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 College, Trumpington Community College, and Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology (formerly UTC Cambridge). Cambridge Academic Partnership joined the United Learning group of academies as a unit in September 2019. It is located next to the main Cambridge Parkside Police Station, the main Cambridge Fire Station and the National Express coach stops. It is east of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. From 1960 to 1974 it was the Cambridge Grammar School for Girls, after which it became the co-educational comprehensive Parkside Community College. It was the first school in the UK to be designated a Media Arts College under the UK government's specialist schools programme, in 1997, and was granted Foundation status in 2003. In 2005 Parkside Community College formed the Parkside Federation with Coleridge Community College, which had then been placed in special measures. The school achieved Academy status in 2011 when the federation converted to a multi-academy trust. At the same time it opened a new sixth-form college, Parkside Sixth, which closed in 2025. In 2017 the trust changed its name to the Cambridge Academic Partnership. The Cambridge Academic Partnership would later go on to change its name to the United Learning Cambridge Cluster. The history of the school is related in An Epoch-Making School, by former Deputy Principal Rosemary Gardiner (1983). Research work Its work as a specialist media arts college has been documented in a number of research studies by staff at the school. These include studies of an extensive primary school animation project (e.g. Burn and Parker, 2001), run in conjunction with the Cambridge Film Consortium, a group composed of Anglia Ruskin University, City Screen (an Arts cinema chain), the Cambridge Film Festival, and Parkside itself. A comprehensive account of the school's media work, giving examples of work in digital video, computer games, animation, and television drama, as well as work across the curriculum, is provided in Andrew Burn and James Durran's Media Literacy in Schools (2007). On 1 December 2008, the Nova 9 helium balloon took two space-suited teddies close to the edge of space from the grounds of Churchill College, Cambridge. The space suits were designed by 11- to 13-year-olds at the school. The journey took just over two hours. The teddies descended back to Earth and landed near Ipswich, being located by GPS equipment. Academic performance Parkside Community College achieves GCSE results that are consistently among the best for state schools in Cambridgeshire. Notable alumni Cavetown, musician and YouTuber Patrick O'Flynn, UK Independence Party MEP Ben Thapa, opera singer Ronald Searle, Cartoonist Isamaya Ffrench, Make-up artist The author Nick Hornby was an English teacher at the school between 1982 and 1984. The UCL English professor and media theorist Andrew Burn (professor) taught English, Media and Drama at the school from 1986 to 2001. References Burn A & Parker D (2001), ‘Making your Mark: Digital Inscription, Animation, and a New Visual Semiotic’, Education, Communication & Information, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp 155–179 (and online at http://www.open.ac.uk/eci/burn/featset.html) Burn, A and Durran, J (2007) Media Literacy in Schools: practice, production and progression. London: Paul Chapman Gardiner, R (1983) An Epoch-Making School, Parkside Community College: Cambridge External links Parkside Federation Archived 26 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine Cambridgeshire County Council Admissions website City of Cambridge Education Foundation EduBase News items Independent July 2010 Teddy-nauts in December 2008 Cuddly cosmonauts in December 2008 Visit to the Arctic in July 2007 Use of technology wins award in August 2005 Audio clips Today programme December 2009 Video clips Parkside Media