Education
- see List of schools in Kent
The town of Maidstone has fifteen secondary schools, twenty-three primary schools, and two special schools. Three of the secondary schools, Maplesden Noakes, Invicta Grammar School and the St Augustine Academy (formerly Astor of Hever School) have been awarded Business and Enterprise College status.
Alumni at the town's oldest school, Maidstone Grammar School (founded 1549), include James Burke, television presenter, and Lord Beeching, notorious for the British railway route cuts of the 1960s. William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies was once a teacher at the school.
Oakwood Park to the west of the town is host to a regional campus of the University for the Creative Arts (formerly Kent Institute of Art & Design) at which Turner Prize nominated artist Tracey Emin, fashion designer Karen Millen and television personality and artist Tony Hart once studied. Several secondary schools are also located there; Oakwood Park Grammar School, the local Catholic secondary School, St. Simon Stock School and the aforementioned St Augustine Academy.
Maidstone has two other independently/non-government funded academy schools: Cornwallis Academy (formerly The Cornwallis School) and the New Line Learning Academy (a combination of former schools Oldborough Manor School and Senacre Technology College), all of which were formerly state schools. The Senacre School site closed and was turned over to housing development with all school activities moved to the former Oldborough site, which is to be rebuilt. Cornwallis Academy has been recently rebuilt, at an estimated cost of over £62m.
Maidstone Grammar School for Girls is also situated in the town.
As of the 2001 census, 15.7% of the town's residents aged 16–74 had a higher education qualification or equivalent, below the national average of 19.9%. 27.5% had no academic qualifications, compared to the national figure of 28.9%.
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Famous quotes containing the word education:
“If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind?”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“There are words in that letter to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters, which deserve to be framed and hung over every mantelpiece in the land. Compare this earnest wisdom with that of Poor Richard.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)