High school to change its name

A WARRINGTON high school is to change its name – and its uniform – to reflect its changed role and bigger catchment area.
Padgate High School – a specialist school for technology and the arts – will become Lysander High School.
The name provides a link with the former Padgate RAF camp, where thousands of servicemen did their basic training during and after World War 2, and with Shakespeare, whose play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” may have first been performed locally.
The change will come into effect in September.
Head teacher Alison Sherman said: “We have been planning and consulting on the name change since September.
“Part of the school is built on the site of the RAF camp so the name Lysander is appropriate because of the Lysander aircraft and also because the character in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.
“The school was built as a comprehensive and this will be its first change of name, although the present green uniform is the second we have had.
“New pupils arriving in September will be expected to have the new uniform but for existing pupils the old uniform will be phased out gradually. We will have a new badge, but that has yet to be designed..
“We think a change of name is appropriate because the school will be serving a wider than area than Padgate.”
The Westland Lysander was a two-seat high wing monoplane, which gained fame with the Special Operations Executive, taking people in and out of occupied France.
In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Lysander is a young man of Athens with a somewhat tangled love life. There is some evidence the play may have been performed at an open air theatre at Prescot and that people from Warrington may have travelled there to see it.