Buile Hill Visual Arts College


Buile Hill Academy is a secondary school, in Pendleton, Salford, in North West England. The main gate situated on Chaseley Road can be found just off the A576 Eccles Old Road. The school stands opposite Buile Hill Park.

History

The school is over 100 years old in some parts, with the school owning a playing field with Salford City College in Pendleton, which is across the field to the north. It was known as Salford Grammar School until 1973, when its sixth form along with Pendleton High School for Girls was moved to Pendleton College, which is next door. The building had opened on 12 January 1956, being officially opened on 21 March 1956 by the Mayor of Salford, G. H. Goulden.

Admissions

The school received an Artsmark Gold Award in May 2006. It is one of the few schools in the area with a fully working theatre and performance space.
The school was rebuilt on the adjacent field and completed in 2008. The new buildings were funded through the Private Finance Initiative.

Academic performance

GCSE figure for 2007 rose from 26 per cent of pupils gaining 5 A* to C the previous year, to 52 per cent in 2007. The school's contextual value added now stands at 999; the national average is 1,000.
The school underwent an OFSTED inspection in October 2007 which described the school as satisfactory overall with elements of good.
It got very low GCSE results in 2008, under the government's minimum for comprehensive schools.

Headteacher controversy

The school's headteacher left the school in the summer of 2006 and was replaced by a 'super head'. The new headteacher, Mr. P. Fitzpatrick, was paid a larger-than-usual salary of £100,000 per year, and was contracted for two years to improve the school's results and ready the school for the move into its new buildings in 2008. However, Fitzpatrick failed to achieve the results that the council had been looking for, and in 2007 he was removed by mutual agreement after just two terms. In 2007 the school's results on the standard measure jumped from 26% to 52%. He was replaced by Mrs. W. O'Neill, previously the deputy head of The Albion Academy in Pendleton. As of 2013, the headteacher was James Inman. In 2018, the then deputy headteacher Jon Marsh became the new head teacher with James Inman working for the Academy Trust, Consilium, which the school is a part of.

Historical sexual abuse

In March 2014, Edward Beetham, a former head of year and humanities teacher at the school, pleaded guilty to indecency with an 11-year-old pupil in the early 1990s. He was spared jail, but was subjected to a two-year community order, with a requirement to attend a sex offenders' programme. His defence barrister, Stuart Duke, told Manchester Crown Court: "He has lost his good character. He has gone from being a genteel, retired schoolteacher playing petanque to somebody who will be monitored by the authorities – it has been absolutely devastating for this to come back and haunt him." When sentencing, Judge Patrick Field QC, told Beetham: "You developed and encouraged a relationship with – this appears to me, at least in part, grooming behaviour, enabling you to lure him into your bedroom where you invited an undoubtedly bewildered child to beat you for your own sexual gratification."

Notable former pupils