Education
The West Midlands contains seven universities. Aston University, the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City University are all located in Birmingham. Coventry University and the University of Warwick are located in Coventry whilst Wolverhampton University is located in Wolverhampton with campuses in Telford and Walsall. It had a campus in Dudley until 2002, when it was replaced by a new building in Wolverhampton city centre and the Dudley site became part of Dudley College.
The Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies and Newman College, both in Birmingham, received university college status in 2008 and 2007, respectively. The colleges changed their names as a result and both pledged to become Birmingham's fourth university. University College Birmingham, formerly Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies, purchased a 2-acre (8,100 m2) site in the Jewellery Quarter area of Birmingham to expand its student capacity from 3,500 to 4,000 which would make it eligible for University status.
Each of the local authorities has at least one further education college for students aged over 16, and since September 1992 all of the local authorities have operated traditional 5-7 infant, 7-11 junior, and 11-16/18 secondary schools for students in compulsory education. This followed the demise of 5-8 first, 8-12 middle and 12-16/18 secondary schools in the Sutton Coldfield area.
For 18 years before September 1990, Dudley had operated 5-8 first, 8-12 middle, and 12-16/18 secondary schools before then, while Halesowen (September 1972 until July 1982) and Aldridge-Brownhills (September 1972 until July 1986) had both operated 5-9 first, 9-13 middle and 13-16/18 secondary schools.
Many local authorities still have sixth form facilities in secondary schools, though sixth form facilities had been axed by most secondary schools in Dudley since the early 1990s (and in Halesowen in 1982) as the local authorities changed direction towards further education colleges.
All secondary state education in Dudley and Sandwell is mixed comprehensive, although there are a small number of single sex and grammar schools existing in parts of Birmingham, Solihull, Wolverhampton and Walsall.
In August 2009, Matthew Boulton College and Sutton Coldfield College merged to become Birmingham Metropolitan College, one of the largest further and higher education institutions in the country. Plans are afoot for the construction of a new campus in the Perry Barr area of Birmingham.
Read more about this topic: West Midlands (county)
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it? With regard to the education of my own children, I find myself soon out of my depth, destitute and deficient in every part of education. I most sincerely wish ... that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women.”
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818)
“Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)