Dearne Advanced Learning Centre


Dearne Advanced Learning Centre is a non-denominational, mixed-sex, specialist Humanities College in the Dearne Valley, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England.
The secondary school was previously known as Dearneside Secondary Modern and then Dearneside Comprehensive School until its merger with Thurnscoe Comprehensive School to create The Dearne High School. It received specialist humanities status in 2008 making it The Dearne High – a Specialist Humanities College. A new school building was constructed during 2010 next to the existing school for £29 million as part of Barnsley Council's "Building Schools for the Future" project, and the new site opened in January 2011 as "The Dearne ALC".
It caters mainly for pupils from the Goldthorpe, Thurnscoe and Bolton-on-Dearne areas of Barnsley. It currently has around 1,300 pupils aged 11–16 years.
In 2007 the percentage of pupils gaining five A* to C grades rose 18% to 54%, but in 2008 the school was one of eight schools in Barnsley to be told by the government that they were not meeting national targets on the number of pupils gaining five A*–C GCSEs. In 2008 the school published a book of short stories, Out of the Shadows: An Anthology of Fantasy Stories, which sold in high street stores and was among the top three fantasy books on Amazon, and in 2009 pupils at the school produced a graphic novel called Fools Gold. In 2011 the school was one of two in the country to send pupils to a remembrance event in Ypres, Belgium, as part of the Royal British Legion's Poppy Travel scheme. The school was awarded £50,000 in 2011 by the Heritage Lottery Fund. In 2016 the house system was introduced with 5 houses: Titan, Griffin, Sphinx, Phoenix and Pegasus.