Castle Vale School and Specialist Performing Arts College is a secondary school located in Castle Vale, Birmingham, England. The school has been awarded specialist status as an Arts College.
The school opened in new premises in 1967. The buildings were completed and officially opened in 1969. It was built to serve the large new housing estate which was in the final stages of construction at this time, and now has Performing Arts specialist status.
At the time of its last OFSTED inspection in early-2007, there were a total of 876 students.
In 2012, NASUWT staff took strike action against management practices at the school. A one-day strike was held on March 7th, 2012 which stimulated action by the Local Authority to resolve the problems. However, further strikes were held as the School NASUWT representative was singled out by the Head for speaking to the media and another member was sent on gardening leave. In May, the Head resigned and the school started the procedure to become an academy.
The school has been subject to a furor regarding the new head teacher, Charlotte Blencowe, implementing "tinkle cards" permitting children to leave class a maximum of once per week to go to the toilet, a number of different hand signals to communicate in class and a strict policy over school uniform. Parents protested, and eggs were thrown at teachers.
The school suffered further uncertainty when AET arranged for Miss Blencowe to leave after only one term to move back to Yorkshire. Their reasons were contradictory, confusing and does not indicate particularly skillful or caring management. The school will be managed nominally by Mr Simon Turney and his team from another AET Academy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgrave_High_School) for at least one, possibly two, terms.
Now to be known as Greenwood Academy.
Famous quotes containing the words castle, vale, school, specialist, performing, arts and/or college:
“Let me be at the place of the castle.
Let the castle be within me.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“In the vale of restless mind
I sought in mountain and in mead,
Trusting a true love for to find.”
—Unknown. Quia Amore Langueo (l. 1–3)
“You send a boy to school in order to make friends—the right sort.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“It never was in the power of any man or any community to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual wants, never to please his fancy.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)