Michelle McDonagh

Chaucer Technology School

Chaucer Technology School in Canterbury, Kent, was permanently closed in August 2015, bringing an end to 75 years of education heritage in the city. The school was originally incepted as The Canterbury Technical School for Boys in 1940 at the old hospital site in the city. In 1967 it moved to its current location at Spring Lane where the first phase of a new purpose-built school had been completed. 1973 saw the school renamed The Geoffrey Chaucer School. This coincided with the admission of girls for the first time and the opening of a new Upper School block. In 1990, under the visionary leadership of Noreen Manning, the school was reinvented once more, becoming the Chaucer Technology School, the very first specialist Technology school in the country. The school enjoyed great popularity in the Canterbury district, attracting pupils from a wider area too. In addition to catering for the traditional secondary modern intake, it offered a grammar stream so that all abilities were catered for. In this respect the Chaucer was one of a very small number of secondary schools in Kent providing a genuine comprehensive education.