St. Joseph's Catholic College is a Roman Catholic Girls' school with specialist science college

Science College

Science Colleges were introduced in 2002 as part of the now defunct Specialist Schools Programme in the United Kingdom. The system enabled secondary schools to specialise in certain fields, in this case, science and mathematics...

 status, situated in Manningham

Manningham, Bradford

Manningham is an area of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, approximately a mile north of the city centre and is seen as the centre of the city's south Asian population.- Geography :...

, close to 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...

 city centre in 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....

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

School history

St. Joseph’s Catholic College was founded by the Order of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion

Sisters of the Cross and Passion

Sisters of the Cross and Passion is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in nineteenth-century Manchester, England, by Elizabeth Prout, later called Mother Mary Joseph. It is part of the larger Passionist movement.-External links:**...

 in 1908. It was a direct grant grammar school

Direct grant grammar school

A direct grant grammar school was a selective secondary school in England and Wales between 1945 and 1976 funded partly by the state and partly through private fees....

 until 1977 when it became a Voluntary Aided

Voluntary aided school

A voluntary aided school is a state-funded school in England and Wales in which a foundation or trust owns the school buildings, contributes to building costs and has a substantial influence in the running of the school...

 13–19 Girls’ School under the trusteeship of the Diocese of Leeds, which owns the buildings and grounds, and appoints the majority of the Governors. In 1995 due to Bradford Catholic re-organisation the College became an 11–19 Catholic Girls' School.

Head Mistress'

• 1908–1916 - Mother Gonzaga
• 1916–1956 - Mother Sister Mary Immaculate (c.1890 - 1977), Yorkshire Women of the Century, Educationalist, overseeing St Joseph’s to become one of the major Catholic girls' grammar schools in the country.

Governors

The Governors are responsible for managing the budget, for the appointment of staff and the admission of pupils. The College has over 1,000 pupils, of whom 176 are in the Sixth Form, and 69 teaching staff. The intake of 150 comes from 16 Catholic parishes.

School today

The College was founded on its present site in February 1908 by the Sisters of the Cross and Passion, who gave the College its motto "Per Crucem ad Lucem"- Through the Cross to the Light.

Graduates include Olympic medalists, diplomats, members of parliament, television journalists, actresses, artists, writers, professors, religious sisters and Bankers.

Sixth form

There is a mixed-sex education Sixth Form

Sixth form

In the education systems of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and of Commonwealth West Indian countries such as Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Jamaica and Malta, the sixth form is the final two years of secondary education, where students, usually sixteen to eighteen years of age,...

 with our sister school, St. Bede's Grammar School

St. Bede's Grammar School

St. Bede's Grammar School, in Heaton, Bradford, West Yorkshire is a Roman Catholic boys' Secondary school and specialist science college close to Bradford city centre.-School history:...

. Most students in Year 11 successfully progress onto the Sixth Form

Sixth form

In the education systems of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and of Commonwealth West Indian countries such as Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Jamaica and Malta, the sixth form is the final two years of secondary education, where students, usually sixteen to eighteen years of age,...

, college and apprenticeships.

Notable former Joseph's girls

• Kathryn Apanowicz
  Kathryn Apanowicz
  Kathryn Apanowicz is a British actress best known for her 1980s television appearances in the BBC soap operas, Angels, where she played Nurse Rose Butchins, and EastEnders, where she played the caterer, Magda Czajkowski...
  
   - Actress and TV presenter , the long-term partner of the late Richard Whiteley
  Richard Whiteley
  John Richard Whiteley, OBE DL , usually known as Richard Whiteley, was an English broadcaster and journalist. He was famous for his twenty-three years as host of Countdown, a letters and numbers arrangement game show broadcast most weekdays on Channel 4...
  
  
• Elizabeth Stratford - Composer
• Sophie McShera
  Sophie McShera
  Sophie McShera is a British actress. At an early age she moved to Eccleshill, also in Bradford, where she attended St Joseph's College. Out of school she attended the Footsteps Theatre School before getting her stage break at the age of twelve in comedy The Goodbye Girl...
  
   - Actress
• Steph Swainston
  Steph Swainston
  Steph Swainston is a British literary fantasy/science fiction author, receiving critical acclaim for her first novel The Year of Our War . The book won the 2005 Crawford Award and a nomination for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. The sequel No Present Like Time was published in 2005...
  
  - Author

External links

• St Joseph's Catholic College