North Leamington School

North Leamington School

Headteacher	Joy Mitchell
Deputy Headteachers	Robert Lowries
Chair of Governors	Julian Humphreys
Specialism	Performing Arts College
Location	Sandy Lane, Blackdown Leamington Spa Warwickshire CV32 6RD England
Local authority	Warwickshire
DfE URN	125748
Ofsted	Reports
Staff	167
Students	1255
Gender	Coeducational
Ages	11–18
Website	www.northleamingtonschool.warwickshire.sch.uk

Coordinates: 52°18′35″N 1°31′51″W / 52.3098°N 1.5308°W / 52.3098; -1.5308

North Leamington School (NLS for short) is a mixed comprehensive school for pupils aged 11 to 18 that operates from a single site which, previous to September 2009, operated from two sites Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England.^[1] The new school is no longer in Leamington, but the parish of Blackdown just off the B4113 road on Sandy Lane.

Admissions

It is a mixed 11 to 18 comprehensive school maintained by Warwickshire County Council.^[2] The school mainly serves North Leamington. It has 1,210 students on roll, including 310 in the Sixth Form. Joy Mitchell is currently headteacher.^[3]

History

Binswood Hall 2005

The school was formed in 1977 from the merging of three schools: Blackdown High School (Park Road site), Leamington College for Girls, a girls grammar school (Cloister Way site) and Leamington College for Boys (Binswood Hall site) on Binswood Avenue. The sixth form centre at Binswood Hall was separate to the school until 1994, when the teaching staff was merged with the 11-16 school. This was not a simple operation, with the disparate nature of the sites.

Former sites

Previous to September 2009, the main site, at the north of the town sandwiched between the A452 and A445, comprised the Lower School (Years 7, 8 & 9), approached from Cloister Way, and the Upper School (Years 10 & 11), approached from Park Road. The Sixth-Form Centre (Years 12 & 13) was situated in the centre of Leamington, at Binswood Hall, Binswood Avenue. This was the former Leamington College for Boys, a boys grammar school, which opened in 1848. This school merged with a secondary modern school, in 1977 to form a comprehensive.

New site

NLS has opened a completely new school, built at the Manor Hall end of the former main site, which opened in September 2009 with the address Sandy Lane, Blackdown, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, CV32 6RD^[4] This new complex merged together both the main school and the Sixth-Form. The old site of the school will be demolished and the land sold to developers. The demolition of the old site will occur in the later stages of 2007. It is designed by Robothams Architecture, an archirectural firm based in Warwick.

Sixth-form centre

Binswood Hall is a listed building with previous incarnations as a girls convent school and as a college for boys. It offered 36 AS Level courses, leading onto A2 courses in year 13. It had an overall pass rate of 97% with 40% of 435 individual exam entries attaining Grades A or B in 2004. The head of the Sixth-Form was Robert Lowries, who was also Deputy Head of NLS as a whole. The sixth form centre gets good A level results, better than two Warwickshire grammar schools.

Academic performance

Arts College

NLS was granted Specialist School status as a Performing Arts College in 1999 thanks to sponsorship by EMI Music Sound Foundation, and, as a result of success in this role, the DfES confirmed the status for a further five years, 2003 to 2008. It was the first Arts College school in Warwickshire.

Artsmark

In 2002 the school also won the Arts Council's 'Artsmark Gold' Award and also gained 'Sportsmark' status from Sport England in 2004. Due to vast improvement in exam results between 2000 and 2003, NLS received a "School Achievement Award" from the Government and in addition, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust Council has recently elected NLS to its 'Most Improved Schools Club'. It gets GCSEs just under the England average.

Sports Memorabilia

Inside the school's sports hall is various sports tops from notable pupils such as Ben Foster. There is also a signed Celtic Shirt from 2007 and a Ronaldinho signed match jersey from the same year.

Alumni

Leamington College for Boys

• Prof Sir David Baulcombe, Professor of Botany since 2007 at the University of Cambridge, and President from 2003-4 of the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology
• Thomas Byles
• D. J. Enright OBE, writer
• Edgar Jepson, novelist
• Vivian Dering Majendie KCB, Chief Inspector of Explosives from 1871 to 1898
• Wilfrid Mellers, composer
• Norman Painting, actor^[5]
• Charles Spearman, President from 1923-6 of the British Psychological Society, and creator of the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, used in statistics
• Lytton Strachey
• Sir Frank Whittle OM CBE CB, inventor of the jet engine^[6]

North Leamington School

• Kelly Sibley, Olympic Table Tennis Player
• Ben Foster, Manchester United and England International Goalkeeper

References

1. ^ "Contact Us". http://www.northleamingtonschool.warwickshire.sch.uk/lnk_contactus.html. Retrieved 2009-04-29. ^{[dead link]}
2. ^ "North Leamington School - Warwickshire Web". http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/Web/corporate/pages.nsf/Pages%20by%20Department/3A04F5AF990358BC802574C700323B42/. Retrieved 2009-04-29. ^{[dead link]}
3. ^ "North Leamington School". http://www.northleamingtonschool.warwickshire.sch.uk/. Retrieved 2011-8-27. 
4. ^ "Contact Us". http://www.northleamingtonschool.warwickshire.sch.uk/lnk_contactus.html. Retrieved 2009-04-29. ^{[dead link]}
5. ^ Telegraph article on Norman Painting (29 October 2009)]
6. ^ http://www.raf.mod.uk/history_old/whittle1.html

External links

• North Leamington School
• NLS Sixth-Form Media Studies Website
• Planning proposal for the new school (PDF)
• EduBase