Dixons City Academy
Encyclopedia
Dixons City Academy is an Academy
Academy (England)
In the education system of England, an academy is a school that is directly funded by central government and independent of control by local government in England. An academy may receive additional support from personal or corporate sponsors, either financially or in kind...

 in Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...

, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....

. The school was originally founded in 1990 as Dixons City Technology College
City Technology College
In England, a City Technology College is a state-funded all-ability secondary school that charges no fees but is independent of local authority control, being overseen directly by the Department for Education....

 which focused on a specialism of Design & Technology and Product Design
Product design
-Introduction:Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business or enterprise to its customers. It is concerned with the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.Product designers conceptualize and...

. In 2005 the school converted into an Academy
Academy (England)
In the education system of England, an academy is a school that is directly funded by central government and independent of control by local government in England. An academy may receive additional support from personal or corporate sponsors, either financially or in kind...

 and in doing so changed its name to Dixons City Academy. With the change of name came a change of focus as the school became a specialist Performing Arts
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...

 school which allows it to select ten percent of admissions purely based on talent in this area.

In 2007 the school received an "outstanding" OFSTED
Ofsted
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills is the non-ministerial government department of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools In England ....

 report. The founding principal Sir John Lewis retired from the school in 2006 and Mr Nick Weller has been the principal, who in September 2011 became the Executive Principal. Ms Shirley Watson has now taken on the role.

The Academy repeatedly performs well in OFSTED
Ofsted
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills is the non-ministerial government department of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools In England ....

 inspections and also in the secondary education league tables. Often earning the title of best school in Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...

. the school is well thought of in the local community and also within the UK for its specialisms.

Trivia

The school was attended to by Pop Idol
Pop Idol
Pop Idol is a British television series which debuted on ITV on 6 October 2001. The show was a talent contest to decide the best new young pop singer in the United Kingdom, based on viewer voting and participation. Two series were broadcast - one in 2001-02 and a second in 2003...

 runner up Gareth Gates
Gareth Gates
Gareth Paul Gates , is an English singer-songwriter. He was the runner-up in the first series of the ITV talent show Pop Idol. Gates has sold over 3.5 million records in the UK alone. He is also known for having a stutter, and has talked about his speech impediment publicly...

, Film Composer Benson Taylor
Benson Taylor
Benson Taylor is an English composer.Taylor is a trustee of the Bradford section of Emmaus UK.He lives in Huddersfield in the North of England with his wife and son, who was born in 2009.- Notable film scores :...

 & current young cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 talent Moin Ashrafwho is in the yorkshire team.

In 2008/2009 the school was the focus of a documentary series My First Year in which pupils were followed during their first year at the school.
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