Parkside Community College is a secondary academy school with 600 places for children aged 11–16, situated in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, Cambridgeshire. It is part of the United Learning Cambridge Cluster, along with Parkside Sixth, Coleridge Community College, Trumpington Community College, and Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology (formerly UTC Cambridge). Cambridge Academic Partnership joined the United Learning 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 Mobico Group, formerly National Express Group, is a British multinational public transport company with headquarters in Birmingham, England. Domestically it currently operates bus and coach services under brands including National Express. Th ...

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 mo ...

. 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 status in 2003. In 2005 Parkside Community College formed the Parkside Federation with Coleridge Community College, which had then been placed in special measures. The school achieved

Academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

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, which will close in 2026. 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 research university in the region of East Anglia, United Kingdom. Its origins date back to the Cambridge School of Art (CSA), founded by William John Beamont, a Fellow of Trinity College at the Unive ...

, City Screen (an Arts cinema chain), the Cambridge Film Festival, 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 Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but retains a strong interest in the arts ...

. 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 status in the United Kingdom, borough in Suffolk, England. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, ...

, being located by GPS equipment.

Academic performance

Parkside looking towards the swimming pool - geograph

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 stylised in all lowercase), is an English singer-songwriter, record producer, and YouTuber. His style blends elements of indie rock, indie pop and bedroom ...

, 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 (both through defect ...

MEP * Ben Thapa, opera singer * Ronald Searle, Cartoonist The author Nick Hornby 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 Milton base. In the period December 2010 – June 2011 it had an average daily c ...

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