Education
The city's post-1992 university, the University of Portsmouth, previously known as Portsmouth Polytechnic, has notable achievements in law, mathematics and biological sciences. Several local colleges also have the power to award HNDs, including Highbury College, the largest, which specialises in vocational education; and Portsmouth College, which offers a mixture of academic and vocational courses in the city. Additionally there are several colleges in the surrounding area, all of which offer a varying range of academic and vocational courses. Post-16 education in Portsmouth, unlike many areas, is carried at these colleges rather than at secondary schools.
In 2007 for the first time in over a decade, no school in Portsmouth was below the government's minimum standards and thus none of them was in special measures; nevertheless many still counted among the worst performing schools in the country.
Before being taken over by ARK Schools and becoming Charter Academy, St Luke's Secondary School was, in terms of GCSE achievement, one of the worst schools in the country. It has improved considerably in recent years. 21% of students achieved five GCSEs at grades A* – C including English and mathematics in 2009. The new academy's aim is that at least 80% will achieve this benchmark by 2014. Charter Academy operates its intake policy as a standard comprehensive taking from its catchment area rather than selecting on religious background. This is the opposite of its nearby rival St Edmund's RC school. Both Admiral Lord Nelson School and Miltoncross School were built recently to meet the demand of a growing school age population.
Portsmouth's secondary schools are to undergo a major redevelopment in the next few years with three being totally demolished and rebuilt, (St Edmund's, City Boys and King Richard's) and the remainder receiving major renovation work. However this is now unlikely to proceed with the new coalition government's cancellation of the national building programme for schools.
There is also a cohort of independent schools within the city – the oldest, founded in 1732, is The Portsmouth Grammar School which has been rated as one of the top public schools in the country. There is also the Portsmouth High School, a member of the Girls Day School Trust, as well as Mayville High School and St. John's College.
The University of Southampton which trains student nurses and midwives has a campus within the grounds of St Mary's Hospital.
Also, Portsmouth City College is a new college in Kingston Road opened in 2011 which provides English, Tourism, Business and Management courses.
Read more about this topic: Portsmouth
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“... many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)