West Bridgford School
Encyclopedia
The West Bridgford School & Specialist Technology Academy is a co-educational Comprehensive school in West Bridgford
West Bridgford
West Bridgford is a town in the Rushcliffe borough of Nottinghamshire, England. It lies immediately south of the city of Nottingham, delimited by the River Trent; this proximity means that it forms a continuous urban area with Nottingham, effectively makes West Bridgford a suburb of the city, and...

, Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...

, England,

About the school

  • It used to be a grammar school
    Grammar school
    A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...

    .
  • The school operates a two week timetable system.
  • It applied to be an Academy under the Academies Act 2010, and became an Academy at midnight on 31 March 2011.

Grammar school

The school, then known as West Bridgford County Secondary School moved to the present buildings in 1938. It became West Bridgford Grammar School in 1944. The school's original site was on Musters Road, which is now occupied by Musters Medical Practice. In September 1938 the school moved to a newly constructed building adjoining Loughborough Road, which is now its main building. As a grammar school, it would also have had rivalry with Nottingham High School
Nottingham High School
Nottingham High School is a British boys' independent school situated about a mile north of Nottingham city centre. It has around 900 pupils from ages 11 to 18 and there is the adjoining Nottingham High Junior School catering for younger boys and, from September 2008, the Lovell House...

.

Comprehensive

It became West Bridgford Comprehensive in September 1969. It is now called The West Bridgford School - A Specialist Technology College and remains a comprehensive. It kept some of its old grammar school ethos long after it became a comprehensive: Latin and Classics were taught and rugby was given priority over football until the 1970s. Its catchment area was the east side of the old LNER railway line (now Green line nature reserve) in West Bridgford and included Ruddington
Ruddington
Ruddington is an English village situated five miles south of Nottingham in the Borough of Rushcliffe. It had a population of 6,441 at the 2001 UK census....

. The building is next to South Nottingham College
South Nottingham College
South Nottingham College is a further education college based over five sites in Nottinghamshire, England.South Nottingham College was founded in September 1970 on the site of the old Lutterell Comprehensive School on Greythorn Drive West Bridgford....

.

Local rivalry

The school is known for its local rivalry with the closest other comprehensive, Rushcliffe
Rushcliffe School
Rushcliffe School is a comprehensive school in the Rushcliffe district of Nottinghamshire and is situated on Boundary Road in West Bridgford, one of the most wealthy areas in the county.-History:...

. Both schools get good results at both GCSE and A level. West Bridgford is usually at the top of the GCSE tables for Nottinghamshire, similar to Rushcliffe School, but West Bridgford does much better at A level - usually the second best in Nottinghamshire. However, the nearby Becket School
The Becket School
The Becket School is an 11-18 coeducational Roman Catholic comprehensive school in Nottinghamshire, England. It was formed in 1975 by the amalgamation of two schools, Corpus Christi Grammar School and Becket Grammar School for Boys....

 is the best in Nottinghamshire at A level, although tends to do less well at GCSE.

Uniform

From September 2009, the school's uniform consists of a navy blazer with the updated logo and an optional navy sweater for all, with differences for each gender. Boys wear a white shirt and a school logo tie, with trousers in mid-grey, whereas girls can wear trousers or a skirt in mid-grey and a white and blue-striped blouse without a tie. Prior to this it consisted of a blue and yellow striped tie, plain white shirt, black trousers/skirt and navy jumper for both sexes. Pupils in years 7 - 9 adopted the new blazer and tie, along with the grey skirt/trousers from September 2006 onwards.
There was some controversy over proposed changes to rules about hairstyles, which would have banned outright the wearing of unnatural colours or styles by students, but a student petition caused the proposal to be dropped and the more relaxed rule was kept.

Sixth form

The school's sixth form is situated in the "Malcolm Bradbury Building" at the front of the school and includes several classrooms, a common room, study area and meeting room.

Headmasters

  • Robert McDonough (2005–present)
  • David Cokeham (1989–2005)
  • Brian Marden (1972–1989)
  • Peter Cornall (1967–72) - became Cornwall
    Cornwall
    Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

    's inspector of schools from 1981-91. Advocate of comprehensive education.

An 'Eco-School'

The school's council and "Environmental Committee" have worked, with assistance from teachers and the support of the student body, to reduce the school's impact on the environment. The school has raised awareness by holding cake sales, fundraising events and holding a "Green Week", which involved students paying a donation and dressing in green. The money raised has gona towards green projects, such as double glazing, insulation and, most notably, a wind turbine, which feeds energy into the National Grid, who then subsidise the school's energy bill.
Currently, the school holds the bronze and silver Eco Schools awards, and recently earned the green flag award in recognition of its efforts.

Cashless catering

As of the 21st November 2011 the school operates as cashless catering system it is aimed to cut bulling down in the school.

