A new academy which has united two schools in a bid to wipe out ‘deep-rooted’ segregation in a town hit by race riots has opened.
The new Waterhead Academy in Oldham, scene of the worst racially-motivated riots in the country for 15 years in 2001, has brought together two of the town’s most segregated schools – Counthill School, which serves a mostly white area and Breeze Hill School, which has predominantly Asian pupils.
The 1,500-pupil academy will operate at the old schools’ existing sites, now known as the Roxbury Campus and the Moorside Campus, until a new building is opened in Huddersfield Road, Waterhead, in October 2012.
Improvements at the schools, including new signs, have been carried out over the summer.
Principal David Yates said: "It really is a landmark day. It’s been in the planning stage for a long time and it’s now finally here.
"We are absolutely delighted. The response and attitude of the students, parents and staff has been really pleasing.
"The new pupils in year seven starting today are all really excited and not apprehensive at all. This is a great opportunity for them.
"It’s a fresh start, a new dawn and a key word for us in going forward is unity. We are going to be very inclusive and not deviate from community routes."
New uniforms were made to celebrate the start of the school with the ‘Waterhead Swirl’ badge designed and chosen by pupils.
Mr Yates added: "All pupils came in full uniform and looked really smart, which has set the right tone."
Following the race riots a report by the Home Office said Oldham was a place of ‘deep-rooted’ segregation, with communities leading ‘parallel lives’.
Education bosses hope moving the schools onto one site will help integrate pupils and improve race relations.
Work on the new building will begin later this year and is located in a mostly white area that borders the Asian areas of Clarksfield and Glodwick.
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a sad day when two perfectly good schools with massively improved ofsted reports and where making inroads from the day when they where failing schools are now forced together with this idiotic academy buzz created by labour. helped in part by the liberal fools that run oldham council who've rail roaded this through with hardly any consultation with students, parents, teachers or local residents.
the daft thing is that the new academy site that these two schools will be relocated to is isnt big enough. the building design is not big enough to house the numbers of students from both schools. so potentially some future students will be missing out by not being able to get into their nearest secondary education centre.
also i wonder whats going to happen to the two old school sites?
Good. segregation is dangerous and unhealthy and it doesn't help to create good community relations between people. Children need to be shown and taught that there's more that unites us than separates us as human beings, whatever your culture and values are. It breaks down barriers and that can only be a good thing.
You'd have to be racist and/or a member of the BNP to think this is wrong.
Asians are here to stay, get over it.
I'm a bit confused. It says 'asian' ans 'white'. Why does it not refer to 'asian' and 'european' or 'white' and 'brown'?
Uniting for political interest only?
As a former pupil of Counthill Grammar School in the 1960s, I have followed the sad fortunes of the place for many years. I was not happy there, due to extreme bullying by staff and pupils, but it was a lovely building with a great academic record. Recently it has been a shambles.
I am not a supporter of the academies being created in Oldham, they are all about social and racial engineering which is very sinister.
There will be a Catholic Academy - which involves evicting two existing Catholic schools from their sites with no regard to the covenants placed on the land they occupy - placed on a second-rate site while the best site - currently occupied by Our Lady's School is given to another 'academy' which is really a struggling school in another part of Oldham.
I really think this is a step in the right direction and others schools in Oldham should follow immediately since so many are still "deeply segregated". This is not just secondary schools but many of the primary schools in Oldham are also the same category where you will only see either asian children or all non-asian students in the whole school. I would really like to see this radical change implemented throughout the whole of Greater Manchester regardless of parents or children disagreeing with the idea.
Well done to the Oldham Council for making such a move!!
Social engineering by socialist fools with rose tinted glasses, believing against all the evidence that forcing two disparate groups together will improve cohesion.
The evidence from Radio 4s study of a similar school in the Lancashire area showed the new school which should have had a 50/50 mix now has an 80/20 mix in favour of Asians. Horror stories of bullying by Asian gangs, have led to parents removing their children and the attempt to open a large private school for Moslem girls who were also experiencing bullying from Asian male gangs.
