Poole - Education

Education

Poole has sixteen first schools, eight middle schools, seven combined schools, eight secondary and grammar schools, five special schools, two independent schools and one college of further education. Canford School is an independent boarding school administered by Poole local education authority. Poole’s two grammar schools maintain a selective education system, assessed by the Twelve plus exam. Poole High School is the largest secondary school in Poole with 1,660 pupils. The Bournemouth and Poole College attracts over 16,000 students a year and is one of the largest further education colleges in the country and the leading provider of academic and vocational education in Dorset. It has two centrally located main campuses in Poole and Bournemouth. In 2008, the college announced plans to refurbish and redevelop its campuses at an estimated cost of £120 million. However, the project stalled in 2009 when the Learning and Skills Council, which had promised to provide 80% of the money, ran out of funds.

From the 2007 General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) results, Poole was ranked 18th out of 148 local authorities in England based on the percentage of pupils attaining at least five A* to C grades at GCSE level including maths and English (54.5% compared with the national average of 46.8%). Parkstone Grammar School was the most successful secondary school in Poole for GCSE results in 2007: 100% of pupils gained five or more GCSEs at A* to C grade including maths and English. Canford School also achieved 100% and Poole Grammar School was the next best performing school with 98%. Poole High School achieved 39% and the worst performing school was Rossmore Community College where only 19% of students achieved five or more A* to C grade results. Poole’s grammar schools were also the best performing for A-level results. Poole Grammar School was the 60th most successful school/sixth form in the country in 2007: each student achieved on average 1071.4 points compared to the national average of 731.2. Parkstone Grammar School students averaged 1017.9 points.

Bournemouth University was designated as a university in 1992 and despite its name, the university’s main campus (the Talbot Campus) and buildings are in Poole and smaller campus is situated in Bournemouth. Media courses are the university's strength, and recent teaching quality assessments have resulted in ratings of 'excellent' for courses in the areas of communication and media, business and management, catering and hospitality, archaeology and nursing and midwifery. The Arts University College at Bournemouth is a university-sector institution in Poole at Wallisdown. The AUCB offers undergraduate, foundation degree, postgraduate and further education courses in contemporary arts, design and media.