My life has been pulled down.

Primary School - Still standing and very popular today, it was built in 1908.

First secondary school - Built in 1956, pulled down in 2004.

Second secondary school - Built in 1995! pulled down in Feb 2006 What a complete waste of money.



College - Still standing

University -Telford Building - Built 1967 pulled down Feb 2006. The building I used to be has been pulled down within the last couple of weeks, this has saddended be some what as I have lots of happy memories there. It was reburbished quite exentisvely in 2001 but the 911 attacks meant demand for aircraft engineering courses declined and they decided to close some labs and move my buiding into them, hence an entire campus was surprless to requirements.

It seems they are pulling down my entire life

 

Mountbatten Building, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton. Opened 1991, destroyed by fire november 2005:

 

Won't they build new things there that will give many more good memories to other people? Nothing to be sad about, your life is yours, not in a building! Though it does look like a lovely building and mad to pull it down!

 

Isaac
They build stuff new to look like that in Paris!

 

It was, it was pulled down due to politics. It was too small to be profitable but too big to be small so it was massively in debt.

I there from day one and it was very modern, each class room had a PC and RJ45 ports were all over the place. It was fully wheel chair accessable and was well furnished.

Issac I see you let the university store your final year project What happened did a 10Kv capacitor short:

Both those buildings will now become flats. The irony is this week I have been working collecting lecture room utalisation statistics and that is a brand new building opened two weeks ago. It is a nursing school too so plenty of nice girls around :

 

Sounds about time it was turned into some top of the line very swish apartments for the rich yuppies or whatever they are called now.

 

They would have a job, its a real piece of engineering. The Bee Gee's went there as well so it has a little bit of history.

It is a lovely building and it was built with no expense spared. It will still be standing in 2108.

 

I wonder who left their bunsen burner on too long ?

Pulling down a school that was only built in 1995 is shameful !

Sidney's rear view mirror theory;

I have lived in many places, both in the UK and oversea's. In most instances and despite the brilliant times i had in many of these places, the last time i saw them was in the rearview mirror as i drove out of town to embark upon the next chapter in my life, **** happens, but life just keeps rolling on.....

 

It is a scandal, it cost £6.2 million to build. The replacement school cost £20 million but what was so wrong with the old one? Nothing.

If it wasn't big enough for the new school all they had to is extend it.

 

So what's your theory? They like squandering money just for the hell of it?

 

my old comp school was pulled down some time ago - best thing they could have done IMO...they failed us - but I've done ok with my life tho

 

Ducie High later to be the Manchester Academy has been one of the really controversial schools, it has been deemed to have been failing for years, with pass rates that are way below what was deemed to have been acceptable. I always thought it's closure was inevitable. It's problems will now be transferred elsewhere no doubt. It's not the building of the schools that is unacceptable, it's the curriculum. It doesn't meet the needs of the pupils that go there. It's catchment area is one of the most deprived in the country, mainly Moss Side and the back end of Withington. It was an enterprise doomed to failure.

This is not to belittle the achievements of those who did succeed from there, their achievements should perhaps count as double as they triumphed from adversity

 

thinking about it - some of you geordie lot may know it...it was skatyford school...mr Birkett - you still live in Blakelaw..?? - as it was just around the corner from there...

 

The staff were all great though, in many ways it was a great school. Part of the problem is many of their pupils were imigrants with very little knowledge of English.

The new school is called Manchester Academy, about half of the staff have been replaced.

I was there for four years and it really wasn't as bad as the press made it out to be, but that may be because we all stayed in the class rooms at dinner time because the playground was deemed too violent.

I was put it in hospital twice during my time and my grandad was threatended with a knife.

But the core stuff were very good and the majority of pupils were decent people. I spoke to an old teacher a few weeks ago and we were saying that half of ducies popils ended up at university, the other half are either dead or in prison, there seems to be no middle ground.

I got 5 Cs, 3Ds and an E, I got my name in the paper for doing so well, at my sisters school (a grammar school) that would have been pathetic.

 

That is totally unacceptable, at school you have two rights, the right to feel safe, and the right to learn. Sounds like you were being deprived of both of them.

 

The teachers did what they could but my main critism is that trouble pupils were never kicked out - until they hit a teacher. It didn't matter how many popils ended up in hospital.

 

I was put it in hospital twice during my time and my grandad was threatended with a knife

And that wasn't as bad as the press made it out to be!

For the record I'm 54, was brought up just off Lloyd Street, behind the Parkside pub and even then Ducie was an utter dump where you went to fail. It was because of this litany of failure that MEC along with new labour spun their spin, pulled it down and rebuilt it as an academy, new labour's answer to all our educational woes!
One day they'll realise that a school is not made by its building but by its clientele.

 

The Parkside pub, can't picture where that is, probably flats now

I still think I was happier there than I was at the middle class comp I went to, becuase there the teachers didn't want to know about my problems, at least at Ducie the teachers really did care. The problem is they were fighting a major battle. I can't really complain about the teachers.

For the record the new schools GCSE results have improved a lot, but I suspect government spin (i.e GNVQ) has influenced that a lot. My old teacher joked that the it has a sixth form now, which basicaly means the resit centre

It is funny how when I came out of Ducie though I did really well at college (got the highest grade on my course in the whole of Manchester) and at university I did well achieving a high 2:1.

I will critisise the English department because that was a joke, their idea of teaching us was to watch an film and then right about it instead of reading the book as we were supposed to!

ICT was a joke, they would not let any of us take higher tier even though I told them I would get an A in it. I helped my sister out with her computing A level which has to be a trillion times harder than mickey mouse (for me) GCSE ICT.

Moss Side isn't even that rough, the problem is it has a lot of rough people living there. It is not a place you're likely to mugged in but if you get into the wrong crowd it is a place which will put you into an early grave.

I really want to know what the actual GCSE results are for this new school, not the silly new combined thing. From day one I was against Manchester Academy because I could not see what would change, the staff were already largely very good teachers but there were some management issues.

Once I got asked why I was in the quing (sorry ducie spelling up with the teachers to get dinner by some kid. It turns out there was too ques, one for dinner tickets and one for paying customers : 90% of people there were on dinner tickets. The joke is even then (I left in 1999) most kids had mobile phones and lots of fancy clothes. There were some genuinely poor kids there though.

 

That brings back some memories Bob, I used to drink in the Parkside before matches at Maine Road.

Sadly AT what you describe is all the key features of a failing school, lack of challenge, pupil safety not accounted for. It's probably for the better it's gone. Look at Whalley Range Girls just down the road, it shows what can be achieved when discipline is rigourously applied! If expectations are high enough and bad behaviour isn't tolerated pupils will achieve far more.

 

Look at Whalley Range it just shows what can be achieved when due regard to the law is flouted and graft, nepotism and corruption are allowed to flourish. The school may have achieved well but the Head is still a crook. For anyone who doesn't know the story, fear not, I am not saying anything an independent audit by the Government hasn't said.