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Salesian School, Chertsey

school in Surrey, UK

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 revisionJul 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ7404346 ↗
Source-derived summary

Salesian School is a split-site Roman Catholic comprehensive secondary school in Chertsey, Surrey. The two sites were originally a pair of single-sex education Roman Catholic private schools maintained by the Salesian Fathers and Sisters. The Salesian College at Highfield Road (previously Salesian Sixth Form), founded in 1919, was for boys and the later Guildford Road school was for girls. In 1971 they merged to form one comprehensive school but still maintained single-sex education on separate sites.

In 1981 it became a coeducational school with pupils located on sites according to their age or subject taught. As of 2009, however, years 7 to 11 (aged 11–16 years) began to exclusively study at the larger Guildford Road, while the college (ages 16–18) remains at Highfield Road – the students currently following a two-week timetable.

Staff

James Curran was headmaster until 1963, followed by Vincent Ford (1964–1967), Edward O'Shea (1967–1977), John Gilheney (1977–1990), David Cleworth (1990–2005), Eric Doherty (2005–2006) and James Kibble (2006-2022). In September 2022, Paul Gower took on the post of head teacher. Currently, there are over 200 members of staff, either working as teachers, learning and teaching assistants or associate staff.

A former member of staff was Sean Devereux, the Salesian missionary and aid worker murdered in Kismayo, Somalia in 1993 while working for UNICEF, who taught physical education at Salesian School from 1986 to 1988.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Salesian School, Chertsey” as school in Surrey, UK. 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—1919, 1971, 1981, 2009—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1971, 2016-09-01—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. The account is most persuasive where Salesian, School and Chertsey 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 Surrey, UK. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

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 Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7404346. Authority coordinates are 51.382, -0.518. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1971, 1981 and 2009.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. 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 “Salesian School, Chertsey”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Salesian School, Chertsey primary sources, Salesian School, Chertsey archive and Salesian 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 “Salesian School, Chertsey”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Salesian School, Chertsey” 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.