£30k boost for music facilities
A WIDNES school has been awarded £30,000 allowing it to greatly enhance the quality of music provision in state-of-the-art facilities.
Ormiston Chadwick Academy (OCA) on Liverpool Road obtained the grant from the Wolfson Foundation.
The funding, which was secured through a competitive application process, will allow OCA to purchase the latest equipment for their high-tech recording studio which was built last summer.
OCA already has a thriving music department with large numbers already enrolled onto the GCSE course, but they hope to raise the profile of music even further as the new equipment will allow them to introduce new high-quality musical technical qualifications at Key Stage 4 level to prepare pupils well for a technical career in the music industry.
OCA principal Tuesday Humby said: “It’s wonderful to see ● our vision for music at OCA come to fruition thanks to the passion and incredible expertise of our head of music, our estates manager and the funding from the Wolfson Foundation.
“We are extremely grateful to the foundation for helping us further improve the quality of provision at OCA and we are all extremely excited to get the music technical qualifications up and running with our state-of-the-art equipment.
“Our pupils have been asking for this and Wolfson has made their dreams a reality.”
The school was rated ‘outstanding’ by education watchdog Ofsted in 2016 in its first inspection since becoming an academy in 2014 and has been in the Top 100 secondary schools in the country for progress for the past two years.
The Wolfson Foundation is an independent charity which awards grants to support and promote excellence in the fields of science, health, education, the arts, and humanities.
Through its secondary education programme, it supports the teaching of A-levels and GCSEs at high-achieving state-funded schools and sixth form colleges, providing funds for the provision of highquality buildings and equipment.
The charity’s chief executive Paul Ramsbottom said: “The Wolfson Foundation was very impressed by this proposal to support a project that was shaped by the pupils themselves.
“We look forward to hearing the results of our support for this high-tech recording studio. We hope that the equipment will inspire the next generation of musicians.”