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Bishop Douglass Catholic School

voluntary aided school in East Finchley, London

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ4917537 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bishop Douglass Catholic School is a Roman Catholic co-educational secondary school and sixth form, situated in East Finchley area of the London Borough of Barnet, England. Its current Headmaster is Martin Tissot, a former pupil at the school.

History

Bishop Douglass opened with voluntary aided status as a mixed secondary modern Roman Catholic school in Hamilton Road in 1963. In 1969 it merged with the independent Manor House Convent School in the nearby East End Road, which thereafter housed the sixth form of the expanded school. New buildings were added in Hamilton Road in 1969, 1973, 1976 and 1982, when there were 1,140 pupils on the roll.

The founding headmaster, Michael Caulfield, was at the time of his appointment the youngest of any school in the UK. He was succeeded by his deputy, John Meadows in the early 1990s, who retired in 2001. After a year with a temporary head and the school was faced with closure, Angela Murphy became the school's first headmistress in 2003. At the time of Murphy's appointment in 2003 the school was under 'special measures'.

Since this date standards have consistently improved. Bishop Douglass was taken out of special measures following HMI inspection in December 2005 and in its most recent inspection Ofsted described it as “a Good school of which students, parents, staff and governors are proud of”

In 2007, the school was granted Specialist Science College status, and was renewed in 2010.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Bishop Douglass Catholic School” as voluntary aided school in East Finchley, London. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bishop, Douglass and Catholic.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1963, 1969, 1973, 1976—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Bishop, Douglass and Catholic providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Bishop Douglass Catholic School”, the useful work is to connect “voluntary aided school in East Finchley, London” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4917537. Authority coordinates are 51.594, -0.178. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1969, 1973 and 1976.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bishop Douglass Catholic School”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bishop Douglass Catholic School primary sources, Bishop Douglass Catholic School archive and Bishop research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bishop Douglass Catholic School”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bishop Douglass Catholic School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.