The Wellington Academy, founded in 2009, is Wiltshire's first academy. Located in the town of Ludgershall, the academy is an 11-19 non-selective state-funded school, sponsored by Wellington College, an independent school in Berkshire.
The President of the Academy is HRH the Duke of York, who performed the official opening of the new campus in November 2011. The first Principal of the Academy was Andy Schofield who oversaw its set-up, doubled its size to a school of over 1,000 and established its 6th Form. The Academy is now being run by Executive Principal, Dr Mike Milner and Senior Vice Principal, Ms Abrilli Phillip.
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Design
The Wellington Academy was designed by London-based architects BDP, built by Kier and was shortlisted in the best academy category for the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Awards in 2009.
Characteristics
The campus houses a community sports and fitness centre with bowling green, a hair salon, a cadet centre with indoor shooting range, twin boarding houses for 100 pupils, and Castledown Radio media centre. Located near to Tidworth Garrison on Salisbury Plain, almost half of the school's pupils are from service families. The Academy has a skills centre in the adjacent Castledown Business Park.
Achievements
The Wellington Academy's first set of results in 2010 established the school as one of Wiltshire's highest performing. The Academy was visited by Ofsted in December 2010 and was deemed to have made outstanding progress since opening.
Summer of 2015 saw the Academy achieve its best exam results ever for both GCSE and GCE.
Sponsored academy
The Wellington Academy is the first in the country to take its name from an independent school, in this case Wellington College, founded as a national monument to the Duke of Wellington by Queen Victoria in 1859. Other independent schools were initially slow to do something similar, despite the high-profile campaign led by Wellington College's former Master Anthony Seldon. However, by 2011, around 28 independent schools were helping to run Academies, including Sevenoaks School, Dulwich College, Malvern College, Marlborough College, Oundle School, Uppingham School and Winchester College, with strong encouragement from Government for even greater involvement.
Predecessors
The first school on the site was Tidworth Down School, a secondary modern opened in 1940. From 1965 the school was for boys only, with girls attending the newly-built Ludgershall Castle School, then in 1978 the girls rejoined the boys and Tidworth Down was renamed Castledown School, a comprehensive.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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