St George's Academy is a co-educational comprehensive secondary school based in the English market town of Sleaford in Lincolnshire, with a satellite school at nearby Ruskington.
Its origins date to 1908, when Sleaford Council School opened at Church Lane to meet the growing demand for elementary education in the town. After the Education Act 1944, the senior department became a secondary modern under the name Sleaford Secondary Modern School. A second school was constructed piecemeal at Westholme in the 1950s and early 1960s and expanded in 1983, allowing the Church Lane site to close; to mark the occasion, it was renamed St George's School. After it became grant-maintained, the school became a comprehensive, received a Technology specialism, became a Technology College in 1994 and later converted to Foundation status. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, new buildings were added to the site. Coteland's School in Ruskington federated with St George's in 2007; they merged to form the Academy in 2010. The conversion included a government grant of £20 million to carry out extensive building work on both sites, completed in 2012 at Sleaford and in 2015 at Ruskington.
The Sleaford school opened with a capacity for 600 pupils in 1908, but St George's had over 2,230 on roll across both sites in 2021, including the Sixth Form; the Ruskington site, with roughly 350 pupils, makes up a small proportion of the total. Pupils generally sit examinations for General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) or equivalent vocational qualifications in Year Eleven (aged 15–16), and they have a choice of three or four A-levels or vocational options in the sixth form, which is part of the Sleaford Joint Sixth Form consortium with the town's single-sex grammar schools. In 2019, the school received an "average" Progress 8 score; 31% of pupils achieved English and mathematics GCSEs at grade 5 or above, which was lower than the national figure. The average A-Level grade in 2019 was a C, slightly below the national figure; the government's progress score for the Sixth Form is "well below average". An Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) inspection in 2015 graded St George's Academy as "good" in every category.. This rating was confirmed following a short inspection in 2019.
History
Elementary school During most of the 19th century, schooling in England was provided either on a fee-paying basis or by the Church. To ensure that all children had access to elementary education, the Forster Act 1870 set up Local School Boards to provide elementary schools for all children aged 5 to 10. From 1880, schooling became compulsory for that age group.. The Education Act 1902 consolidated these boards into local education authorities and allowed them to subsidise schools with money raised from local rate-payers.. Alongside a grammar school for boys, a private school for girls and a mixed National School, Sleaford had four elementary schools in 1905: two Wesleyan (one was for infants), one Catholic and one other infants school.. The construction of the Bass maltings (1901–06) and the Rauceby Asylum (1897–1902) led to an increase in the town's population and school inspectors found that the four schools could not accommodate every child in the town. The indebted Wesleyan schools could not afford any enlargements so the town's elementary school managers opted for Kesteven County Council to take responsibility under the 1902 Act. The Council built a schoolhouse on Church Lane at the cost of £11,500, which opened as Sleaford Council School on 4 May 1908. The staff and pupils at the Wesleyan schools were transferred there; its first headmaster was H. H. Godfrey, who had been master at the Wesleyan school.. Built with a capacity of 600 pupils, 280 were on roll when teaching commenced.
From the outset, the school was run as an elementary school with an infants' department. In 1918, the Fisher Act raised the school leaving age to 14 and many schools subsequently split into junior and senior departments; to accommodate senior children at Sleaford Council School, the County Council proposed formally introducing separate departments, one for infants and junior pupils (those aged below 10), and another for the remaining (senior) pupils.Letter from W. T. Phipps, Chief Education Officer at Kesteven County Council, to the Secretary of the Board of Education formally requesting approval for recognition of an Infants' and Senior department at Sleaford Council School. Dated 24 October 1922. Kept in the National Archives, reference number ED 21/33994. The Board of Education approved these plans in 1922.Letter from A. P. Oppé of the Board of Education notifying the Chief Education Officer at Kesteven County Council of the Board's approval of plans to recognise Sleaford Council School's division into Infant and Senior departments. Dated 21 December 1922. Kept in the National Archives, reference number ED 21/33994. In 1935 the County Council reorganised schooling in Sleaford so that the Council School's senior department received all the town's children in elementary education aged over 10.. The Board of Education sanctioned these changes on the condition that new classrooms be added to the Council school to accommodate Senior pupils and a new Infants' department be erected at the site.Letter from the Board of Education to Kesteven County Council approving the reorganisation of elementary schooling in Sleaford and outlining the required modifications to the Council School. Dated 26 February 1935. Kept at the National Archives, reference number ED 21/33994. Financial setbacks and delays over the purchasing of land meant that the new Infants' school was not completed until 1939.Letter from Chief Education Officer at Kesteven County Council to the Board of Education informing them of delays in purchasing land for the erection of a new Infants' school building at Sleaford Council School. Dated 27 June 1936. Kept at the National Archives, reference number ED 21/56392.Letter from the Director of Education at Kesteven County Council to the Board of Education formally notifying the Board that Sleaford Infants' Council School opened on 9 January 1939. Dated 9 January 1939. Kept at the National Archives, reference number ED 21/56392.
