Emmanuel City Technology College is a secondary school based in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear in England. It was founded in 1990 as a City Technology College. Emmanuel now instructs 1250 students, aged between 11 and 19, and has almost 100 staff working on the purpose-built site. It is part of the Emmanuel Schools Foundation. Students come from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds but predominantly from the inner-city areas within Gateshead and Central and West Newcastle upon Tyne. The school was at the centre of a storm of protests from scientists and educationalists when it was revealed that the senior management were sympathetic to Young Earth creationism and had allowed its hall to be rented by Answers in Genesis, an organisation which promotes such views.
Controversy
Accusations have been made against the strictness and petiness of some members of staff, as some punishments have been meted for offenses as slight as students walking with their hands in their pockets, or students taking off their ties and jackets outside of school hours. Some criticism has also been made of the boundaries of the school's punishments - students are expected to show impeccable behaviour off school property, and punishments have been given in the past by teachers passing through a student's neighborhood and observing something considered unseemly. The institution is well known for achieving some of the highest GCSE and A-Level examination results, but accusations have been levied against them that they 'filter' out the students they don't expect to achieve as well as they'd like, leaving a higher chance of above-average success among remaining students. However, no evidence has yet been provided to support this. The school was at the centre of a storm of protests from scientists and educationalists when it was revealed that the senior management (including the head of the Science Depratment) were sympathetic to Young Earth creationism and had allowed its hall to be rented by Answers in Genesis, an organisation which promotes such views. This has led to concern, that students may be made to listen to school's beliefs to the exclusion of competing world views (such as other religious views, and scientific theory). Some of the Alumni have claimed this to be the case but, again, no concrete evidence has been provided.
Notable Alumni
External links
Websites
- Emmanuel College, Emmanuel College website
- The BBC, BBC item about Emmanuel College and Dawkins
- The Guardian, UK newspaper article about creationism and Emmanuel College
- cloudsoup UK blog which broke the original story about creationist influences at the school
