Talk:Cavendish School, Hemel Hempstead

Protection request

I requested page protection because of the repeated vandalisms today. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jared555 (talk • contribs) 22:48, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

On-going vandalism and content repair

This article has been persistently vandalised.

I have repaired some of the obvious vandalism, but do not have the time or knowledge to complete the task.Tomintoul (talk) 13:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Forms

Current content is contradictory.Tomintoul (talk) 22:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Reverted to Cavendish School

This is an article about The Cavendish School, Hemel Hempstead that existed between 1962 and 2018. That the school existed is a matter of historical record, and this article is about THAT school.The school closed in 2018 and the successor that took over the site opened as Laureate Academy in 2018. If you wish to record information about Laureate Academy, please do so in the Laureate Academy article and not this one. Marlarkey (talk) 09:37, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was Don't Merge. Paul W (talk) 08:28, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

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Proposed merger

Merge - Further to discussion on Marlarkey's Talk page, I have proposed that Laureate Academy be merged into Cavendish School, Hemel Hempstead. There are other Wikipedia articles on English schools (eg: The Halley Academy, Shooters Hill Sixth Form College) which have gone through similar historical changes of name and management but which continue to operate on the same site. This appears no different. Paul W (talk) 10:59, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Don't Merge - The Laureate Academy and Cavendish School share nothing in common other than the geographical site. I support Marlarkey's position that they should be separate articles. Tomintoul (talk) 11:14, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Don't Merge - I agree... the old Cavendish school closed... the new Laureate academy shared little in common. It wasn't simply a change of name or governance... it was a school closing and a new school opening on the same site. The Cavendish School had a long history and notable reputation for most of its history, both locally and even nationally, gaining academic and sports achievements on the national stage. That Laureate Academy is not notable is their problem.Marlarkey (talk) 11:19, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

May I ask: did the school completely close, with pupils and teaching and other staff dispersed to other institutions? If it didn't, then I don't think it constitutes a complete closure, and the establishment of a totally new institution. Paul W (talk) 11:44, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

It was a new institution - new name, new ownership, new governance, new board of governors, new headteacher, new leadership, new administration, new finances, new curriculum, new uniform, new ethos - none of those had any link to the previous school. AFAIK, all that transferred to the new school were the physical assets, existing students (years 8-12) were offered places subject to agreeing to new student contracts (so they were not automatically enrolled), and existing staff were offered jobs or redundancy. Very different to a continuation and TUPE arrangement for staff. Marlarkey (talk) 12:11, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

If there is a way to preserve ALL the Cavendish content eg all the infobox content and continuing to all edits about the history of Cavendish School - then fine... but The Hally Academy article you mentioned doesn't do that... the Ofsted Reports link for instance is to the Halley Academy rather than the Corelli College or the Kidbrooke School, there is no reference to houses as they might have been at Kidbrooke School. etc. Alumni are not called out as of which school they are alumni.

Your suggestion isn't a consistent approach.... its not applied in the case of companies that change structure/name (eg Bentley, Rolls Royce), or F1 teams (Alpine), or american football teams (each of the former incarnations have their own Marlarkey (talk) 11:15, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

The Ofsted report links are managed via the schools template, but if you click the link to access the Ofsted website, the reports for both previous manifestations of the school "at the same postcode" are available; as for houses, presumably no editor thought them worthy of inclusion (or there were/are no reliable sources); alumni can be easily segregated by era (now done at The Halley Academy - see also Shooters Hill Sixth Form College). State schools, private companies, F1 teams, and American football franchises are totally different institutions, and so are (rightly) subject to different approaches within Wikipedia. Paul W (talk) 12:10, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

You'd have to segregate every section into its different eras making the article a mess. Every item of content would have to identify which of the incarnations the content related to. Better to have separate articles Marlarkey (talk) 12:14, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Segregation within sections would only really apply once there is something notable to segregate. At this point in time, there are no notable Laureate Academy staff, alumni, etc. Paul W (talk) 14:17, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

And that's exactly why this Cavendish article should be maintained. If there were a merged article named "Laureate Academy" it would be entirely misleading as it would give the impression that the notable events, staff and alumni were of Laureate when they weren't. Marlarkey (talk) 13:39, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

If it were insisted to merge (and I OPPOSE) then the name of the article should be renamed 'Laureate Academy (formerly Cavendish School, Hemel Hempstead)' to avoid ambiguity. And the Laureate Academy content could be relegated into a tiny section at the end, given that it has nothing notable to record. Marlarkey (talk) 13:38, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

"The policy for article titles (naming conventions) is Wikipedia:Article titles. There is no specific approved naming conventions guideline for schools at present." (source: WP:SCHOOLS). Another page (WP:WPSCHOOLS/AG), talking about Changing the Title, notes: "The UK, and England in particular, has an annoying propensity for renaming or rebranding its schools. A solution is to merge the entire content and leave redirects so that nothing gets lost." Paul W (talk) 14:05, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

This wasn't a rebranding. Cavendish closed down. And a new school opened. Taking over the existing buildings. It is my understanding that the existing students were not automatically carried forward but were offered a place subject to acceptance of a 'contract' Marlarkey (talk) 13:51, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

BTW I see that you are finding notable things to record about Cavendish School, thus reinforcing the need for its historical record to stand in its own right - if Laureate Academy had anything notable to record then I might be more supportive of your stance, but it doesn't appear to have anything worth recording Marlarkey (talk) 13:55, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

To be even-handed, I have also expanded Laureate Academy based on reporting in local and education sources. Paul W (talk) 14:14, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.