Notable alumni

  • Samantha Morton
    Samantha Morton
    Samantha Jane Morton is an English actress and film director. She began her performing career with guest roles in television shows such as Soldier Soldier and Boon before making her film debut in the 1997 drama film This Is the Sea, playing the character of Hazel Stokes...

    , British oscar nominated Actor.
  • Joseph Dempsie
    Joseph Dempsie
    Joseph "Joe" Maxwell Dempsie is an English actor, best known for playing the role of Chris Miles in the E4 television show Skins. Dempsie's earlier acting credits include the medical dramas Doctors, Peak Practice and Sweet Medicine, as well as the films One for the Road and Heartlands...

    , British actor, as seen in Skins
    Skins (TV series)
    Skins is a BAFTA award-winning British teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of college. The controversial plot line explores issues such as dysfunctional families, mental illness , adolescent sexuality, substance abuse and death...

    and Game of Thrones
    Game of Thrones (TV series)
    Game of Thrones is an American medieval fantasy television series created for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Based on author George R. R. Martin's best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels, the first of which is called A Game of Thrones, the television series debuted in...

    .
  • Dan Hardy
    Dan Hardy
    Dan Hardy is an English professional mixed martial artist who competes in the welterweight division. A professional MMA competitor since 2004, Hardy fought in various promotions such as Cage Force and Cage Warriors before signing a contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2008. He was...

    , mixed martial artist who fights in the UFC
    Ultimate Fighting Championship
    The Ultimate Fighting Championship is the largest mixed martial arts promotion company in the world that hosts most of the top-ranked fighters in the sport...

    .
  • Justine Thornton
    Justine Thornton
    Justine Thornton is a British barrister, and the wife of Ed Miliband, the current Leader of the Labour Party. She is a former child actress who appeared in Dramarama and Hardwicke House.-Early life and education:...

    , British actress and a barrister. Wife of Labour Party
    Labour Party (UK)
    The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

     leader Ed Miliband
    Ed Miliband
    Edward Samuel Miliband is a British Labour Party politician, currently the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition...

    .
  • Anjli Mohindra
    Anjli Mohindra
    Anjli Mohindra is an English actress from West Bridgford, Nottingham, best known for her role in The Sarah Jane Adventures as Rani Chandra.-Biography:...

    , British actor, as seen in The Sarah Jane Adventures
    The Sarah Jane Adventures
    The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...

    .
  • Simon Francis
    Simon Francis (footballer)
    Simon Charles Francis is an English footballer who plays for Charlton Athletic as a defender.-Career:Born in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Francis was rejected as a youngster by both hometown clubs Notts County and Nottingham Forest. Instead he joined Bradford City as a trainee in 2002 after being...

    , Professional footballer for Charlton Athletic
    Charlton Athletic F.C.
    Charlton Athletic Football Club is an English professional football club based in Charlton, in the London Borough of Greenwich. They compete in Football League One, the third tier of English football. The club was founded on 9 June 1905, when a number of youth clubs in the southeast London area,...

    .
  • Keith Mansfield
    Keith Mansfield (writer)
    Keith Mansfield, born in Scunthorpe, England in 1965, is an English writer and publisher. He is the author of the Johnny Mackintosh series of novels, has scripted several television programmes and is also the publisher for mathematics books at Oxford University Press.His first novel, Johnny...

    , writer and author of the Johnny Mackintosh
    Johnny Mackintosh
    Johnny Mackintosh is the fictional hero of a series of books by English novelist Keith Mansfield, published by Quercus Books.The first title in the series, Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London, opens on his thirteenth birthday and finds Johnny living in Halader House, a children’s home in the...

     novels.
  • Marcus Clarke (puppeteer)
    Marcus Clarke (puppeteer)
    Marcus Clarke is a puppeteer and voice actor from Nottinghamshire. He is best known as the puppeteer and voice actor behind the BAFTA-winning ITV Kids series Bookaboo and the principle puppeteer of Audrey II in the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors. Clarke has worked as a puppeteer in over 60...

    , British actor and puppeteer.
  • Angus Barnett
    Angus Barnett
    Angus Barnett is an English actor known for his repeated roles in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series and the British ITV series Dead Man Weds...

    , British actor.
  • Vance Warner
    Vance Warner
    Vance Warner is a former English professional footballer who played as a defender from 1994 until 2000 notably for Nottingham Forest, as well as appearing for Grimsby Town and Rotherham United.-Nottingham Forest:...

    , Ex-professional footballer for Nottingham Forest
    Nottingham Forest F.C.
    Nottingham Forest Football Club is an English Association Football club based in West Bridgford, Nottingham, that plays in the Football League Championship...

    .
  • Spencer Churchill, European freestyle Martial Arts Champion 1994-1999 retired undefeated.Ninjutsu Instructor, Shaolin Gung-fu Master.MMA.
  • Mick Newell, Coach of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club and a former player.
  • Owen Thomas
    Owen Thomas
    Owen Thomas may refer to:*Owen Thomas , UK radio and television reporter/presenter*Owen Thomas , lead singer in American rock band The Elms*Owen Thomas , former editor of Valleywag...

