Ormiston Sandwell Community Academy is an academy for secondary aged pupils located in Tividale, Sandwell, in the West Midlands of England.
It was built by Tipton County Borough Council in 1956 as Tividale Comprehensive School to serve the expanding Tividale area which by this date had expanded beyond Tipton's borders into Dudley.
The school was controlled by Warley CB council from 1966 to 1974, despite existing within the Tipton council area that was almost entirely placed in West Bromwich, as was the Dudley section of Tividale.
Since 1974, it has been controlled by Sandwell council. Since then, its identity has been even more complicated by the fact that it exists in the modern Oldbury B69 postal district, rather than the Tipton DY4 postal district, as does the bulk of Tividale; none of it is in the modern Dudley borough or postal district.
The school attracted some controversial local media attention in October 1981 when two 15-year-old pupils were suspended from the school by the head teacher after he caught them kissing in a corridor.
Another name change came when in September 1997 when it became Tividale High School. This arrangement lasted eight years until it received Art College specialist status in September 2005 becoming Tividale Community Arts College.
In March 2005, the school made the local and even national headlines again for the wrong reasons, this time after the father of a pupil at the school was threatened with legal action by the local education authority after he created a website highlighting the school's alleged bullying problem and criticised staff for failing to take effective action.
The summer of 2006 saw 26% of GCSE students attain 5 grades at C or above. By 2009, this figure had improved to 42%. In September 2009 the pupils came back to school which was then renamed Ormistion Sandwell Community Academy.
In 2010, the first year of the new academy saw 70% of students attain 5 grades at C or above, and 50% of students achieving 5 A*-C grades including English and Maths. These results now place the academy as one of the top 5 schools in Sandwell, and the highest achieving Ormiston Academy in the country.
It hosts annual trips for well behaved students, including trips to Alton Towers and Drayton Manor theme parks.
It became Ormiston Sandwell Community Academy in September 2009, on being removed from local authority control and receiving funding from the private sector.
It is now planned that the school will be rebuilt.
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or academy:
“Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs?—No—no, ‘tis your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)
“...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)