Secondary Modern and new site The Education Act 1944 made secondary education available to all children up to the age of 15; a 'tripartite system' of secondary schools was established to provide curricula based on aptitude and ability: grammar schools for "academic" pupils, secondary moderns for practical studies, and technical schools for science and engineering. Pupils were allocated to them depending on their score in the eleven-plus examination.. The Senior department at the Sleaford Council School became its own school in March 1945 and was designated a secondary modern.. Earlier post-war plans had envisaged the Church Lane school being restricted to boys only and a separate secondary modern school for girls being built at Westholme, an area of parkland owned by the County Council (Kesteven and Sleaford High School would also be rebuilt there), but these proposals did not come to fruition. Instead, HORSA huts at the site were acquired for the still-mixed Sleaford Secondary Modern School; teaching took place there during the 1950s and new classrooms were added during the decade. In January 1956, many pupils were transferred to a new secondary modern school at nearby Ruskington, allowing pupils from other villages to come to Sleaford; previously they had been forced to stay in their village schools until they reached 14, and then spend the last year of study at Sleaford.
In 1957 the Secondary Education Sub-Committee of the County Council amended its earlier plans; it now proposed to build a new mixed secondary modern school at Westholme to replace the Church Lane school, which would become a further education college. It would be allocated over of the parkland at Westholme. In 1961, a new school building at Westholme had opened with an assembly hall, five classes and kitchens. This was the first phase of a proposed building programme which would have built a whole new school on the Westholme site with an enlarged assembly hall, a library, gymnasium and classrooms capable of accommodating 750 pupils across five forms (year groups), fulfilling the council's ambition to consolidate the secondary modern onto the Westholme site (the old HORSA huts would have also been demolished). However, in the interim, the Church Lane premises were still being used: Sleaford Secondary Modern was now split between its old buildings there and the new ones at the Westholme site."Sleaford County Secondary School" (1960), B/W silent film on 16mm film (23 mins). Preserved at the Lincolnshire Film Archive, no. 495. For a short clip, see While the plans were approved locally, central government funding for the next phase of development at Westholme was indefinitely paused in the early 1960s, leaving the dual school system in place.
Comprehensive debate
The educational opportunities for secondary modern pupils were limited compared to those at grammar schools, prompting criticism of the selection system; grammar schools and the eleven plus were also criticised for alienating working-class families.. A reluctance to improve secondary moderns or expand grammar schools under the Conservatives prompted the Labour Government to issue Circular 10/65 in 1965 which requested local education authorities convert to a comprehensive system.
Following the introduction of comprehensive schooling in the north of Kesteven, plans were drawn up in 1970 for rolling out comprehensive schooling in the Sleaford area. This scheme proposed expanding Carre's and the High School as co-educational comprehensive schools (for 11–18 year olds) with the secondary modern being abolished and Westholme becoming both schools' playing fields. In 1971, Sleaford parents voted in favour of comprehensive education in the town (by 842 votes to 803), but rejected the Council's proposals (528 votes for, compared with 1,103 against). New plans were unveiled in 1972–73: the High School and the Secondary Modern sites were to become mixed 11–16 schools and Carre's would become a sixth form college. The proposals were controversial, with some councillors questioning whether the system was being "forced" onto communities and citing higher costs". Parents voted for the plans (1,199 to 628), albeit with a 50% turnout. The County Council approved them, but allowed governors a veto. Following negotiations with governors at Carre's, the scheme was revised in 1974 so that Carre's and the High School became 11–18 schools; the secondary modern would be closed, Westholme absorbed by the High School and the Church Lane site by Carre's.
During the comprehensivation debate, the secondary modern remained split across its two sites and the second phase of building at Westholme remained uncommenced; one councillor said that it was "the worst secondary modern in Lincolnshire as far as accommodation is concerned". In 1974, staff wrote a highly critical letter to the county council concerning the poor standard of facilities at the school, noting its split-site, aging temporary accommodation and Edwardian Church Lane site. They noted that: "there have been several attempts ... to arrive at a suitable scheme for comprehensive education in the area, none of them so far put into operation ... we feel that we have waited too long for ... something more positive [to be done] about our accommodation problems."