- You may be looking for King Henry VIII Grammar School, Wales
| King Henry VIII School | |
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| Established | 1545 |
| Type | Independent selective school |
| Religious affiliation | Secular |
| Headteacher | Mr George Fisher |
| Founder | John Hales |
| Location | Warwick Road Coventry West Midlands CV3 6AQ England |
| LEA | Coventry |
| Students | 1,100 |
| Gender | Co-educational |
| Ages | 7 to 17 |
| Website | http://www.khviii.org/ |
King Henry VIII School is an independent school comprising a senior school (ages 11–18) and associated junior school (ages 7–11) located in Coventry, England. The senior school has approximately 800 pupils (120 in each of years 7–11 and 100 in each year of the Sixth Form), the majority of whom pay full fees of approximately £8,000 per year, though some means-tested scholarships are awarded. Some pupils commute daily from as far as Northampton (30 miles away), usually by train - Coventry rail station being within two minutes' walk of the school.
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History of the school
The school was founded on 23 July, 1545 by John Hales as the Free Grammar School under letters patent of King Henry VIII. It spent over 300 years in the former Hospital of St. John the Baptist (Henry having dissolved the Hospital) just north of the city centre, before moving to its present site on the south side of the city in 1885, a building there having been designed for it by Edward Burgess. Much of this original redbrick still stands despite war damage as well as many expansions. The school is run by the Coventry School Foundation, jointly administered with Bablake School under a common Board of Governors. The Coventry School Foundation also includes Coventry Preparatory School as well as the new junior school at Bablake. The schools have mutual arrangements such as a common entrance examination, shared astroturf pitches, and similar school uniforms, differing only in the colour of tie and the crest on the blazer. Girls were first admitted to the school in 1975.
Houses
The four modern-day houses are:
- Hales'
- Holland's
- Sherwyn's
- White's
A fifth house called Kings was abolished in 1996, following a decision to reduce the number of houses to four by eliminating whichever house came in overall last place that year. Its loss was particularly notable since up until a change of leadership only a few years previously it had consistently dominated the house competitions, winning the overall competition almost every year for some decades.
Famous Old Coventrians
The school's best-known alumnus is probably Coventry poet Philip Larkin. Other alumni include:
- Debee Ashby, glamour model
- Paul Barnes, graphic designer and typographer
- Sir Colin Blakemore, author and scientist
- Harvey Brough, musician and composer, founder of Harvey and the Wallbangers
- Bob Carlton, composer of the rock musical Return to the Forbidden Planet
- Edward Thomas Copson, mathematician
- Jerry Dammers, musician
- Peter Ho Davies, author
- Amy Palmer, dancer
- Paul Daniel, conductor
- Sir William Dugdale, antiquary
- David Duckham, rugby player
- Jackie Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, admiral
- Andy Goode, rugby player
- James Grindal, rugby player
- Roger Harrabin - BBC journalist and reporter
- Basil Heatley, marathon runner
- Ian Hobson, pianist
- James Whittingham, Varsity winner with Oxford and England Students
- John Wilfrid Linnett, chemist and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University
- Eric Malpass, novelist
- Arthur Samuel Peake, theologian and biblical scholar
- Herbert Marcus Powell, chemist
- S. S. Prawer, Taylor Professor of German Emeritus, Oxford University
- Peter Rossborough, rugby player
- Scott Bowers, Olympic bid-winning PR consultant
- Bob Wyatt, cricketer
- Peter Whittingham, football player (Aston Villa FC, Cardiff City FC and England U21)
Infamous former teachers
In a scandal in 1999, a mathematics teacher and the then headmaster of King Henry VIII were both convicted of possession of child pornography, on unrelated charges. It appears that British Customs Officers first intercepted magazines which John Skermer, who had taught mathematics at the school for many years, had ordered from abroad and which were found to be illegal in the UK. After a raid the Police trawled through hundreds of home albums of Skermer's, a keen amateur photographer as well as a part-time sports teacher, and presented evidence including one photograph depicting a schoolboy in the shower. Routine raids on other members of staff at the school then turned up more child pornography in the possession of Terence Vardon, FRCO, who had recently been appointed from outside as headmaster after three senior figures of the school administration retired within two years. Vardon was fined and he chose to emigrate to Dresden, Germany to escape stigma. He died of a heart attack on 19 January, 2001. See also this local news report from 1999. Another teacher who taught at King Henry VIII in the 1980s, John Randall, wrote a book entitled "Childhood and Sexuality: A Radical Christian Approach" which was published in 1992. He argues in the book that healthy sexual development is helped by sexual information and sexual exploration during childhood, and this has been widely used by the paedophile community to support their argument that sexual activity between an adult and a child is not necessarily wrong. The first chapter of the book can be read here.
