Peterborough Collegiate

PACE at Peterborough Collegiate, formerly Peterborough Collegiate Vocational School, is a public secondary school located in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada and is a member of the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board. It is one of the oldest public schools in the country and was the only public high school in the city of Peterborough until the opening of Kenner Collegiate Vocational Institute in 1952. Regular student programming ended at Peterborough Collegiate Vocational School in June 2012. The building was renamed Peterborough Collegiate and in August 2012 opened as a re-purposed facility offering alternative and continuing education (ACE).Peterborough Collegiate was founded in 1827 as the Peterborough Government School on the former property of Central Public School. Since then it has been moved to different locations throughout the central part of the city with various names and types of programming. It reached its peak enrollment in 1959 with 1402 students and used additional buildings to accommodate the students of the baby boom. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the trend of declining enrollment had reduced the school student population to 800 students with approximately one third in the Integrated Arts and English Language Learners programs.HistoryPeterborough Collegiate and Vocational School is one of the oldest schools in Ontario.Peterborough Government SchoolReverend Samuel Armour opened the first school in Peterborough on May 1, 1826. The school, originally known as the Peterborough Government School was first located in the back playground of present-day Central Public School on Murray Street in Peterborough. It functioned as a public elementary school and the early Victorian equivalent to a public high school. As the population of Peterborough increased, public school students moved into smaller schools while the Grammar School high school students stayed in the original school building.