Buile Hill Academy

Buile Hill Academy is a coeducational secondary school in Pendleton, Salford, England, opposite Buile Hill Park. It is a specialist Visual Arts College. History The school buildings are over 100 years old in some parts, with the school sharing a playing field with Salford City College in Pendleton, across the field to the north. The site was occupied by the former Salford Grammar School until 1973, when it was closed and its sixth form, along with that of Pendleton High School for Girls, was transferred to Pendleton College, which is nearby. The grammar school buildings had opened in 1956. In 1973 a new 11 to 16 comprehensive school called Buile Hill High School was opened on part of the former grammar school site. The school received an Artsmark Gold Award in May 2006 and was renamed Buile Hill Visual Arts College. It is one of the few schools in the Salford area with a fully working theatre and performance space. The school's headteacher left the school in the summer of 2006 and was replaced by a 'super head'. The new headteacher, Mr. P. Fitzpatrick, was paid a larger-than-usual salary of £100,000 per year, and was contracted for two years to improve the school's results and ready the school for the move into its new buildings in 2008. However, Fitzpatrick failed to achieve the results that the council had been looking for, and in 2007 he was removed by mutual agreement after just two terms. In 2007 the school's results on the standard measure (% of pupils reaching 5 GCSEs at grades A*-C) jumped from 26% to 52%.