Middleton Academy – dead in the water?

Councillor Robin Parker

The proposed change of name of the Queen Elizabeth School dropping ‘Queen Elizabeth’ has been the biggest single issue news item in Middleton for weeks, dwarfing even the campaign against the congestion charge.

A free school was endowed to Middleton by Queen Elizabeth I in 1572, and the name has continued ever since. Now business people David and Anne Crossland want to invest £2m (10% of the costs of a new school, £750k coming from the Church of England with the rest from the public purse) and change the name to St Anne’s Academy.

A vigorous campaign to stop the name change has been ongoing in Middleton with complainants from the leafy suburbs to social housing estates. On Thursday night (15 March) at the Middleton Township meeting, a bombshell was dropped by former Chairman of the Township, and leading opposition campaigner, Henry West. He had researched the school history and discovered that a King’s charter of 1910 had endowed the school with the name Queen Elizabeth into the care of  Middleton Town Council, now part of the Metropolitan Borough Council of Rochdale. That governance is endowed permanently and so it appears that neither that nor the name can be revoked.

Middleton Councillor Robin Parker commented: "This almost seemed to come as a relief to the members of the Township Committee who, in an unprecedented gesture of three party solidarity, voted to support Henry’s proposal to oppose the closure of the Queen Elizabeth School at the Schools Organisation Committee on 29 March. They were also fired up by a speech from the current Chair of Governors of the Queen Elizabeth School, Peter Dawson, who said that the existing governors had been frozen out of all decisions regarding the proposed academy."

Peter McNulty from the Middleton Township Management Team offered to obtain a report from the Borough Solicitor as a matter of urgency.

Councillor Parker added: "If this confirms Mr West’s information, that will be the end of the academy. For the members of Middleton Township Committee and the majority of the people of Middleton, some things are worth more than money, especially when it comes to the town’s heritage and history."