Parkside Community College

Parkside Community College is a state secondary school with 600 places for children aged 11–16, situated in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England. It is part of the Parkside Federation, along with Coleridge Community College.

  

Admissions

The college has two specialities as an Arts College and Language College. The College is situated in the centre of the city, north of Parker's Piece. It is now a member of the Parkside Federation along with Coleridge Community College under Principal Andrew Hutchinson. Parkside was the first school to be designated a specialist media arts college in 1997, under the UK government's specialist schools programme. It has developed a second specialism in Modern Foreign Languages. Although called a 'community college', it is neither a community school nor a College but has had Foundation status since 2003.

It is situated east of the A603 and next to the main Cambridge Parkside police station and the National Express coach stops. It is east of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

History

The long history of the school is related in An Epoch-Making School, by former Deputy Principal Rosemary Gardiner (1983), which presents the transformations of the school from its origin as the Higher Grade Schools in Melbourne Place (1913), through its successive incarnations as the Central School for Boys and Girls and then Cambridge Grammar School for Girls.

  

Research work

Its work as a specialist media arts college has been documented in a number of research studies by staff at the school. These include studies of an extensive primary school animation project (e.g. Burn and Parker, 2001), run in conjunction with the Cambridge Film Consortium, a group composed of Anglia Ruskin University, City Screen (an Arts cinema chain), the Cambridge Film Festival, and Parkside itself.

The most recent and comprehensive account of the school’s media work, giving examples of work in digital video, computer games, animation, and television drama, as well as work across the curriculum, is provided in Burn and Durran’s Media Literacy in Schools (2007).

On 1 December 2008, the Nova 9 helium balloon took two space-suited teddies close to the edge of space from the grounds of Churchill College, Cambridge. The space suits were designed by 11-13 year olds at the school. The journey took just over two hours. The teddies descended back to Earth and landed near Ipswich, being located by GPS equipment.

  

Academic performance

It gets well above average results at GCSE - the best for state schools in Cambridge. With around 60 state schools nationwide, the school plans to offer the IGCSE especially in science subjects, largely prompted by the scientists among its pupils' parents.