    , British Television journalist, presenter, CNN and BBC World News.
  • Terry Haywood, British actor, as seen in the BBC
    BBC
    The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

     Series Dive!
    Dive!
    Dive! is an American documentary film directed by Jeremy Seifert.-Premise:The film follows director Jeremy Seifert and his friends as they dumpster dive behind several grocery stores in the Los Angeles area to demonstrate the massive amount of food that is wasted each year in America...

    , CBBC
    CBBC
    CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...

     Series Young Dracula
    Young Dracula
    Young Dracula is a British children's fantasy television series airing on CBBC, loosely based on Young Dracula AND Young Monsters, a children's book by Michael Lawrence. Directed by Joss Agnew, the first series was broadcast in 2006, and the second series, which started in late 2007, concluded in...

     and Shane Meadows
    Shane Meadows
    Shane Meadows is an English film director, screenwriter, occasional actor and BAFTA winner.-Background:Meadows grew up in the Westlands Road area of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. His father was a long distance lorry driver and his mother worked in a fish and chip shop...

     film This Is England
    This Is England
    -Track listing:#"54-46 Was My Number" - Toots & The Maytals#"Come On Eileen" - Dexys Midnight Runners#"Tainted Love" - Soft Cell#"Underpass/Flares" - Movie Dialogue From This Is England#"Nicole " - Gravenhurst...

    .
  • Lucy Worsley, Historian.
  • Jo Metson Scott, Photographer
  • Prof Bob White, Professor of Geophysics since 1989 at the University of Cambridge
    University of Cambridge
    The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

  • Matt Dunstall, British actor, as seen in Batman: The Dark Knight Rises
  • Josh Hawketts, British model and diplomat
  • Helen Richardson, English field hockey international

West Bridgford Grammar School

  • Malcolm Bradbury
    Malcolm Bradbury
    Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...

    , novelist and academic (1944–51)
  • Clive Granger
    Clive Granger
    Sir Clive William John Granger was a British economist, who taught in Britain at the University of Nottingham and in the U.S.A. at the University of California, San Diego. In 2003, Granger was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, in recognition that he and his co-winner, Robert F...

    , Nobel Laureate in Economics, of University of California San Diego (1946–53)
  • Paul Esswood
    Paul Esswood
    Paul Esswood is an English countertenor. He is best known for his singing in Bach cantatas and the operas of Handel and Monteverdi. Along with his countrymen Alfred Deller and James Bowman, he led the revival of countertenor singing in modern times.Esswood was born in West Bridgford, England. He...

    , counter-tenor singer (1953–60)
  • Michael Neale CB
    Order of the Bath
    The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

    , engineer
  • Henry Perfect, Chairman of the Babtie Group from 1996–2002, civil engineer
  • Sir Brian Smedley, High Court Judge
  • Sir Chris Fox, Chief Constable of Northamptonshire Police
    Northamptonshire Police
    Northamptonshire Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing Northamptonshire in the East Midlands of England.The force area amounts to and has a resident population of 642,708...

     from 1996–2003
  • Peter Bramley (1939–1943) Captain - The Sherwood Foresters, Group Computer Operations Controller - Vickers Ltd, Chairman - Holt Model Railways
  • Prof Ian Bell, Professor of American Literature since 1992 at the University of Keele (1959–66)
  • Sir Percy Edward Kent
    Percy Edward Kent
    Percy Edward Kent PhD, DSc, LLD, ScD, FGS, FRS was a British geologist who won the Royal Medal in 1971.-Early life:...

     (also known as Peter Kent), Chief Geologist from 1966-71 for BP
    BP
    BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...

     (worked at Eakring
    Eakring
    Eakring is a village in the Newark and Sherwood district in Nottinghamshire.-Geography:It is situated between the A617 and the A616 roads between Ollerton and Southwell. Dukes Wood to the south is situated on the top of an escarpment, giving good views over the Trent valley to the east and towards...

     during the war), Chairman from 1973-7 of the National Environment Research Council, and President from 1974-6 of the Geological Society of London
    Geological Society of London
    The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...

  • Prof Raymond Kirk, surgeon, President from 1995-6 of the Hunterian Society
  • Tony Isaac, former Chief Executive from 1999-2005 of The BOC Group
    The BOC Group
    The BOC Group plc was the official name of the multinational industrial gas and British based company more commonly known as BOC, and now a part of The Linde Group. In September 2004, BOC had over 30,000 employees on six continents, with sales of over £4.6 billion. BOC was a constituent of the...

  • Pat Heywood (1942-48) Film Star & actress
  • Jonathan Ebsworth (1999-2005) Well know Ice Hockey goalkeeper for Nottingham Panthers.

External links

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