Queens Park Community School


Queens Park Community School is a secondary school and sixth form with academy status, located in Queen's Park, in the London Borough of Brent, England.

History

Merger

Opened in 1989, Queens Park Community School is the result of an amalgamation of three schools during the 1980s. The three schools that were merged were South Kilburn High School, Aylestone Community School and Brondesbury and Kilburn High. The latter was formed from the merger in 1973 of Kilburn Senior High School for Boys, and Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls. Both were successors to state grammar schools which were abolished by the local authority in 1967, the boys' grammar school being Kilburn Grammar School. The new school's logo, an image of three trees, represents this union of the three local secondary schools. The headteacher chosen to head the new school was Mary Norton. Norton headed the school from its formation through to her retirement from education in 2002.

Present-day QPCS

The school had a new block funded through the millennium National Lottery fund at an estimated cost of £34.3 million. The building of this block involved demolishing one of the existing buildings. The new building was opened by Ken Livingstone with a plaque commemorating his visit. The school has been granted specialist school status in Business and Enterprise.
QPCS secured additional funding through the government's Excellence in Cities programme, which provided resources for schools, to provide extended activities and work for gifted and talented pupils.
In March 2012, QPCS applied for Artsmark status – it received the Gold award.
Queens Park Community School converted to academy status in September 2012.

QPCS City Learning Centre

The QPCS City Learning Centre was one of 105 CLCs built by the DfES throughout the country. It was completed in 2003.
In 2015, funding for CLCs ceased and the CLC building has become part of the school's teaching accommodation.

Classroom Chaos

QPCS was one of the six schools featured on the 2005 Channel 5 programme Classroom Chaos in which a retired teacher under the pseudonym 'Sylvia Thomas' returned undercover as a supply teacher after 30 years. Her stated objective was to show the 'chaos' which teachers must deal with in the modern classroom. With the use of hidden cameras, she filmed chairs being thrown, pupils fighting in class and swearing at teachers and other such behaviour, the most severe of all featured incidents being an extremely violent attack in which one
student struck another in the face with an extendable police baton/kosh at our very own Q.P.C
S.

Notable former pupils