Talk:Herschel Grammar School

Where the school started
Can anyone advise on the original location of Slough Tech/Herschel? My personal understanding (as previously shown in the article) was that Slough Tech was set up in the old Slough Secondary School buildings in William Street, sometime after Slough Grammar and Slough High had vacated the site for Lascelles Road and Twinches Lane.

However, 'The Changing Face of Slough' (page 84, Slough Museum / Breedon Books 2003) claims that Slough Tech was a direct development from Tonman Mosley school, also in William Street. This would imply that Tonman Mosley had a senior section - the same book credits it with an infants department (p95) which subsequently moved to become James Elliman.

For the moment, I've simplified the history to undisputed fact (that Slough Tech started in William Street) but more precision would be nice.

Grblundell 11:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * after discussion with user:Icairns (see his talk page) it looks as if there is further support for Slough Tech starting in the old Slough Sec buildings, so I've reintroduced this information. Grblundell 19:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Assess
A good start article. With some expansion (more on the history, pics, alumni, etc) and more references you could be a B. Dahliarose 14:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

June 2010 - substantial changes
There's not much space in an edit summary, so to explain in more detail the changes I have just made / remade:

Tony Hayward as an alumnus: This was unsourced, and a few minute's googling has failed to produce anything. The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/tony-hayward-right-in-the-thick-of-it-1986232.html) says that he went to Windsor Grammar School'. So out he goes.

Herschel Sports: it was built in 2004 - six years ago now. I think we can stop calling it new.

Sixth form: (i) I have removed some of the comments about rules being relaxed/imposed/whatever, because
 * - they were not sourced
 * - they were not notable (would anyone outside of Herschel care?)
 * - repeated editing had scrambled the syntax beyond all redemption

(ii) 2010 university offers. I've tried to make this reflect the quoted source and reduce opinion - see wp:pov for a discussion at length about opinion and why it has no place in Wikipedia. In particular, 'significant' is a statistical term, and not a synonym for 'some' so should not be used. Hopefully, I've improved the paragraph a bit by wikilinking Cambridge University (Cambridge by itself will probably take readers to the page for the town) and the LSE.

(iii) Current head boy and head girl: Sorry, but this has got to go. No disrespect to the people listed who I'm sure are the finest that the school has ever produced, but again it's unsourced, and (thus far) in their lives they have not been notable to anyone outside Herschel. There's also a real problem with vandalism when student names are listed - I see that Iain Lee appeared in the article as 2009/2010 Head Boy for a while, which is pretty good going for someone now in his thirties.

HGS student newspaper: I've got real doubts as to the notability of this, but others disagree so I have left the section. But I've trimmed it to information which can be sourced. In particular, it's not the first student publication ever at Herschel. I know this because there was one in my time (a long, long time ago...) Why don't I add that to the article? Because I can't prove it - I have no source. It's the same with the claim for the current newspaper (to which, again, I wish every success). If you can't prove that the current newspaper is the first ever, then don't say it.

The bit about likening to Vogue is unsourced and pushing an opinion. Sorry, but it's got to go.

Baylis Court Controversy: again, this is unsourced. People may have criticised the Herschel Consortium, and gone to study elsewhere - but unless there's a source that members of the public can look at, whether online or on paper or as a broadcast, then we don't know if it's true. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia - which means that we should be able to show why we have written something.

Hope this helps. Grblundell (talk) 12:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)