Cheney School is a secondary school located in Headington

Headington

Headington is a suburb of Oxford, England. It is at the top of Headington Hill overlooking the city in the Thames Valley below. The life of the large residential area is centred upon London Road, the main road between London and Oxford.-History:...

, Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

, England.

Current

Cheney is currently one of the largest comprehensive schools in Oxford, serving the Headington and East Oxford area. It is the destination for students from numerous primary schools across the city. It has recently become one of the higher achieving state schools in Oxford, along with The Cherwell School

Cherwell School

The Cherwell School is a state secondary school on the Marston Ferry Road in Oxford, England. The current school site was built in 1963 as a secondary modern school, later becoming the main comprehensive school for North Oxford...

. The current head-teacher, Jolie Kirby, was appointed in 2006 when Alan Lane retired after 25 years service.

History

The original foundation was around 1797. It then moved to New Inn Hall Street in 1901 under the name of Oxford Central Girls School. The building it occupied at that time is now part of St Peter's College

St Peter's College, Oxford

St Peter's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, located in New Inn Hall Street. It occupies the site of two of the University's oldest Inns, or medieval hostels - Bishop Trellick's, later New Inn Hall, and Rose Hall - both of which were...

 of Oxford University. Eventually the school became Cheney Girls' School. The Junior Day Department of the Oxford Technical College eventually moved to the same site under the name Cheney School, a mixed secondary technical school

Secondary Technical School

A Secondary Technical School was a type of secondary school in the United Kingdom that existed in the mid-20th century under the Tripartite System of education. For various reasons few were ever built, and their main interest is on a theoretical level....

. Together they were usually known as Cheney Mixed. In 1972 the two schools merged to form the new mixed comprehensive school

Comprehensive school

A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...

, Cheney School. In 2003, Cheney School changed from being upper school, for children aged 13 to 18, to a secondary school serving children aged 11 to 18, in the two tier system.

Colleges

Cheney school has 6 different colleges which are:

• Jesse Owens college
• Isaac Newton college
• Marie Curie college
• Jane Austen
• Martin Luther King Jr. college
• Rosa Parks college

Each college has different college colours:

• Blue (Owens)
• Purple (Newton)
• Red (Curie)
• Green (Austen)
• Yellow (King)
• Orange (Parks)

Specialist Status

When the UK government began awarding grants to schools specialising in areas of the curriculum, Cheney School decided to become a Language College

Language College

Language Colleges were introduced in 1995 as part of the Specialist Schools Programme in the United Kingdom. The system enables secondary schools to specialise in certain fields, in this case, modern foreign languages...

. Using the grant money, they built a specialised language computer laboratory and added extra in-classroom IT

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 equipment.
Recently, Cheney School was awarded a second specialism. Deciding against another average subject, they picked Student Leadership, which enables more "Student Leaders" (mostly in sports and languages), and concentrates primarily on the student voice.

Notable former students

• Andy Bell
  Andy Bell (musician)
  Andrew Piran "Andy" Bell is a Welsh musician, currently playing guitar in the band Beady Eye. He is a songwriter, singer, producer, DJ and former member of the early 1990s shoegazing band, Ride, and later, Hurricane #1...
  
   - bass guitarist of Oasis
  Oasis (band)
  Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
  
  
• Mark Gardener
  Mark Gardener
  Mark Stephen Gardener is an English rock musician, and former singer and guitarist with the shoegazing band, Ride.-Ride:...
  
   - guitarist of Ride
  Ride (band)
  Ride were a British alternative rock band that formed in 1988 in Oxford, England, consisting of Andy Bell, Mark Gardener, Laurence "Loz" Colbert, and Steve Queralt. The band were initially part of the "shoegazing" scene. Following the break-up of the band in 1996, members moved on to various other...
  
  
• Adam Lee - keyboardist of Let Loose
• Bryony Shaw
  Bryony Shaw
  Bryony Elisabeth Shaw is a British windsurfer.-Early life:She first began windsurfing in the south of France in 1992. She attended Cheney Upper School on Cheney Lane near Headington in Oxford gaining A levels in Art, Maths and Biology, where her father had been teaching Business Studies for PhD at...
  
   - Olympic windsurfer
• Roy Thomason
  Roy Thomason
  Kenneth Roy Thomason, known as Roy Thomason, OBE is a British Conservative Party politician who was a local government leader and served one term as a Member of Parliament.-Local government experience:...
  
   - former Conservative
  Conservative Party (UK)
  The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
  
   MP
• Clive Walker
  Clive Walker
  Clive Walker is a retired English footballer. His playing career spanned some 1,000 league and cup games for Chelsea, Sunderland, Fulham and Brighton before enjoying a renaissance in the Conference with Woking and Cheltenham Town.-Chelsea:Walker was an old-fashioned winger with pace who used to...
  
   - footballer for Chelsea FC and Sunderland
• David Gimson - Leader of the Oxford Conservative Party

Buildings

Cheney has several different buildings in which different subjects are taught.

• Chadwick (English, Art, PSHE, PE Offices)
• Wainright (Maths, Science)
• Lane (History, Geography, Languages)
• John Brookes (RE, DT, ICT, Business & Enterprise)
• Russell (Science)
• Music (Music)
• Sports Hall/Gymnasuim (PE)

Please Note: Wainright also holds the school library, reception and medical room. Music is attached to the assembaly hall and the Community hall.

External links

• Cheney School official website