I am quite sure that similar experiences will happen at this new school and that it will quickly become a largely Asian school, thus totally defeating the purpose for which it was built.
I really think this is a step in the right direction and others schools in Oldham should follow immediately since so many are still "deeply segregated". This is not just secondary schools but many of the primary schools in Oldham are also the same category where you will only see either Asian children or all non-asian students in the whole school. I would really like to see this radical change implemented throughout the whole of Greater Manchester regardless of parents or children disagreeing with the idea.
Well done to the Oldham Council for making such a move!!
everyone is going on about segregation. but the truth of the matter is that the catchment area for breezehill was in a mainly asian populated area.
like in many other towns across the contry these asian families have settle down and created their own communities. but its their lack of cohesion within these communities that has created this segregation in the first place.
this sort of thing could have been sorted with just altering the catchment areas. instead they want to build a completely new school. which will not have the capacity to accept both areas covered by counthill and breezehil. its just not going to work! and the silly thing is that the new academy site is actually further away from the predominantly asian area that breezehill covers.
so now these children from these areas will have to travel further than they did before!
breezehill even had its own swimming pool. the new academy will not.
so what are going to be the improvements we'll see?
these two schools if they had been maintained properly in the first place could have continued for decades to come. without the massive costs a new academy will create.
and people are complaining about government cuts! these sorts of schemes are the reason why everyone is facing cuts, labours spend spend spend policies over the last 13 years!
Indroid, you really are a proper socialist! Just because people dissagree with you, out come the nasty criminalising names. The reality is that from the experience of other schools like this one, the two communities are like oil & water and will not mix. All people like yourself & Dzenko will acheive with half baked ideas based on socialist utopian pie in the sky, is the death of towns like Oldham as parents move their children out of the borough to better schools.
It's got nothing to do with racism what so ever, it has everything to do with certain schools having so many pupils who are not even proficient at speaking English let alone reading and writing it, any children who have aready attained a standard will be left until the rest of the class catches up. In another area they could progress with everyone else.
I'd like both of you to cite some sources showing that this forced mixing of pupils works in a beneficial manner, and is sustainable over time, because all of the studies I've ever seen show exactly the opposite.
Reality, not dreams.
As a former pupil of Breeze Hill, I wish them luck with the integration and hope they don't make the mistakes that were made at that school.
There were serious issues - that would, years later, lead up to the riot - that the school refused to even acknowledge, let alone tackle, even when the national press took something of an interest and the police and youth courts got involved.
Just look at that blazer badge. It would be bad enough but it is two colors being mixed together and both going down the pan.
Eurgh thus would creep Orwell out in his grave. I believe this was tried at another school and a white had was attacked with a hammer and left brain damaged. but that can be swept under the carpet for the moment.Here they are trying to de-culturalise the kids so they can live together as multicultural nobodies. Here is a vain Frankfurt School social experiment that is bound to cause untold misery, bullying, low level intimidation and ethnic strife.
Joe Kerr (replying to Thoughtful's comment at 16:14):
"A study by Radio 4 you say? Glad to hear your evidence comes from such highly regarded and reliable institutions."
I listened to that Radio 4 documentary. Given the BBC's deserved reputation for left-wing bias and its enthusiasm for right-on multiculturalist orthodoxy, they would have been keen, nay desperate, to report that the social engineering experiment of enforced "cohesion" had been a resounding success. The fact that they were compelled to concentrate on the failures of the project rather suggests that it was an even bigger disaster than they reported.
How can you say things like this when you dont even go to the school. I'm a student at the Waterhead Academy (Roxbury Campus) and I can say that without a doubt that there has never been any racist attacks in the 4 years, I have been here and there never will be.
Yes.. the Roxbury Campus doesn't have an excellent ethos but, if you came down and visited the school you would understand that it isn't as bad as its portrayed.......