Dinnington High School
Dinnington Comprehensive School is a secondary school in Dinnington, South Yorkshire, England. It is a coeducational comprehensive school for day pupils between the ages of 11 and 18, and takes in approximately 1500 pupils from Dinnington and surrounding settlements (chiefly Anston, Laughton Common, Laughton-en-le-Morthen, Woodsetts, Gildingwells, Letwell and Firbeck). The school is administered by the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham.
The school was built in the grounds of Throapham Manor, and was opened by Sir Percy Jackson (chair of the West Riding Local Education Authority) in 1935 as Dinnington Secondary Modern. It consisted of two timber buildings: the school itself (divided into girls' and boys' halves, and laid out around three quadrangles), and a separate gymnasium.
After just under 30 years, the school merged with the secondary technical element of the neighbouring Dinnington Chelmsford Technical College to form Dinnington High School, opened on 23 September 1963 (a formal opening took place a year later, conducted by Jack Longland). The area between the two establishments was developed into a campus of four house bases and a sixth form college, along with a new main hall and a second gym. The four houses took their names and badges from historical local land-owning families, and were as follows:
- Athorpe: owners of Dinnington Hall. The Athorpe badge was a falcon on a yellow background.
- Hatfield: land-owners in Laughton-en-le-Morthen in the 17th century. The Hatfield badge was a white rose on a green background.
- Osborne: the family name of the Duke of Leeds who had propery in Kiveton Park. The Osborne badge was a tiger on a blue background.
- Segrave: after the de Segrave family who owned much of the local area in the 16th century. The Segrave badge was a lion on a red background.
The campus continued to be extended following the merger, with the addition of a swimming pool, technology block, sports hall, new sixth form base and library in the 1970s and 1980s.
On August 20, 1996, the original school building (which still made up about half of the teaching campus) was set alight by arsonists. The fire destroyed the building and took with it equipment and student course-work. House-bases were re-fitted into classrooms and this led to the eventual phasing out of the house system at Dinnington.
In 1997, a new school building was opened, standing on the site of the burnt-out original. The brick-built two-storey building also allowed a long-standing "ghetto" of '60s-built portakabin classrooms (known as the Terrapin Plateau) to finally be retired. Several other ageing prefab buildings on campus have been demolished in recent years.
On January 27 2005, the school announced its success in a bid to become a specialist school in Science and Engineering.
There is a gentle rivalry between Dinnington and the nearby Wales High School. The two schools are sufficiently close for some slight overlap in catchment. Their school league table standings differ negligably: Wales currently (2005) has the better GCSE results and Dinnington the better A-level results.
Headteachers of Dinnington Comprehensive School
- Mr. J.E.W. Moreton (1963-1975?)
- Mr. Ingram (1975?-1983?)
- Mr. Gordon Forster (1983?-1997)
- Mrs. Jean Nicholson (1997-present)