- The Thomas Hardye School
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The Thomas Hardye School Motto Scientia E Veritas Specialisms Science, Humanities Location Queen's Avenue
Dorchester
Dorset
DT1 2ET
EnglandLocal authority Dorset DfE number ???/4615 DfE URN 113895 Ofsted Reports Students 2270 Gender Coeducational Ages 13–18 Former name Hardye's School Website www.thomas-hardye.dorset.sch.uk Coordinates: 50°42′30″N 2°27′13″W / 50.70838°N 2.45372°W
The Thomas Hardye School is a secondary school in Dorchester, Dorset. As part of a scheme run by the BBC and the British Council called Olympic Dreams, the school is twinned with The Doon School which India's first Olympic Gold Medalist Abhinav Bindra attended as a child.
Contents
Admissions
It provides government funded education for children from Year 9 to Year 11. The school also has an integrated sixth form. This takes students through A-Levels and AVCEs. IB courses are also available and many students have found that the course is becoming more popular among their prospective universities with some offers being recently lowered.
Until the end of 2010, the school's headteacher was Dr Iain Melvin O.B.E, who had served for 22 years. The headteacher from September 2011 will be Mr Michael Foley.
The school is situated on the western edge of Dorchester, next to Thomas Hardye Leisure Centre.
Activities
The school currently has a CCF (Combined Cadet Force) that has been running for the last 100 years. The CCF has a large Army contingent as well as a smaller RAF section. They train regularly and compete on a national level. The Army contingent is cap-badged The Rifles and was formerly Devonshire and Dorset Regiment. The school inevitably produces many army (and navy) officers.
Aaron Cook (who represented Great Britain at the 2008 Olympics in taekwondo, losing in the bronze medal bout in the -80 kg class) also attended the school for years 9-10 but never completed his full education in order to concentrate fully on his Olympic dreams and preparations.
History
Grammar school
The school is named after a distant collateral ancestor of the author Thomas Hardy and Admiral Thomas Hardy; Thomas Hardy of Melcombe Regis and Frampton. Hardy was a property owner who endowed the Dorchester 'free' school in 1579, ten years after its completion by the town. His monument is on the south wall of St. Peter's Church. The Tudor grammar school offered free education to boys of the town and neighbourhood, and flourished under the Puritan regime of Revd. John White. It survived the doldrums of the 18th century, though at times having very few scholars, and struggled through the first half of the nineteenth century, closing in 1879. It was substantially rebuilt and re-opened in 1883. It was known as Dorchester Grammar School until 1950 or 1951, when the name Hardye's School was adopted as a reminder of the sixteenth century founder and links to the Hardy family.
Though he had as a child attended Isaac Last's rival establishment in Durngate Street, Thomas Hardy, the author, laid one of the foundation stones for the school's new building on the out-of-town Fordington site in 1927 - parents attached great importance to health as an aspect of education at the time! The land had previously belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall, and the new building was formally opened in 1928 by the Duke of Cornwall, the then Prince of Wales, and remained the 'Hardye's' site until 1992. The Memorial gates, dedicated in 1957, escaped demolition and were moved to the new Thomas Hardye School. The Dorchester Grammar School for Girls was opened in around 1930, and the Dorchester Modern School some time after the 1944 Education Act. These schools formed the basis of the Thomas Hardye School.
Comprehensive
Dorchester Grammar School for Girls became Castlefield School in 1980. The boys' school had boarding facilities until 1982. The current school is a merger of the former Hardye's School (boys) and Castlefield School (girls) in 1992 on the Castlefield site when the decision was made to have a mixed comprehensive school. The Hardye's School site was subsequently sold in 1995 and developed into housing.
On Friday 12 December 2008, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall visited the school to officially open the newly constructed library and sports hall. The Prince recently developed land near the school into what is now known as Poundbury, and a school nearby to the south-west is called the Prince of Wales First School.
BBC World Olympic Dreams
After Sports Voice submitted an entry into the BBC scheme (which sees a UK school twinned with a former school of a London 2012 Olympic athlete), the Thomas Hardye School was twinned with The Doon School, in the northern Indian city of Dehradun. The all boys private school is one of India's oldest education institutions and was the school of India's first individual Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra.
The schools communicate regularly and are represented by a member of staff and pupil who arrange projects to exchange culture and prepare for the London 2012 Summer Olympics.
Headmasters
- Anthony Hamilton 1955-74
- Ralph Hill 1927-55
Facilities
- Two swimming pools,
- Astroturf pitch,
- Large playing fields,
- ICT rooms in most departments,
- Theatre,
- Cafeteria,
- A library with over 30,000 books.
- A new swimming pool is set to be completed in February 2012.
Notable alumni
- Bill Baker,[citation needed] Conservative MP from 1964-74 for Banffshire
- Prof Neil Barclay,[citation needed] Titular Professor of Molecular Immunology since 1998 at the University of Oxford
- Colonel Christopher Biles[citation needed] OBE, Army intelligence officer, and head of military intelligence in Northern Ireland, who died in the 1994 Scotland RAF Chinook crash
- David Kenneth Hay Dale CBE, Governor of Montserrat from 1980-4
- Roger Gale, Conservative MP since 1983 for North Thanet, and former BBC producer
- Prof Peter Garland CBE, Professor of Biochemistry from 1992-9 at the Institute of Cancer Research
- Prof John Gillingham CBE, Professor of Neurological Surgery from 1963-80 at the University of Edinburgh, and a pioneer of stereotactic surgery
- Paul Hillier,[citation needed] classical singer and composer.
- Lt-Col Alec Lovelac CMG MBE MC, Governor of Antigua from 1954-8
- Rt Rev Michael Perham,[citation needed] Bishop of Gloucester since 2004
- Maj-Gen John Stephenson[citation needed] CB OBE, Colonel Commandant from 1984-9 of the Royal Artillery
- Simon Winchester[citation needed] OBE, journalist
- Paddy Milner, singer and composer
External links
Categories:- Schools in Dorchester
- Comprehensive schools in Dorset
- Training schools in England
- Schools with Combined Cadet Forces
- Science Colleges in Dorset
- Humanities Colleges in England
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