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Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, Leeds

school in Leeds, West Yorkshire

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ5038561 ↗
Source-derived summary

Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School is a comprehensive school located in Meanwood, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

General

Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School is part of the Diocese of Leeds. It is named in honour of Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, a former Bishop of Leeds, Archbishop of Liverpool and Archbishop of Westminster.

It is situated around four miles north of Leeds city centre, just south of the Leeds Outer Ring Road.

The school is a well performing comprehensive school with, in 2017, over 76% of pupils achieving 5 A*-C grades at GCSE level - the school's best ever results.

At its last Ofsted inspection in February 2023, it was rated as a good school.

History

Grammar school

The school was formerly the St Thomas Aquinas Grammar School on Tongue Lane. It was built in 1961 as a three-form entry boys' school by the City of Leeds Education Committee. The Saint John Bosco school was next door and had 600 boys and girls, and was also built in 1961.

Comprehensive

A coeducational comprehensive 13–18 school was established in September 1978, when the two adjoining schools, Saint John Bosco RC Secondary Modern School and the grammar school were merged to create Cardinal Heenan High School, as it was then known (the word 'Catholic' was added at a later date.).

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, Leeds” as school in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2017, 2023, 1961, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1961-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Cardinal, Heenan and Catholic can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as school in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5038561. Authority coordinates are 53.839, -1.560. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2017, 2023, 1961 and 1978.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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 “Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, Leeds”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, Leeds primary sources, Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, Leeds archive and Cardinal 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 “Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, Leeds”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, Leeds” 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.