Speke Airport), about from Birkenhead. Manchester Airport is approximately away. Other nearby aviation facilities include Hawarden Airport and RAF Woodvale. Former airfields in the area include RAF Hooton Park and Bidston Aerodrome. Education Schools Birkenhead has a number of maintained schools, including Birkenhead Park School (formed after the merger of Rock Ferry High School and Park High School) and the only all-boys Catholic grammar school in the area St. Anselm's College. Birkenhead also has two independently run schools. The oldest is Birkenhead School. It was exclusively a boys' school from its founding in 1860 until 2000, when its sixth form became co-educational. It became fully co-educational for pupils aged 3–18 in 2008. "Old Birkonians" (as former pupils are known) include the lawyer F.E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead); Andreas Whittam Smith (chairman of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) and founder of The Independent newspaper); mountaineer Andrew Irvine; Philip Toosey (hero at the Bridge on the River Kwai); and Tony Hall (former Director-General of the BBC). Birkenhead High School Academy, formerly Birkenhead Girls High School, is an all-ability state funded girls' Academy. It was founded in 1885 and caters for girls aged 3–19. Its sponsor was the Girls' Day School Trust, but is now publicly funded. Its alumnae include the actress Patricia Routledge. Birkenhead Girls High School decided to become a state-funded Academy school in 2009, increasing the availability of its education. Like the change to co-education at Birkenhead School, this decision was largely driven by falling pupil numbers; however to this date, it remains a single sex school. Birkenhead Institute Grammar School existed from 1889 in Whetstone Lane, before being moved to Claughton in the 1970s. The school closed in 1994. The school's alumni include Wilfred Owen. Colleges Previously situated at Borough Road, Birkenhead's college has campuses at Europa Boulevard and Twelve Quays. The college was originally Birkenhead Technical College, and has been known as Wirral Metropolitan College since the 1980s. The college had a theatre on Borough Road named after one of its most famous former students, Glenda Jackson, the Oscar-winning actress and Member of Parliament, herself a Birkonian, born in 1936. The Borough Road campus and the Glenda Jackson Theatre were demolished in late 2005, to make way for flats, although Wirral Metropolitan College flourishes on other sites across Wirral. The theatre secretly housed an emergency command centre for the region in its basement, accessible via the college.