Established | 1896 (predecessor school) |
---|---|
Type | Academy |
Headmaster | Andrew Davies |
Chair of Governors | C J Oldham |
Location |
Alexandra Park Bath Somerset BA2 4RE England Coordinates: 51°22′20″N 2°21′36″W / 51.3723°N 2.3600°W |
DfE URN | 136520 Tables |
Ofsted | Reports Pre-academy reports |
Students | 1,170 pupils as of 2014 |
Gender | Boys (Coeducational sixth form) |
Ages | 11–18 |
Colours | |
Publication | The Torch |
Former name | City of Bath Boys' School |
Website | www |
Beechen Cliff School is a boys' secondary school in Bath, Somerset, England, with about 1,150 pupils. Its earliest predecessor school was founded in 1896.
There are around 840 boys in years 7 to 11 and a co-educational sixth form of 322 pupils. The school offers the option of state boarding. It is located just south of the city centre near Alexandra Park, up a hill from Bear Flat on the A367, a major route from the south of the city into Bath.
The school began in 1896 as Bath City Secondary School in the Guildhall.
It moved from the Guildhall Technical College to its present site at Beechen Cliff in 1932 when it was renamed the City of Bath Boys' School.
It changed to its present name in 1970 when the City of Bath reorganised secondary education. The grammar school was amalgamated with Oldfield Boys' School, a local secondary modern school founded in 1903, to form a comprehensive school.
On 7 August 1988, on a school climbing expedition in the Briançon region of the French Alps, the 57-year-old headmaster Donald Stephens fell 300 feet (91 m) to his death. Fifteen pupils and three members of staff were on the expedition, training for a walk up Mount Kenya, and witnessed the tragic incident. A library has been established in his memory.
A review of Bath secondary provision by Avon County Council in the 1980s proposed that the school be closed and replaced with a sixth form college on the same site serving the whole city. Partisans of the school, however, took advantage of new legislation to obtain grant-maintained status for the school, taking it out of local authority control, which the then Government permitted despite a policy that schools would not be allowed to use grant-maintained (GM) status as a way of avoiding closure.