Hanley Castle High School
St Gabriel's Primary School
Hanley Castle High School
Hanley Castle. Tel: 01684 593241. Please call or email us.
History: The origins of this school are lost in the mists of time. The first documents referring to school lands are deeds of 1523 and 1544, but a plaque erected in the 1930s puts its foundation as early as 1326, when a chantry school was established to teach local children music, reading and writing, so that they could become part of the choir of St Mary's church. The oldest part still existing is the Sixth Form house of around 1600.
The Lechmere family maintained a close connection with the school, whose emblem is the Lechmere pelican, appointing the schoolmaster and, in 1733, paying for its restoration. But they also tended to regard the school as their personal property and in 1760 Edmund Lechmere was charged with incorporating school lands into his own and using school timber for his own purposes. At this time it was known as the Free School and owned various small plots of land around the parish, from which it received rents.
Traditionally the schoolmaster was the vicar of the parish, who was glad of the extra income, but was not always a good teacher. By the mid-19th century the school's reputation was at a low ebb and in 1868 the trustees appointed a pioneering headmaster, William Walker, who reformed the school and divided it into two parts: an upper or grammar school giving the sons of the middle classes a good education at a cost of £5 (£300 today) a year, and a lower or elementary school providing the labouring classes with a basic education for a penny or two (50p) a week. Sir Edmund Lechmere summed up Walker's achievement by saying, "When he came to the school, it was in a state of melancholy decadence. He raised it from a dormant condition to one of considerable efficiency and importance."
In 1893 another reform allowed the grammar school to concentrate on boys from the age of 8 to 17, by moving the elementary school to a new site at Cross Hands and renaming it St Mary's Primary School. [By 1896 there were 36 infants and 74 older children at this school. In 1947 it became solely a school for infants and numbers dropped to around 30.]
In 1909 Worcestershire County Council paid for several new classrooms and took control of the appointment of governors. A prospectus designed to attract both dayboys and boarders stated that Hanley Castle was one of the healthiest villages in England. When Mr R H F Walling became headmaster in 1921, there were 55 boys in the school and when he retired in 1946 the number had increased to 172, of whom 50 were boarders. Although the total had reached 217 in the mid-1960s, the school was still small by county standards and, with state support for grammar schools now politically unfashionable, there was a possibility that it might close. But the council decided on reform and continuation. In 1972 girls were admitted for the first time, boarding ceased and two years later the school changed its status from grammar to comprehensive, becoming Hanley Castle High School.
Today: Hanley Castle is a mixed 11-18 school of about 880 pupils looked after by a teaching staff of 70. Its catchment area stretches from Castlemorton to Earls Croome and from Kempsey to Eldersfield. Facilities include six science laboratories, two computer rooms, two music rooms, a drama studio, two art studios and five craft, design and technology work areas. A sports hall accommodating four badminton courts was built in 2002. In 2006 Hanley Castle became a Specialist School for Languages.
OFSTED judges Hanley Castle to be a good school with outstanding features, among them: the quality of teaching and learning, support for vulnerable learners, well behaved pupils, a peer system of reporting incidents to senior pupils in confidence, good leadership and management, and a range of extra-curricular activities and clubs. Head teacher Rob Haring said, "Pupils are encouraged to play an active role in school life and have every opportunity to contribute and learn. Classroom teachers and assistants combine to support the learning of all our pupils."
St Gabriel's Primary School
Hanley Swan WR8 OEQ. Tel: 01684 310364.
History: To serve the needs of the growing population of the parish in the Hanley Swan area, St Gabriel's school was built on church land in 1862, also serving as a Chapel of Ease (a church building for the ease of the local community) until St Gabriel's church was built in 1874.
Initially the school catered for children up to the age of 14 and by 1901 the average attendance was 114, including about 25 boys from the nearby Home of the Good Shepherd. That year an inspector's report noted, "Vigorous steps should be taken to compel more regular attendance on the part of many scholars, and to put a stop to illegal employment". Children often stayed away to help pick fruit or work on the farms. The following year the inspector reported, 'Children in good order; work proceeding satisfactorily. The offices require through cleaning and lime washing.'
In 1929 it was reorganised as a junior mixed school for children from 4 to 11, but in 1947 its infants department was transferred to St Mary's Primary School, returning when that school closed in 1972. The school was extended in 1957 and plumbed cloakrooms installed, replacing a latrine block fitted with two long planks into which holes had been cut, one side for boys and the other for girls, emptying into a channel that had to be regularly cleaned out.
Today: The school caters for around 100 children and has a teaching staff of seven. Recent extension work has improved office and staff-room facilities and enlarged the computer suite. In 2005 St Gabriel's achieved the highest added value rating of any primary school in Hereford & Worcester and came in the top 1% of the 13,700 schools in the country. 'Value added' is a measure that shows the degree of improvement achieved by pupils between the ages of 7 and 11. The Department for Education and Skills says the "value added measure gives a greater indication of a school's effectiveness than its overall results.'"