The village college is an institution specific to Cambridgeshire, England (including, since 1998, the Peterborough unitary authority area). It caters for the education of 11 to 16 year olds during the day, and provides educational and leisure facilities to adults out of school hours.
Village colleges were the brainchild of Henry Morris, the then Chief Education Officer for Cambridgeshire, who had a vision of a school that would serve the whole community, stem migration from the countryside to the towns, and provide a decent education to pupils who had previously only been served by the upper years of Elementary schools.
Between the implementation of the Education Act 1944 and Cambridgeshire's adoption of the Comprehensive school system in 1974, village colleges were effectively reduced to secondary modern schools; since 1974 village colleges have returned to their original mission as schools for the whole community. Indeed, many argue that the village college model had a large influence on the design of the Comprehensive system.
Under Morris' influence, many of the colleges have had distinguished architects, notably the one at Impington designed by Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry.
There are village colleges throughout Cambridgeshire, including Bassingbourn, Bottisham, Burwell, Comberton, Cottenham, Gamlingay, Impington, Linton, Melbourn, Sawston, Soham, Swavesey and Witchford.
Sawston Village College was the first village college to open, in 1930, followed by Bottisham Village College in 1937.
Gamlingay Village College does not cater for the 11-16 age range; instead it is a middle school catering for the education of students aged 9–13, students then transfer to Stratton Upper School in Bedfordshire at the age of 13.
Burwell Village College is in fact a Primary School.
Famous quotes containing the words village and/or college:
“Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock. A village that has them not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I do not think that a Physician should be admitted into the College till he could bring proofs of his having cured, in his own person, at least four incurable distempers.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)