Impington Village College

Impington Village College is a mixed secondary school and sixth form located in Impington in the English county of Cambridgeshire. The buildings of 1938/9 by Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry are Grade I listed.[2]

Impington Village College
The school in 2006
Address
New Road

Impington
,
Cambridgeshire
,
CB24 9LX

England
Coordinates52.2471°N 0.1166°E / 52.2471; 0.1166
Information
TypeAcademy
Established1939 (1939)
Department for Education URN137826 Tables
OfstedReports
Executive PrincipalRob Campbell
PrincipalVictoria Hearn
GenderMixed
Age11 to 18
Enrolment1,324[1]
Websitehttp://www.impington.cambs.sch.uk/

The school opened in 1939, two weeks after the outbreak of World War II. It was the fourth Village College to be opened in Cambridgeshire. As a village college, it was originally intended to encompass all aspects of learning in the village, and included prominent space for adult education and the First Histon Scouts, who are now based in a hut on the grounds of the college.

In 1998 the school was awarded the Sportsmark by Sport England and was also granted international school status by the British Council's central bureau for education visits and exchanges, the first of eleven schools to be designated that way. In September 1999 it built on this with a successful application to the Department of Education to become a specialist Language College.[3] The school converted to academy status in January 2013.

Building
Adult education wing of the college in 2006.

Henry Morris, founder of the village college system in Cambridgeshire, employed prominent architects to design the colleges, and Impington was designed by Walter Gropius, founder of The Bauhaus School of Architecture, and his partner Maxwell Fry. It is the only example of Gropius's work in Britain[4] and the building is now Grade I listed building. In 2014, the college received a £100,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for important repair and restoration works to the listed part of the site.[5] Work began in the August of that year.

A modern school contrasted with an old school. Colour lithograph after Abram Games, 1942.
Music students at Impington College in April 1944.

House system

Starting in the 2014/15 academic year, the college introduced a house system for pastoral care in years 7–11. These houses were named after Helen Keller, Rosa Parks, Alan Turing and Raoul Wallenberg. The following year, a vertical tutoring system began, based around these houses.

Impington International College

Impington Village College has an international sixth form, educating pupils aged 16–19 from a mix of nations and cultures. The sixth form offers both A Levels as well as the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. It also offers its own course called 'Ideal' which is for students with learning difficulties and teaches them essential life skills, as well as some basic qualifications. Impington has also offered an extra year for year 13 performance students, helping them apply for drama school and audition for companies.

Ofsted intervention

Impington was operating a two year Key Stage 3, where pupils are required to experience 'broad and balanced curriculum', and spending three years training for the GCSE examinations. During a Section 8 inspection in November 2019, Ofsted informed them that it was not possible to be considered for the 'Outstanding' grade using such a model. [6] This has had consequences for other schools and academies across the country.[7]

Notable former pupils

References
  1. Impington Village College. Government of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  2. Historic England. "Impington Village College  (Grade I) (1331296)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
  3. "Impington College brochure" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 March 2012. Retrieved 19 October 2013.
  4. 'Viewing Impington – the idea of the village college', the informal education homepage, Smith, M. K. (1997). Last update: 30 January 200
  5. "200 invalid-request". impington.cambs.sch.uk. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  6. Allen-Kinross, Pippa (6 December 2019). "Three year GCSE? No 'outstanding' for you". Schools Week. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  7. Allen-Kinross, Pippa (11 December 2019). "Harris Federation schools to ditch three-year GCSEs". Schools Week. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.