The Grange Academy is a

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...

secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' secondary education, lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) ...

and

sixth form In the education systems of England, Northern Ireland, Wales, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and some other Commonwealth countries, sixth form represents the final two years of secondary education, ages 16 to 18. Pupils typically prepare for A-l ...

located in

Bushey Bushey is a town in the Hertsmere borough of Hertfordshire in the East of England. It has a population of over 25,000 inhabitants. Bushey Heath is a large neighbourhood south east of Bushey on the boundary with the London Borough of Harrow re ...

in the

English county The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural and political demarcation. The term "county" is defined in several ways and can apply to similar or the same areas used by each ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

History

The school descends from a technical school in

Watford Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, a ...

, while the site it now occupies was originally a private junior boarding school. its School of Art, Science and Commerce in 1922, and establishing a Junior Technical School in the old public library building on Queen's Road in 1929. In the following year, these were brought together in the Watford Technical School, with an annexe to the old library building opened by Lord Eustace Percy, an advocate of technical education. Inspectors praised the school in 1934 for its high employment rate among the skilled trades. It became a prestigious selective school, though behind

Watford Grammar School for Boys Go Forward with Preparation , established = 1884 ( Single-sex) , type = partially selective academy , religious_affiliation = , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Ian A. Cooksey , r_head_label = , ...

and

Watford Grammar School for Girls Watford Grammar School for Girls (commonly abbreviated WGGS) is an academy for girls in Watford in Hertfordshire, UK. Despite its name, it is only a partially selective school, with 25% of entrants admitted on academic ability and 10% on musica ...

. Ambitious expansion plans were drawn up by the county council, but were shelved on the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Around 1960 the Watford Technical High School moved to cheaply constructed buildings on the north side of Bushey Hall Road. The Queen's Road site has since been demolished to make way for the

Harlequin Shopping Centre Atria Watford is a shopping centre in the middle of Watford, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. It opened in June 1992 as the Harlequin Shopping Centre. The centre was rebranded as intu Watford in 2013 following the renaming of its parent Capital Sho ...

. When the school became a comprehensive in 1971, it was renamed Bushey Hall School. The new school was simply a continuation of its predecessor, with no change in students, staff, and no special measures. Both road and school were named after the original Bushey Hall, which was located just to the north on Aldenham Road, and is now the site of a leisure centre and golf course. The school relocated to the London Road site in 1988, with September 1988 marked as the inaugural year for pupils at the new site. The buildings at the old Bushey Hall Road site remained derelict for 4 years before being demolished following a drowning in the old swimming pool. A housing estate and caravan site now occupy the Bushey Hall Road site.

The London Road site

The current site is the location of the former Bushey Manor. The buildings were erected in 1928 to house the

Royal Masonic School for Boys The Royal Masonic School for Boys was an English independent school for boys at Bushey in Hertfordshire. History The origins of the school lie in the charities established in the late 18th century to clothe and educate the sons of Freemasons nea ...

junior school, which opened in the following year. The school was designed to house 400 boarders in a line of four buildings connected by a cloister (covered walkway), across the quadrangle from the main building. The other buildings on the quadrangle were the dining hall (on the east side) and the teaching block and library (west). Due to falling rolls, the junior school closed in 1970. The site was then home to Grange Park School (a secondary school for boys) until it closed in 1987, when Bushey Hall School moved to the site. The building still bears evidence of its masonic heritage in the architectural detailing. The brick pillars to the main gate on London Road are topped with stone globes, unusually a lunar globe and oceanic globe. These relate closely with other celestial detailing on the site; in the main entrance hall a stained glass roof dome is marked with the 12 signs of the zodiac. Other masonic markings can be found on the stone lintels over significant doorways. Bushey School attained

grant maintained Grant-maintained schools or GM schools were state schools in England and Wales between 1988 and 1998 that had opted out of local government control, being funded directly by a grant from central government. Some of these schools had selective ad ...

status in the mid-1990s, converting to a

foundation school In England and Wales, a foundation school is a state-funded school in which the governing body has greater freedom in the running of the school than in community schools. Foundation schools were set up under the School Standards and Framework A ...

when grant maintained status was abolished in 1999. The library was replaced in 1993 with the construction of a learning resource centre on the green space beside the gymnasium hall. An arson attack in 1994 destroyed the gymnasium roof and it was closed due to lack of funds to replace the heavy timber trusses. A temporary structure was built on the playing fields as a replacement gymnasium. Since to the introduction of partial selection in several other schools in southwest Hertfordshire in mid-1990s, the school's intake has been skewed toward the lower end of the ability range. Results at the school have been poor for several years and the school was placed in

special measures Special measures is a status applied by regulators of public services in Britain to providers who fall short of acceptable standards. In education (England and Wales) Ofsted, the schools inspection agency for England and some British Overseas Ter ...

in April 2008 following an

Ofsted The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a Non-ministerial government department, non-ministerial department of Government of the United Kingdom, His Majesty's government, reporting to Parliament of the U ...

inspection in March 2008.,

Office for Standards in Education The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a non-ministerial department of His Majesty's government, reporting to Parliament. Ofsted is responsible for inspecting a range of educational institutions, includ ...

. As part of its improvement measures the school then applied for

academy An academy ( Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy ...

status.

Academy

The school converted to academy status in September 2009 and was renamed The Bushey Academy. The academy was originally sponsored by the David Meller Educational Trust and relocated to new buildings in January 2013. Jon Hebblethwaite was appointed as the school Principal in April 2017. In April 2018 the school was rated 'Inadequate' by Ofsted. As a consequence of this the school became sponsored by

Future Academies Future Academies is a multi-academy trust running 10 primary and secondary schools, plus a teacher training college, in London and Hertfordshire in England. The trust's motto is ''Libertas Per Cultum'' (freedom through education). It was set u ...

in February 2020 and was later renamed The Grange Academy. The current Principal, Dr Philip Hills, was appointed in July 2020.

References

External links

Bushey Hall School

The Grange Academy official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grange Academy, Bushey Schools in Hertsmere Academies in Hertfordshire Secondary schools in Hertfordshire