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Cotham Gardens Primary School is a primary school in Bristol, England, UK. The primary school is a Co-operative Academy. In 2018 the school changed it name from Colstan's Primary School to Cotham Gardens Primary School. The school is split over 2 sites, Elmgrove, which is the infants site and was open in 2015, and the original site at Cotham Grove.

History
The school buildings began life as domestic residential houses in Victorian times.

1941: Colston’s Girls School (founded in 1891, funded by the Society of Merchant Venturers, using the substantial bequest of Edward Colston which was made for the provision of education in, the first school to have been founded in this way being Colston’s Hospital which opened in 1710) acquired Upton Lodge - 18 Cotham Grove - to house its Junior school due to damaged buildings on their main Cheltenham Road Site. Upton Lodge belonged to Alderman Burt whose grandchildren Mary and Kathleen had attended Colston’s Girls School.

1942: The house next door, Osborne House, became available and the governors rented it to provide more space for the junior school.

Colston’s Girls school, Senior and Junior continued to be a Direct Grant School, benefitting from Edward Colston’s endowment for education, managed by the Merchant Venturers Society

1944 Welfare Estate emerging and Butler’s Education Act was passed, introducing the idea of free education for primary and secondary schooling for all and the concept of the Local Education Authority.

1945: Labour wins the election, and Colston’s Girls School becomes a Direct Grant Grammar School with new rules of entry (11 + exam open to all) to the senior school, no longer being able to guarantee places for girls from the Junior School. Because of this, and the Junior School’s dip in results for the 11 + it lost pupils and therefore money, leading to the eventual closure of Colston’s Girls Junior school, housed at the Cotham Grove site in 1946.

1946: The LEA took over and all ties with Colston’s Girls School were severed.

In Colston’s Girls School: The First Hundred Years (published by Redcliffe Press Ltd in 1991), author Sarah Dunn reports: ‘ Soon after the status was changed there was controversy, which spread to the columns of the local papers as to the propriety of its retaining the name of Colston. Happily, no official notice was taken of this small mindedness’

Colston’s Girls School senior continued as a Direct Grant girls grammar school until 1966 when it became an independent fee paying school. It then converted to Academy status in 2008 and continues to be supported by the Merchant Venturers Society as it also was during its grammar and independent set ups.

As of 1947, Colston’s Girls Junior School becomes the LEA state funding Colston’s Primary School School

1973: Colston’s Primary School tried (and failed due to local resistance) to expand on the site that is now home to Cotham Park Tennis club

2012: Colston’s Primary School converted from a Local Authority School to a Co-operative Academy, thereby receiving money direct from central government via the Education Funding Agency (EFA)

2015: Colston’s Primary School opened a new infants site, Elmgrove, with three form entry and a wider catchment area