Avonbourne School

Avonbourne School is a secondary school with academy status located in Bournemouth, Dorset, England. It is a single-sex all-girls school for 11- to 16-year-olds and is a foundation school.It is part of the Bournemouth Network for 'English' Teachers, is working with Earth Charter UK and has ICT Mark accreditation. It also has partnerships with the University of Exeter, Sport England, Bournemouth and Poole College, and the Richard Language College. It is working with the latter two carrying out research as part of the Comenius 'MILE' Project and British Council backed 'Shadows' scheme to create a European-wide strategy to help migrant children avoid NEET.At the end of 2010, a group of year 9 pupils - otherwise known as the Internet Rangers - were awarded the Diana Certificate of Excellence. This accolade and others recognises the work of these students running weekly training sessions for OAP 'silver surfers' in their Bournemouth community. These girls also won the national Enterprise UK competition 'Make your Mark with a Tenner', beating more than 28,000 entrants, and were invited to the House of Commons to tell MPs about their work. Their Internet Rangers image has also been projected against the National Theatre in London as part of the Big Society project, which praises inter-generational schemes such as theirs.HistoryThe school was originally located in a building on Lowther Road. The old building was used by Bournemouth School and as a hospital until 1939. In 1940 the main building was taken over by the new Portchester School, an all-boys senior school. The nearby Alma Road Boys School became an infant and junior school and the Alma Road Girls School became a senior school for girls in the local area. The Alma Road schools were bombed in an air raid in 1940 and the girls senior school moved into the Lowther Road building.