Allen Building, City Centre campus
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Established | 1892 |
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Type | Further education college |
Principal & Chief Executive | Laurel Penrose |
Location |
Bath, Somerset BA1 1UP England Coordinates: 51°22′47″N 2°21′45″W / 51.379722°N 2.3625°W |
Local authority | Bath and North East Somerset |
DfE number | 800/8009 |
DfE URN | 130558 Tables |
Ofsted | Reports |
Students | Approx 9,000 |
Gender | Mixed |
Ages | 16+ |
Website | bathcollege |
Bath College is a Further Education college in the centre of Bath, Somerset and in Westfield, Somerset, England. It was formed in April 2015 by the merger of City of Bath College and . The College also offers Higher Education courses and has its own Undergraduate building.
The college was formed in 1892 under the combined names of Bath City Science, Art, and Technical Schools. Its creation arose out of the need to encourage young people to take an interest in the Sciences, and for them to be made aware of the Technical innovations that were occurring at the end of the 19th century. In April 1896 these new Schools occupied the new north extension of the Guildhall, Bath. In 1910 Long Acre, Walcot was taken over as additional accommodation for technical training mainly as a domestic science college. In 1914 the Old Jail at Twerton was converted and opened as Twerton Technical Institute. In 1927 a Junior Bath Technical School opened at Bath Technical College and in 1929 a Junior School of Art, (Bath School of Art and Design) followed with the Junior School of Homecrafts being established in 1933. In 1934 the Domestic Science College moved from Long Acre, Walcot to Brougham Hayes, Lower Oldfield Park. This building originally housed the Somerset Industrial School for Boys in 1832. It was founded to accommodate 180 boys, it had originally been built as a barracks.
These Technical Schools evolved into the new Bath Technical College, which moved from the North Wing of the Guildhall in 1935 to Lower Borough Walls, taking over the buildings that were vacated when the Royal United Hospital moved to the new hospital in Combe Park. Avon Street became the latest site of the College, when it was constructed as a new purpose built facility during the 1960s re-development of Bath.
In 2009 City of Bath College had approximately 2,000 full-time and more than 6,000 part-time students.
In late 2014, the college decided to merge with the which had had years of financial problems and poor Ofsted reports.