The Garibaldi School

The Garibaldi School
The Garibaldi School
Address
	Garibaldi Road; Forest Town; Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, NG19 0JX; England
Coordinates	53°09′38″N 1°08′01″W / 53.16068°N 1.13348°W
Information
Type	Academy
Motto	Pride Respect Achieve
Local authority	Nottinghamshire
Trust	Nova Education Trust
Department for Education URN	144687 Tables
Ofsted	Reports
Head of School	James Aldred
Executive Head Teacher	Ryan Hawley
Gender	Co-educational
Age	11 to 18
Website	The Garibaldi School

The Garibaldi School (formerly Garibaldi College)^[2] is a co-educational secondary school and sixth form built in the 1960s. It is situated near to the edge Clipstone village, Nottinghamshire (part of Newark and Sherwood District Council administrative area) but lies within Mansfield District Council's Newlands electoral ward and teaches young people from Clipstone and the Forest Town area of Mansfield.^[3] It provides pupils from 11-16 with a GCSE education and 16 to 18 year-olds with an advanced GCE or VCE education through their sixth form.^[4]

History

Secondary modern school

The school was founded in the 1960s and was named for the Italian leader Giuseppe Garibaldi. The Garibaldi County Secondary School opened on Tuesday 8 September 1959. It was named after a nearby woodland plantation.

^[6] The first headmaster Mr Neville Purdy, was educated at the Brunts Grammar School, and had been head for five years at a school in Shuttlewood in Derbyshire. The school had 270 at first, which was to reach 480. ^[7]

On Tuesday 8 September 1963 the school was visited by the missionary Gladys Aylward, who said that schoolchildren in Britain were too addicted to 'silly comics and stupid films'. On her return to the country, she had been disturbed to discover how many schoolchildren pursued their spare time. A house of the school was named after her.^[8]

Old College logo

Comprehensive

The school went comprehensive in September 1973.^[9]

29 year old teacher Manuel Moreno was suspended in May 1974, appearing with his wife on the front page of the Nottingham Evening Post on 10 May 1974. He had three children, and his wife Shirley was an art student at Trent Polytechnic. He saw himself as some kind of revolutionary freedom fighter. The headmaster was Derek McIntosh. Moreno was an advocate of 'progressive education' and 'child-centred education', without 'imposed discipline'. He did not like 'conformity'.^[10] He appeared on front of the Nottingham Evening Post again on 3 December 1974 and 14 December 1974, when sacked by the Sutton Centre, in Sutton-in-Ashfield, for obscene language in the classroom. He wanted to establish a 'free school' in Nottingham, with his wife, where children could turn up when they liked.^[11]^[12]

New headmaster

Garibaldi Comprehensive School was by the 1980s suffering from a poor reputation. In 1989 a new headmaster, Bob Salisbury, was appointed who put in place a programme of improvements that lasted five years. The school removed levels of management and marketed itself. The school was able to attract new funding and the head was recognised for his skills as an entrepreneur.^[13] The head noted that the success came from not investing in one-off initiatives but in activities that continued from year to year.^[14] Salisbury was known for his 'bobbing cork' analogy. He believed his staff should progress like a cork along a stream, knowing that they were free to speed up, slow down or try a different route.^[15] Bob Salisbury was given a knighthood in 1998 in recognition of his work in Education.^[14]

1976 fire

The school appeared on the front page of Nottingham Evening Post on 12 January 1976, when a large fire had been discovered at 4am that morning. The whole of the school records were destroyed, and a three-storey block, with cooking and needlework rooms, and biology and chemistry laboratories. The Nottinghamshire chief fire officer J.J.Boggis was at the scene.^[16]

Curriculum

A 2009 Ofsted Inspection of the Design and Technology department found that overall their education was "good".^[17] An earlier inspection of the whole school in 2008 rated the school as "good" overall.^[3]

In March 2013, Ofsted rated Garibaldi as a "good" school, with some aspects of "outstanding" teaching. In August 2013, Garibaldi received some of the best GCSE and A-Level results the school has ever seen, and topped the league tables, ranking as one of the best schools in Nottinghamshire. The college was also ranked within the top 25 schools across the nation.

Investments

With help from the governments specialist status scheme, it was a specialist computing and mathematics college from 2003 until 2012 when it lost its specialism.^[3] The college then became known simply called 'Garibaldi College' instead of 'Garibaldi Maths and Computing College'. Locally known as 'Gara', the words "Pride, Respect and Achieve" are now the school's key words.

In 2010 the school was identified as part of a rebuilding programme. The council noted that the older buildings were costly to maintain and it was intended to rebuild them but keep the newer buildings like the sports hall, however, the long overdue rebuild was cancelled and all plans were scrapped ^[18]

References

^ School homepage The Garabaldi School. Retrieved 10 March 2020
^ The Garibaldi School Nottingham Post, 9 July 2019. Retrieved 14 April 2020
^ ^a ^b ^c 2008 Ofsted report
^ School website
^ Parks, Tim (9 July 2007). "The Insurgent Garibaldi and his enemies". The New Yorker. Retrieved 17 December 2010.
^ Nottingham Evening Post Wednesday 9 September 1959, page 7
^ Nottingham Evening Post Tuesday 8 September 1959, page 7
^ Nottingham Evening Post Tuesday 8 October 1963, page 1
^ Nottingham Evening Post Wednesday 28 February 1973, page 5
^ Nottingham Evening Post Friday 10 May 1974, page 1
^ Nottingham Evening Post Tuesday 3 December 1974, page 1
^ Nottingham Evening Post Saturday 14 December 1974, page 1
^ Boyett, Inger; Don Finley (1994). "Entrepreneurship and Change in the Public Sector: The Garibaldi School". Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development. 1 (3): 14–21. doi:10.1108/eb020941. Retrieved 17 December 2010.
^ ^a ^b Coleman, Marianne; Lesley Anderson (2001). Managing Finance and Resources in Education. p. 46.
^ Haigh, Gerald (2007). Inspirational, and cautionary tales for would-be school leaders. Taylor & Francis. p. 85. ISBN 9780203933060.
^ Nottingham Evening Post Monday 12 January 1976, page 1
^ D&T Ofsted report, accessed December 2010
^ Greenwell, Michael (6 January 2010). "School rebuilding to begin next year". Nottingham Evening Post. Retrieved 17 December 2010.