Coleridge Community College is a secondary academy school with 750 places for children aged 11–16, situated on Radegund Road,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfor ...

, England. The school is a member of the United Learning Cambridge Cluster (formerly the Parkside Federation and the Cambridge Academic Partnership) along with

Parkside Community College Parkside Community College is a secondary academy school with 600 places for children aged 11–16, situated in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. It is part of the United Learning Cambridge Cluster, along with Parkside Sixth, Coleridge Community Coll ...

, Trumpington Community College, Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology (formerly UTC Cambridge), and Parkside Sixth. It joined Parkside Community College to form the Parkside Federation in 2005, after having been placed in

special measures Special measures is a status applied by regulators of public services in Britain to providers who fall short of acceptable standards. In education (England and Wales) Ofsted, the schools inspection agency for England and some British Overseas Ter ...

in 2003. An

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report in 2019 rated it as good, under the leadership of headteacher Mark Patterson. Cambridge Academic Partnership joined the

United Learning United Learning is a group of state-funded schools and fee-paying private schools operating in England. United Learning is the trading name for United Church Schools Trust (UCST) and United Learning Trust (ULT). It is one of the largest 10 char ...

academy as a unit in September 2019. Originally two segregated schools, the Coleridge Secondary Modern School for Boys was located in the right half and the Coleridge Secondary Modern School for Girls in the left half of the mirror-image twin main building, with a separate dedicated gymnasium located behind the Girls' school, and prefabricated classroom outbuildings surrounding its internal playing fields at the rear of the Boys' school. The two schools were merged into a comprehensive school from the 1966 school year as part of the national reorganisation of secondary and grammar schools.

Criticism of behaviour policy

In December 2021 a student-made petition on Change.org said that the school had transformed from a "safe have"' to a "negative environment which resembles a prison", asking for these "derogatory rules to be demonised". A parent was interviewed in the local news and described the school as a "camp" because children were given report cards. A former student was interviewed and said "You always felt like you were doing something wrong".

Daniel Zeichner Daniel Stephen Zeichner (born 9 November 1956) is a British Labour Party politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Cambridge since 2015. He has served as Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs since July 2024. ...

, the

Labour Party UK The Labour Party, often referred to as Labour, is a List of political parties in the United Kingdom, political party in the United Kingdom that sits on the Centre-left politics, centre-left of the political spectrum. The party has been describe ...

MP for Cambridge, said "I found some of the attitudes of the trust hard to take. It was very much 'this is United Learning’s approach and that's the way it is'". A

spokesperson for the college said that the behaviour policy had been 'successfully put in place' but that local parents are 'entitled to complain'.

Notable alumni

* Louis Rolfe, British

Paralympic The Paralympic Games or Paralympics is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of disabilities. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Kore ...

track cyclist * Michael Heaver,

Brexit Party Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. Nigel Farage has been Leader of Reform UK and Richard Tice deputy leader since 2024. It has five members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons and one membe ...

MEP * Leon Davies, Cambridge United Football Club defender * Catherine Banner, writer * Lucy Parker, footballer

Notable staff

Ted Hughes Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He wa ...

, poet and writer, worked at Coleridge

References

External links

Parkside Federation website

Cambridgeshire County Council Admissions website
{{authority control Schools in Cambridge Academies in Cambridgeshire Secondary schools in Cambridgeshire United Learning schools