The Winterbourne Academy, is a co-educational school in

South Gloucestershire South Gloucestershire is a unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire, South West England. Towns in the area include Yate, Chipping Sodbury, Thornbury, Filton, Patchway and Bradley Stoke, the latter three forming part ...

. The school is in the village of Winterbourne in

, on the outskirts of

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

, England.

History

The Ridings High School was founded in 1957. It was opened by the then

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for

Bristol South East Bristol South East was a constituency in the city of Bristol that returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The constituency was created for the 1950 general election, mainly from t ...

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. ...

Academy proposal

In 2007, Rob Gibson (Headteacher at the time) was invited by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to consider a move to Academy status as the Lead (non-financial) sponsor in a hard federation, incorporating King Edmund Community School in

Yate Yate is a town and civil parish in South Gloucestershire, England. It lies just to the southwest of the Cotswolds, Cotswold Hills and is northeast of Bristol city centre and from the centre of Bath, Somerset, Bath, with regular rail services ...

. As a result, in September 2009, The Ridings' Federation of Academies was established with two independent academies, Winterbourne International Academy (formerly 'The Ridings High School' and the lead sponsor) and Yate International Academy (formerly King Edmund Community School). The two academies have since parted ways, and now operate under separate trusts. Rob Gibson became the Chief Executive Principal in 2009 of the Federation but left at the end of 2014. Beverley Martin became Chief Executive Principal of the Federation in 2015 and Principal of Yate International Academy. The Winterbourne Academy has approximately 1,820 students on roll including 370 in its sixth form. Winterbourne Academy used to base its curriculum models upon the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme. The Winterbourne International Academy delivered the International Baccalaureate Diploma (post-16). International Baccalaureate results were consistently above the International benchmark pass rate of 80%. Since 2008, The Winterbourne International Academy has had three students awarded the prestigious

Prime Minister's Global Fellowship The Global Fellowship programme (previously The Prime Minister's Global Fellowship) works with 18- and 19-year-old students from England to give them a strong foundation in interacting with one of the three major emerging economies. It began in 2008 ...

: students have used these awards to travel to China and Brazil. Following major changes at the academy, the International Baccalaureate Diploma was dropped, and thus Winterbourne International Academy became solely Winterbourne Academy. The Principal of Winterbourne Mr Rob Evans announced that he was going to be resigning in 2015. Mr Richard Haupt took his place of Principal on 1 June 2015. In September 2018 Jason Beardmore became the new principal, taking over from Peter Smart who had been interim headteacher since 2017

Academic standards

The school (and now Academy) has expanded since its inception, providing services such as a technology college, Arts Centre and Sixth Form. Since 2006 it has offered the

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate (IB), formerly known as the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the IB Dip ...

, becoming the first school in South Gloucestershire to offer this qualification, and even attracting students from abroad. It hosts the most popular Sixth Form in the county, with children joining at the age of 16 from all of the other local secondary schools. The OFSTED dashboard for WIA may be found at: http://dashboard.ofsted.gov.uk/dash.php?urn=135944 and the inspection reports at: http://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ELS/135944.

New build

The school was granted £19.3 million to finance their new build. In January 2013, the new school opened at the end of 2014.

Notable former pupils

* International rugby player,

Dave Attwood Dave Attwood (born 5 April 1987 in Bristol, England) is a rugby union player who plays at Lock for Bath in Premiership Rugby. In 2017 he was described as a "big traditional tight-head lock, a master of the set piece, indeed arguably the best ...

* Author,

Nathan Filer Nathan Filer is a British writer best known for his debut novel, ''The Shock of the Fall''. This won several major literary awards, including the Costa Book of the Year and the Betty Trask Prize. It was a ''Sunday Times'' Bestseller, and has bee ...

* Former

Bristol Rovers Bristol Rovers Football Club are a professional football club in Bristol, England. They compete in League One, the third tier of the English football league system. They play home matches at the Memorial Stadium in Horfield, they have been c ...

goalkeeper, Mike Green * Winter Olympic Bronze medallist,

Jenny Jones Jenny Jones may refer to: People *Jenny Jones (presenter) (born 1946), United States television personality and host of ''The Jenny Jones Show'' *Jenny Jones, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (born 1949), British Green Party politician, member of the ...

* Singer in duo

Bars and Melody Bars and Melody (often abbreviated as BAM) are a British R&B and rap duo consisting of rapper Leondre Devries and singer Charlie Lenehan, who took part in the eighth series of Britain's Got Talent in 2014. During their audition, they were autom ...

, Charlie Lenehan * Former football player and manager

Gary Megson Gary John Megson (born 2 May 1959) is an English former football player and manager. He has previously managed Norwich City, Blackpool, Stockport County, Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion, Nottingham Forest, Leicester City, Bolton Wanderers ...

* Mark Zanker,

Red Arrows The Red Arrows, officially known as the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, is the aerobatics display team of the Royal Air Force based at RAF Waddington. The team was formed in late 1964 as an all-RAF team, replacing a number of unofficial teams ...

pilot from 1994–96 and

RAF The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

Harrier pilot, now a

Boeing 747-400 The Boeing 747-400 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an advanced variant of the initial Boeing 747. The "Advanced Series 300" was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, targeting ...

(freight) pilot with

Cathay Pacific Cathay Pacific Airways Limited (CPA), more widely known as Cathay Pacific (), is the flag carrier of Hong Kong, with its head office and main hub located at Hong Kong International Airport. The airline's operations and subsidiaries have sc ...

since 1999 *

Wayne Hussey 250px, Hussey performing at the M'era Luna Festival in 2004. Jerry Wayne Hussey (born 26 May 1958) is an English musician who was born in Bristol, England. He is best known as the lead singer of The Mission, and the guitarist with The Sisters ...

, musician. Singer with The Mission, guitarist with

The Sisters of Mercy The Sisters of Mercy is an English rock band, formed in 1980 in Leeds. After achieving early underground fame there, the band had their commercial breakthrough in the mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasin ...

and Dead or Alive *

Chelsea FC Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in Fulham, West London. Founded in 1905, they play their home games at Stamford Bridge. The club competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football. Th ...

player Kyle Scott *Cricketer, Sam Bracey *Broadcaster BC Radio screenwriter

he Last Detective He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

TV producer Richard Leslie Lewis

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ridings' Federation Winterbourne International Academy Civil Parish of Winterbourne Educational institutions established in 1957 Secondary schools in South Gloucestershire District 1957 establishments in England Academies in South Gloucestershire District