Byrchall High School is a secondary school and specialist mathematics and computing school with academy status, in the Ashton-in-Makerfield area of the

Metropolitan Borough of Wigan The Metropolitan Borough of Wigan is a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, in North West England. It is named after the main settlement of Wigan. It covers the towns of Atherton, Ashton-in-Makerfield, Golborne, Hindley, Ince-in-Mak ...

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...

Admissions

It has a mixed intake of both boys and girls aged 11–16. The current pupil population is approximately 1,200. The current headteacher is Alan Birchall. Byrchall High School is one of three secondary schools in Ashton, the other two being St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, next to Byrchall High School, and Cansfield High School. The school is situated between the A49 and the M6 on the southern edge of the Wigan borough, neighbouring St Helens.

History

Grammar school

The school was founded in 1588 as Ashton Grammar School by Robert Byrchall on land donated by wealthy local land owner William Gerrard. The original building in Seneley Green is now

Garswood Garswood is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of St. Helens, Merseyside, England. The village is within the civil parish of Seneley Green. The parish was historically part of Ashton-in-Makerfield until 1974 boundary changes. History Within ...

Library. Through the school, Ashton-in-Makerfield Grammar School Old Boys F.C. (now known as Ashtonians AFC) entered the Lancashire Amateur Football League in 1951. In 1960, Lancashire Education Committee proposed to amalgamate the school with Upholland Grammar School when the school had around 450 pupils. The school was administered by Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council from April 1974. By 1973 the school had 700 pupils and 800 by 1975.

Comprehensive

It became a comprehensive school in 1978.

Academy

The school became an academy on 1 October 2012.

Academic performance

The school's pupils generally obtain above-average GCSE results; one of the few schools in Wigan LEA to achieve this which is not a faith school.

Alumni

Ashton-in-Makerfield Grammar School

* Sir George Bishop CB OBE, Chairman from 1972-79 of

Booker-McConnell Booker Group Limited is a British food wholesale operator and subsidiary of Tesco. In January 2017, it was announced that the British multinational supermarket retailer Tesco had agreed to purchase the company for £3.7 billion. It was confirm ...

, President from 1957-58 of the International Sugar Council, President from 1983-87 of the Royal Geographical Society * Prof Rodney Robert Porter FRS, biochemist, won the 1972

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accord ...

for discovering the structure of antibodies, Whitley Professor of Biochemistry from 1967-85 at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

* Sir John Randall FRS, physicist who invented the

cavity magnetron The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and currently in microwave ovens and linear particle accelerators. It generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field whi ...

, currently found in

microwave oven A microwave oven (commonly referred to as a microwave) is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce ...

Byrchall High School

* Jane Bruton, Chairman in 2007 of the

British Society of Magazine Editors The British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) is a professional association of print and online magazine editors in the United Kingdom. Established in 1981, the BSME has 148 members. Its annual awards—the BSME Awards and the BSME Rising Stars A ...

, and Editor from 2005-15 of '' Grazia'' and from 2001-01 of ''

Eve Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...

'' *

Lemn Sissay Lemn Sissay FRSL (born 21 May 1967) is a British author and broadcaster. Sissay was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, has been chancellor of the University of Manchester since 2015, and joined the Foundling Museum's board of trus ...

, BAFTA-nominated writer and broadcaster

References

OFSTED Report

External links

School Website

EduBase
{{authority control Educational institutions established in the 1580s Secondary schools in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan Academies in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan 1588 establishments in England Ashton-in-Makerfield