Laisterdyke High School

Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College
Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College - Thornbury Road - geograph.org.uk - 656257.jpg
Principal Mrs Jennifer McIntosh
Location Thornbury Road
Bradford
West Yorkshire
BD3 8HE
England Coordinates: 53°47′47″N 1°42′53″W / 53.79635°N 1.71459°W / 53.79635; -1.71459
Local authority City of Bradford
DfE URN 107443 Tables
Ofsted Reports
Students 1094
Gender Coeducational
Ages 11–18
Website www.laisterdykehigh.org.uk

Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College is a secondary school and sixth form for boys and girls in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. The age range of the pupils is 11–18. The school currently holds Business and Enterprise College status, and also uses the name "Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College".

Following the re-organisation of education in the local education authority (LEA) in September 1999 the school changed from a middle school for pupils aged 8 to 13 to its current designation. The school is oversubscribed and continuing to grow. In September 2002, the school admitted its first intake of sixth form students and became an 11 to 18 school.

Students

A high proportion of pupils (almost 93 per cent) are from ethnic minority backgrounds and almost all have English as an additional language. Most pupils come from Pakistani backgrounds (mainly in the area of Mirpur) with smaller numbers from Indian and Bangladeshi backgrounds. Other than English, the main languages spoken are Urdu, Punjabi, Pushto and Hindi. There are also a small, but increasing, number of students drawn from Eastern Europe - particularly Poland.

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Faculty

For more than 20 years, Mrs Joan Law was headteacher, then principal, of the school (then college). She retired in August 2010, and currently Mrs Harrison and Mr Chilvers - vice principals - have joint charge. The new principal, Mrs Jennifer McIntosh, takes up her post in January 2011.

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Facilities

As part of their upgrade and new building development, the school has invested in ICT facilities for pupils, staff and surrounding schools. This investment continues. Since the switch from middle to secondary, the school has added a large sports hall, a second dining hall, and a large number of new classrooms, including a brand new English teaching block.[1]

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Achievements

The school has won a Schools Drug Prevention Charter Award for its efforts in anti-drug education icarried out jointly with local units of the Rotary Club and the Soroptimists Club of Great Britain, as well as with the Bradford Bulls rugby club.[2] For three years, the college has also run a very successful, and well respected, literacy project known as Leap Into Books. This has involved more than 400 children from local primary schools over the three years, as well as Laisterdyke students.[3]

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Pakistan link

In December 2006, a delegation of educational professionals led by the University of Bradford travelled to Pakistan for a five-day International Education Conference. Representatives from Laisterdyke school were amongst the delegates. The conference was organised following the publication of a report entitled The Mirpur Connection in July 2006. One of its recommendations was to organise an International Educational Conference including practical workshops for teachers, children and young people.[4] The purpose of that visit was to forge links between schools, colleges and Universities in Mirpur and Bradford and to provide a co-ordinated platform for close collaboration between organisations in the Bradford district and those in Mirpur. This continues through the schools Connecting Classrooms links with Pakistani schools, led by Mrs Sarah Diaz, PSCHE Leader, and Mr Philip Smith, Business Leader. They visited Pakistan in 2009 with a reciprocal visit in 2010. Technology such as Skype is currently being used to keep the links running smoothly.

Mirpur is important to many British Muslim communities in West Yorkshire because of the strong social and cultural ties between the communities. These ties began in the 1960s when the families of many Bradford citizens migrated to the region, mainly because of the development of the Mangla Dam, which flooded 485 villages in the 60s making 100,000 people homeless.

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Last modified on 22 January 2013, at 22:01