide and mostly rural geographic area around the Severn Valley
Severn Valley
Severn Valley could be*The Severn Valley in Shropshire, English Midlands *The Severn Valley Country Park in Shropshire, English Midlands *The fictional Severn Valley...

, and has the notable statistic that more than three-quarters of the pupils are bussed in from surrounding villages.

It is the only school in Shropshire to have a main road running through it as it has two sides East and West.

Awards and accolades

The school's buildings were listed during the 1990s. They were deemed to be of historical interest because of the way the concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

 displays the grain
Wood grain
In speaking of wood the term grain refers to the alternating regions of relatively darker and lighter wood resulting from the differing growth parameters occurring in different seasons . The term is used in several ways. Perhaps most important is that in woodworking techniques...

 of the wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

 shuttering into which it was poured. It was one of the first modern buildings to be built solely out of concrete.

It became a Science College
Science College
Science Colleges were introduced in 2002 as part of the now defunct Specialist Schools Programme in the United Kingdom. The system enabled secondary schools to specialise in certain fields, in this case, science and mathematics...

 in 2003, which sees it gain extra funding in return for developing science facilities and teaching for the benefit of its pupils and the wider community. The school won redesignation as a Science College
Science College
Science Colleges were introduced in 2002 as part of the now defunct Specialist Schools Programme in the United Kingdom. The system enabled secondary schools to specialise in certain fields, in this case, science and mathematics...

again in 2007.
The school was ranked 12th in 2008 in the most improved schools league tables.

6th Form

Oldbury is part of the Bridgnorth Sixth Form Partnership which allows students from Bridgnorth Endowed to take subjects based at Oldbury and Vice versa, although students are only technically attending one of the individual schools. Oldbury wells has proved the most popular with the students, with many pupils from Bridgnorth Endowed secondary school changing over to Oldbury for 6th form.

External links

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