The Brunts School is a large 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...

 in north east Mansfield

Mansfield

Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the main town in the Mansfield local government district. Mansfield is a part of the Mansfield Urban Area....

, Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...

 in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The school is designated as a Performing Arts College. It has previously been a Grammar School and a Technical School and traces its foundation back to a bequest by Samuel Brunts in 1709. Its past students include 2008 double Olympic

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 Gold medallist Rebecca Adlington

Rebecca Adlington

Rebecca "Becky" Adlington, OBE, is an English and British freestyle swimmer. She won two gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in the 400 m and 800 m, breaking the 19 year-old world record of Janet Evans in the 800 m final...

.

History

The Brunts School can trace its history back to an elementary school that was founded in 1687 and had endowments equal to 100 pounds per year. In 1709, Samuel Brunts left a bequest in order that local children could learn an honest trade. The bequest and the school resulted in 40 boys and girls learning reading, writing and arithmetic by 1831 with the girls particularly studying needlework. It was not until 60 years later that the school and the bequest were combined. By 1891, Samuel Brunts' bequest was worth £3,800 so the new school was named Brunts Technical School.

In 1830 Brunts Charity owned buildings and land in East Bridgford

East Bridgford

East Bridgford is a village and a civil parish in the Rushcliffe borough of Nottinghamshire, east of the city of Nottingham. It has a population of about 1,800....

, Nottingham's marketplace and at Claypool in Lincolnshire. It was the richest of all the charitable foundations in Mansfield in 1832 when it was paying out £4 a year to 220 different claimants.

In 1891 a new building was built. In 1976 Brunts Grammar School became a comprehensive.

Organisation

The school's intake is taken from a number of schools known as the 'family of schools'. The list includes King Edward School, Sutton Road School, St Peter's (C of E) School, High Oakham School and Newgate Primary School.

The school uniform includes distinctive green blazers for both boys and girls. The school colours are green and gold,. whilst the school emblem is a rearing griffin within a shield with "Nil mortalibus ardui est" emblazened upon it.

This former grammar school

Grammar school

A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...

 is distinguished by having its own school song

School song

A school song, alma mater, school hymn or school anthem is the patronal song of a school. In England, this tradition is particularly strong in public schools and grammar schools.-Australia:*Melbourne High School - Honour the Work...

, composed by former (music) teachers H S Rosen and A D Sanders in 1944.

Academic standards

In 2002, there were nearly 1500 pupils in the school of whom fewer than 1300 were at age 16 or below. The school achieved 57% A-C passes with only 5% achieving no passes at all. This was 5% better than the county and 10% above the national average.

Overall the school is characterised by a high proportion of white pupils compared with the national average and nearly all students have English as their first language. Attainment is "broadly average" and at the inspection of the school by Her Majesty's Inspectorate in 2009, the school was assessed as "satisfactory" with higher marks for its pastoral care.

Notable alumni

• Rebecca Adlington
  Rebecca Adlington
  Rebecca "Becky" Adlington, OBE, is an English and British freestyle swimmer. She won two gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in the 400 m and 800 m, breaking the 19 year-old world record of Janet Evans in the 800 m final...
  
  , OBE, double Olympic gold medal winning swimmer.
• Prof. George Bond, Prof of Biology (1906-1988)
• Arthur Bown (1921-1994), conductor
• Mark Bryant (cartoonist), cartoonist
• Samuel Harrison Clarke CBE (1903-94), Fire research
• Prof. Nicholas F. R. Crafts
  Nicholas Crafts
  Nicholas F. R. Crafts is Professor of Economics and Economic History at the University of Warwick, a post he has held since 2005. Previously he was a Professor of Economic History at London School of Economics and Political Science between 1995-2005...
  
   (1949-) Professor of Economics
• Burley Higgins (1913-1940), pilot
• Prof. Eric Jakeman FRS (1939- ) Prof. of Statistics
• Sir Richard Leese
  Richard Leese
  Sir Richard Charles Leese, CBE , is a politician in the City of Manchester in the United Kingdom. He has been the leader of Manchester City Council since 1996.-Early life:...
  
   - Leader of Manchester City Council
  Manchester City Council
  Manchester City Council is the local government authority for Manchester, a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. It is composed of 96 councillors, three for each of the 32 electoral wards of Manchester. Currently the council is controlled by the Labour Party and is led by...
  
  
• Nigel Francis Lightfoot, (1945- ), Microbiologist
• Prof. Major James McCunn (1894-1967) Vet
• Jim McGrath
  Jim McGrath (British commentator)
  Jim McGrath is an English-based horse racing pundit and broadcaster. He was associated with Timeform from 1974 until 2009.McGrath had an ambition to become a jockey, but after a summer at trainer Bill Marshall's yard at Whitsbury, he was advised that he wouldn't make the grade...
  
  , TV commentator
• Adrian Metcalfe
  Adrian Metcalfe
  Adrian Metcalfe is a former British athlete, who mainly competed in the 400 meters.He competed for Great Britain in the 1964 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo in the 4 x 400m relay where he won the silver medal with his team mates Tim Graham, John Cooper and Robbie Brightwell.Metcalfe attended the...
  
  (1942- ) UK athlete, Silver Medal winner Tokyo Olympics 1964
• Prof. Norman Millott (1912-1990) Biologist
• Graham Moore QPM (1947- ) Chief Constable
• Dr Robert Henry Priestley (1946- ) Biologist and publisher
• Canon Dr Nicholas Thistlethwaite - authority and writer on church organs
• Sir Bernard (Evans) Tomlinson (1920- ) pathologist
• Dr Charles Wass (1911-89), mines safety expert
• John Whetton - UK athlete, European 1500 metre champion Athens 1969
• Robin Keith Wilson - Provincial Grand Master of Nottinghamshire Freemasons

Awards

In 2003 Brunts was awarded the Artsmark Gold Award and in 2006 the Healthy Schools Gold Standard and the Full International School Award.