Coleridge Community College is a

secondary Secondary may refer to: Science and nature * Secondary emission, of particles ** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products * The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding i ...

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. Most ...

with 750 places for children aged 11–16, situated on Radegund Road,

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 Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

, England. The school is a member of the United Learning Cambridge Cluster (formerly the Parkside Federation and the Cambridge Academic Partnership) along with

Parkside Community College Parkside Community College is a secondary academy school with 600 places for children aged 11–16, situated in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. It is part of the United Learning Cambridge Cluster, along with Parkside Sixth, Coleridge Community Colleg ...

Trumpington Community College Trumpington Community College is a 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 nearby. The school was ...

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 i ...

(formerly UTC Cambridge), and Parkside Sixth. It joined Parkside Community College to form the Parkside Federation in 2005, after having been 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 2003. 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 ...

report in 2019 rated it as good, under the leadership of Headteacher, Mark Patterson. 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 ...

academy as a unit in September 2019. Originally two segregated schools, the Coleridge Secondary Modern School for Boys was located in the right half and the Coleridge Secondary Modern School for Girls in the left half of the mirror-image twin main building, with a separate dedicated gymnasium located behind the Girls' school, and prefabricated classroom outbuildings surrounding its internal playing fields at the rear of the Boys' school. The two schools were merged into a Comprehensive School from the 1966 school year as part of the national reorganisation of secondary and grammar schools.

Notable alumni

Louis Rolfe Louis Rolfe (born 21 July 1997) is a British Paralympic track cyclist competing in C2 classification events. Rolfe came to note as a cyclist during the 2016 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships where he was part of the gold medal-winni ...

, British

Paralympic The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the ''Games of the Paralympiad'', is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of physical disabilities, including impaired muscle power and impaire ...

track cyclist Track cycling is a bicycle racing sport usually held on specially built banked tracks or velodromes using purpose-designed track bicycles. History Track cycling has been around since at least 1870. When track cycling was in its infancy, it wa ...

Michael Heaver Michael Eric Heaver (born 22 September 1989) is a British former politician. He was elected as a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East of England constituency in the 2019 European parliamentary election a role he re ...

Brexit Party Reform UK is a Right-wing populism, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded with support from Nigel Farage in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating hard Euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit, and was bri ...

MEP * Leon Davies,

Cambridge United Football Club Cambridge United Football Club is a professional association football club based in the city of Cambridge, England. They compete in EFL League one , the 3rd tier of the English football league system. The club is based at the Abbey Stadium on New ...

Defender * Catherine Banner, Author

Media attention

In December 2021, the school was noticed by local news channels after numerous complaints from parents and students (current and former) . The article brought insight on a student-made petition on

Change.org Change.org is a worldwide nonprofit petition website, based in California, US, operated by the San Francisco-based company of the same name, which has over 400 million users and offers the public the ability to promote the petitions they care abo ...

claiming the school had transformed from a 'safe haven' to a 'negative environment which resembles a prison', asking for these 'derogatory rules to be demonised' (The meaning of this is unclear). It also interviewed a local parent, who described the school as a 'camp' due to the fact children were given report cards. ITV Anglia's Joanna MacKenzie also interviewed a former student who stated 'You always felt like you were doing something wrong'.

Daniel Zeichner Daniel Stephen Zeichner (born 9 November 1956) is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Cambridge since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, he defeated Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert before retaining his seat ...

, the

Labour Party UK The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all gene ...

MP for Cambridge spoke out and said "I found some of the attitudes of the trust hard to take. It was very much 'this is United Learning’s approach and that's the way it is'". A

spokesperson for the college described the behaviour policy to have been 'successfully put in place' but acknowledged that local parents are 'entitled to complain'. The article also explored how the behaviour policy is present in many other schools, particularly those in

academies 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 ...

, in line with the values of the

Department for Education The Department for Education (DfE) is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for child protection, child services, education (compulsory, further and higher education), apprenticeships and wider skills in England. A Department ...

References

External links

Parkside Federation website

Cambridgeshire County Council Admissions website
{{authority control Schools in Cambridge Academies in Cambridgeshire Secondary schools in Cambridgeshire United Learning schools