Venue: Sutton Community Academy
Address: Sutton Community Academy, High Pavement, Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, NG17 1EE
Town: Nottinghamshire, GB

Sutton Community Academy (formerly Sutton Centre Community College) is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form with academy status, located in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, England. Sutton in Ashfield Urban District councillors in 1966 looked at the possibility of a technical-grammar school between Sutton and Huthwaite. A £264,770 technical grammar school had been planned in 1960, costing £315,000 by 1963. In 1964 the £328,614 technical grammar school was given the go ahead by the county council. The technical grammar school was being planned by 1966. A model was made of the layout of the new technical grammar school in 1968, in the town centre. Two technical grammar schools had been built at Mansfield in 1957 and 1959, one at Eastwood in 1957, one at Hucknall in 1955, and one in Worksop in 1956. In 1967 there was a dispute between the Urban Council and the County Council, as to where to put the school. After 1969, this earlier plan changed to a comprehensive school instead. The school was to be an eight form comprehensive, although the councillors still mostly preferred and expected a technical grammar school, due to the town's textile industry. Quarrydale Comprehensive had opened, but the Sutton Urban councillors saw this type of school as more of an up-to-date secondary modern school with improved buildings. The councillors did not believe that comprehensive schools offered the relevant technical knowledge which they were mostly looking for. Comprehensive school plans in the 1960s were much more favoured by radical city councillors, but in towns such as Sutton-in-Ashfield, the local councillors were more traditional. The local Sutton councillors had also wanted a campus-type school on Leamington Drive, with grammar school, secondary modern school, and a secondary technical school, in the early 1950s. The Nottinghamshire deputy director of education, James Stone, had joined from Leicestershire, which itself had adopted the community college idea in