Education
Schools in Purbeck currently operate as part of a three-tier comprehensive pyramid system. Under this system, the Purbeck Secondary School in Wareham is fed by the various middle schools in the Purbeck district. In Swanage there are several primary schools which feed into Swanage Middle School on the edge of the town at Herston. However, in November 2010 a move to change to a two-tier system was approved after Dorset County Council voted to make the change in May of that year. This change will be implemented by September 2013 and will result in the closure of Swanage Middle School among others.
Concern from parents and teachers following this news prompted the formation of the Education Swanage group, who put together a proposal to form a Free School in the town to provide Secondary education. Having successfully completed several rounds of reviews with the Department for Education, Education Swanage's proposal was finally accepted in October 2011. It is anticipated that the new school will be ready for September 2013.
A large language school in the town, Harrow House, caters for foreign students. The school has a large white pressurised dome which serves as a sports hall, which is visible from some distance.
Next door to Harrow House is a special needs boarding school, Purbeck View School, owned by Cambian Education.
The town has a library in the town centre which is housed in a distinctive 1960s octagonal glass and Purbeck Stone building.
At the square on the seafront there is a small town museum with artifacts and displays recounting the town and surrounding area's history. There was until a recently a second museum housed in the historical Tithe Barn building, however the roof of the building was becoming unsafe, and the artefacts were moved out into safe storage. These may or may not be redisplayed in the future, but for the time being a small number are on display in the museum at the square.
Read more about this topic: Swanage
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“His education lay like a film of white oil on the black lake of his barbarian consciousness. For this reason, the things he said were hardly interesting at all. Only what he was.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“... 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)
“You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)