Parkside Community College is a secondary

academy school An academy school in England is a state-funded school which is directly funded by the Department for Education and independent of local authority control. The terms of the arrangements are set out in individual Academy Funding Agreements. Mo ...

with 600 places for children aged 11–16, situated in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, Cambridgeshire. It is part of the United Learning Cambridge Cluster, along with Parkside Sixth,

Coleridge Community College Coleridge Community College is a secondary academy school with 750 places for children aged 11–16, situated on Radegund Road, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England. The school is a member of the United Learning Cambridge Cluster (formerly the Par ...

Trumpington Community College Trumpington Community College is a Mixed-sex education, co-educational secondary school located in the Trumpington area of Cambridge in the English county of Cambridgeshire. The school is named after the village of Trumpington which is located ne ...

, and

Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology (formerly UTC Cambridge) is a university technical college opened in 2014. It is located on the Biomedical Campus, which encompasses Addenbrooke's Hospital, next to the Long Road Sixth Form College ...

(formerly UTC Cambridge). Cambridge Academic Partnership joined the

United Learning United Learning is a group of state-funded schools and fee-paying independent schools operating in England. United Learning is the trading name for United Church Schools Trust (UCST) and United Learning Trust (ULT). It is one of the largest 10 ch ...

group of academies as a unit in September 2019. It is located next to the main Cambridge Parkside Police Station, the main Cambridge Fire Station and the

National Express National Express Group is a British multinational public transport company headquartered in Birmingham, England. It operates bus, coach, train and tram services in the United Kingdom, Ireland (National Express operates Eurolines in conjunction ...

coach stops. It is east of

Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican m ...

. From 1960 to 1974 it was the ''Cambridge Grammar School for Girls'', after which it became the co-educational comprehensive Parkside Community College. It was the first school in the UK to be designated a Media Arts College under the UK government's

specialist schools programme The specialist schools programme (SSP), first launched as the Technology Colleges programme and also known as the specialist schools initiative, specialist schools policy and specialist schools scheme, was a government programme in the United ...

, in 1997, and was granted

Foundation Foundation may refer to: * Foundation (nonprofit), a type of charitable organization ** Foundation (United States law), a type of charitable organization in the U.S. ** Private foundation, a charitable organization that, while serving a good cause ...

status in 2003. In 2005 Parkside Community College formed the Parkside Federation with

, which had then been placed in special measures. The school achieved

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 philosop ...

status in 2011 when the federation converted to a multi-academy trust. At the same time it opened a new sixth-form college, Parkside Sixth. In 2017 the trust changed its name to the Cambridge Academic Partnership. The Cambridge Academic Partnership would later go on to change its name to the United Learning Cambridge Cluster. The history of the school is related in ''An Epoch-Making School'', by former Deputy Principal Rosemary Gardiner (1983).

Research work

Its work as a specialist media arts college has been documented in a number of research studies by staff at the school. These include studies of an extensive primary school animation project (e.g. Burn and Parker, 2001), run in conjunction with the Cambridge Film Consortium, a group composed of

Anglia Ruskin University Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is a public university in East Anglia, United Kingdom. Its origins are in the Cambridge School of Art, founded by William John Beamont in 1858. It became a university in 1992, and was renamed after John Ruskin in ...

, City Screen (an Arts cinema chain), the

Cambridge Film Festival The Cambridge Film Festival is the third-longest-running film festival in the UK. The festival historically took place during early July, but now takes place annually during Autumn in Cambridge. It is organised by the registered charity Cambri ...

, and Parkside itself. A comprehensive account of the school's media work, giving examples of work in digital video, computer games, animation, and television drama, as well as work across the curriculum, is provided in Andrew Burn and James Durran's ''Media Literacy in Schools'' (2007). On 1 December 2008, the Nova 9 helium balloon took two space-suited teddies close to the edge of space from the grounds of

Churchill College, Cambridge Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establis ...

. The space suits were designed by 11- to 13-year-olds at the school. The journey took just over two hours. The teddies descended back to Earth and landed near

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line ...

, being located by GPS equipment.

Academic performance

Parkside Community College achieves GCSE results that are consistently among the best for state schools in Cambridgeshire.

Notable alumni

Cavetown Robin Daniel Skinner (born 15 December 1998), known professionally as Cavetown (sometimes stylized in all lowercase), is an English singer-songwriter, record producer, and YouTuber. His style blends elements of indie rock, indie pop and bed ...

, musician and YouTuber * Patrick O'Flynn,

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...

MEP * Ben Thapa, opera singer *

Ronald Searle Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI (3 March 1920 – 30 December 2011) was an English artist and satirical cartoonist, comics artist, sculptor, medal designer and illustrator. He is perhaps best remembered as the creator of St Trinian's S ...

, Cartoonist The author

Nick Hornby Nicholas Peter John Hornby (born 17 April 1957) is an English writer and lyricist. He is best known for his memoir '' Fever Pitch'' and novels '' High Fidelity'' and '' About a Boy'', all of which were adapted into feature films. Hornby's work ...

was an English teacher at the school between 1982 and 1984.Snead, Florence
"Cambridge school Parkside Community College welcomes writer Nick Hornby for Q&A session"
''

Cambridge News The ''Cambridge News'' (formerly the ''Cambridge Evening News'') is a British daily newspaper. Published each weekday and on Saturdays, it is distributed from its Waterbeach base. In the period December 2010 – June 2011 it had an average dai ...

'', Cambridge, 14 November 2014. Retrieved 21 May 2016. The UCL English professor and media theorist

Andrew Burn (professor) Andrew Burn (born 1954) is an English professor and media theorist. He is best known for his work in the fields of media arts education, multimodality and play, and for the development of the theory of the Kineikonic Mode. He is a professor of ...

taught English, Media and Drama at the school from 1986 to 2001.

References

* Burn A & Parker D (2001), ‘Making your Mark: Digital Inscription, Animation, and a New Visual Semiotic’, ''Education, Communication & Information'', Vol. 1, No. 2, pp 155–179 (and online at http://www.open.ac.uk/eci/burn/featset.html) * Burn, A and Durran, J (2007) ''Media Literacy in Schools: practice, production and progression''. London: Paul Chapman * Gardiner, R (1983) ''An Epoch-Making School'', Parkside Community College: Cambridge

External links

Parkside Federation

Cambridgeshire County Council Admissions website

City of Cambridge Education Foundation

EduBase

News items

Teddy-nauts in December 2008

Cuddly cosmonauts in December 2008

Visit to the Arctic in July 2007

Use of technology wins award in August 2005

Audio clips

''Today'' programme December 2009

Video clips

Parkside Media
{{authority control Schools in Cambridge Educational institutions established in 1913 Secondary schools in Cambridgeshire 1913 establishments in England Academies in Cambridgeshire United Learning schools