Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heart of England School

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. I guess I'm technically supposed to wait until this runs full course, but WP:SNOW applies and the nominator has requested off-wiki that someone close this, so, IAR. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 08:56, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Heart of England School[edit]

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School with no claim to notability and thus not meeting WP:ORG. Was de-ProD'd by Necrothesp stating "secondary schools in the UK are usually kept" however SCHOOLOUTCOMES does state that "Secondary schools are not presumed to be notable simply because they exist".

There is routine coverage online, of terms dates and school fêtes as you'd expect, only news-type coverage is that some of it's students have been victims of crime (while not actually in the school)[1] [2] which isn't anything unusual - There's also a little about the bus that was going to get cut and then wasn't, [3] [4] which I would only say counts towards notability if the article were about the bus, which it isn't. -- D'n'B-t -- 19:53, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Organizations, Schools, and United Kingdom. -- D'n'B-t -- 19:53, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, per above and WP isn't a directory of schools. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:18, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There is a full page case study in:

Val, Brooks (1 January 2002). Assessment In Secondary Schools: The New Teacher's Guide to Monitoring, Assessment, Recording, Reporting, and Accountability. McGraw-Hill Education (UK). ISBN 978-0-335-20637-7.

This also cites a paper by the Head of Science. That book has 134 citations. It seems to be mentioned in a number of other books too with an educational research focus. Research conducted at the school does not make the school notable by itself, but it is not insignificant. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:26, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Education and England. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:36, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
~~Redirect~~ to Balsall Common where the school's mentioned, if notability cannot be established. It was opened in 1957. As might be expected, there's local news coverage on matters such as a school uniform dispute, theatricals, drugs, sporting achievements, exam results, headteacher appointment/retirement etc but haven't come across anything that makes this school notable outside of the area it serves. Rupples (talk) 01:14, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. As with any other secondary school in the UK, there's plenty of detailed coverage in government reports and in the local media. Easily enough to meet WP:GNG. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:34, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I fail to understand something, can you clarify what's the significance of the school that needs the Wikipedia entry? 1keyhole (talk) 18:49, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete What I see on the internet is routine coverage, social media (not considered to be reliable sources) and databases. The Banner talk 17:17, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This is a well established school, created as a secondary modern in 1957, and with enrolment that was 1100 and has risen slightly with the establishment of a sixth form after conversion to a comprehensive in 1974. It has featured in national press coverage, including this article in the Independent [5] describing an innovative website developed by the school in 1996. There is significant newspaper coverage, including negative coverage about a drugs "scandal"[6]. Across the 66 years of the school's life, this news coverage is sustained. News reports themselves are usually primary sources, but in some cases they will be secondary sources regarding the school, such as the information about the school in the Independent article or the history found in [7] and [8]. In addition to the news sources, the school is cited and discussed in research such as [9] - a 7 page article that has a fair bit of secondary information about the school, some of which I have used alreasy to provide some citations on the article page. The abortive attempt to reintroduce selection, rejected by parents in 1988,[10] led to discussion in another paper[11], whereas there are also mentions in some books. I mention Brooks (2002) above. That one has a case study from the school which cites a paper written by the then head of science. This book has 134 citations. Hunton (2018) also uses the school as a case study, and both books contain secondary information about the school itself, as does the paper above (Schofield, 1982). The school website itself is well produced and provides information (not independent) from which an article can be constructed. All in all, I believe there is sufficient here to pass WP:GNG and it is a whole lot more than we would have for a lot of articles (but I am aware that OTHERSTUFF is invalid as an argument, so I'll say no more on that). What we are lacking is a book with a history of the school, but that is not a necessary precondition for a school article page.

Bibliography

Brooks, Val (1 January 2002). Assessment In Secondary Schools: The New Teacher's Guide to Monitoring, Assessment, Recording, Reporting, and Accountability. McGraw-Hill Education (UK). ISBN 978-0-335-20637-7.
Hunton, Jake (13 August 2018). Exam Literacy: A guide to doing what works (and not what doesn't) to better prepare students for exams. Crown House Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-1-78583-354-0.

-- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:37, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep WP:NSCHOOL has a threshold that non-profit schools need to meet WP:GNG at minimum, and I consider this met. ResonantDis_tortion 22:33, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment on sources. Having a problem seeing how the report/book sources contribute to the school's notability. Mary Schofield was Deputy Head of the school, when writing her research paper so not independent. The Val Brooks book references a paper written by the Head of Science of the school, so again not independent; the page summary of the case study may contribute to notability of the research paper but not the school itself. The Jake Hunton book mentions a teacher at the school who created a DNS strategy, but there's nothing about the school. There's little content from the above sources that could be added to the article. The Independent article does contribute to notability; it's coverage in a national newspaper. Rupples (talk) 01:46, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I especially think that "School pupils smoke cannabis", "Headteacher retires" and "School builds an extension" could all be described WP:DOGBITESMAN. -- D'n'B-t -- 05:22, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought I was clear about the limitations of newspaper reports. Yes, they are primary sources. But the level of coverage across the years is indicative here that there is sustained interest in a well established school, such that secondary sourcing likely exists. Indeed, more does exist. The smoking cannabis article leads to more national coverage, which I have now placed in the article. In 2003 a new headmistress hired a counter drugs firm to use sniffer dogs to prevent pupils bringing drugs to school, making national news.[12][13] There is also at least one notable alumna, Lorna Want, who I have added with a reference (write up in a national newspaper). The mention of the school in the newspaper reports are passing, but notable alumni point to notability of the school. The Schofield paper is not independent, because it is written by Schofield who was a deputy headmistress at the school, and is also primary in the research itself, but the placement discussed also gets national newspaper attention,[14] which is secondary coverage of the research, making the primary sourced material notable. And the primary source has secondary background information. And there is still more. I just don't have any more time right now to put it all together. But I am confident that this school meets GNG. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:07, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The school made an episode for ITV's series Good Health, written by the school's drama teacher, and acted by pupils. You can see it here [15] and it is described in the Times Education Supplement for January 13, 1984 here [16]. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 21:20, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, or merge to Balsall Common. Thanks to the effort of Sirfurboy not only have many more sources been found but they have been used to expand the article. There's enough coverage in national newspapers and local sources to establish notability under the GNG for me to strike the qualified redirect previously suggested. Merge is an option because the cited content isn't especially lengthy and could fit within the target article without making it irretrievably unbalanced. Rupples (talk) 17:34, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Withdraw nom: now a substanially different article to the one I nominated. I mantain that "because it's a UK secondary school" would never have been a good reason to keep it, but as it is now, there's sufficient evidence of SIGCOV to call the school notable. -- D'n'B-t -- 09:37, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's generous of you. The nomination is understandable, made in good faith and has led to the article being improved. What's more, many of the sources dug out were I suspect not easy to find and the nominator is under no obligation to spend hours looking; the onus is on those seeking to keep the article. Rupples (talk) 15:39, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While the withdrawal by @DandelionAndBurdock is indeed generous, I disagree with the statement by @Rupples. Per WP:Before the onus is, instead, on the nominator to check for sources before nomination. A quick check on Wikipedia Library - e.g. ProQuest - identifies many sources for this subject. ResonantDis_tortion 22:45, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The nominator did check for sources, there's four linked to in the nomination statement. None of the sources I can see in ProQuest from the Coventry Telegraph support notability, viz, a piece written by the school's principal (not independent, 12 Sep 2015), a reader's letter from a former pupil (not independent, 17 May 2007), a panto writer staging a play at the school (a mention, 01 Jan 2014), an "advertisement feature" by the school's principal (22 Sep 2016). Granted, there's The Times (5 Aug 1992) on cannabis, but all I can see is a headline. In any case, we don't know whether the nominator checked the Wikilibrary/ProQuest. To be fair, yes, perhaps the search could have been more rigorous, but a lot of the news coverage found may have resulted from having access to paid-for sources. Rupples (talk) 00:50, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have no doubt the nomination was entirely in good faith, and that a WP:BEFORE was carried out. And the article as it was at nomination was also entirely unsourced and had been for 18 years, which is a very poor situation. Some sources did require significant searching, well beyond the basic due diligence suggested in WP:BEFORE. The "because it's a secondary school" comment seems to be elicited by the DEPROD by Necrothesp. I would say I think AfD is best for secondary school nominations. As we are often told, AfD is not for cleanup, but this article is a case in point: the only way to get editor attention to some articles is to nominate them for deletion, and sometimes improvement is the happy result if it turns out sources do exist. PROD doesn't tend to achieve that. However "because it's a secondary school" is no longer a reason to keep an article, per SCHOOLOUTCOMES, so once at AfD it is all about the sourcing. Thanks to D'n'B-t both for bringing this here, and for agreeing to withdraw. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 06:30, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.