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A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a Latin school, but more recently an academically oriented Selective school.
The original purpose of medieval grammar schools was the teaching of Latin. Over time the curriculum was broadened, first to include Ancient Greek, and later English and other European languages, natural sciences, mathematics, history, geography, art and other subjects. In the late Victorian era, grammar schools were reorganised to provide secondary education throughout England and Wales; Scotland had developed a different system. Grammar schools of these types were also established in British territories overseas, where they have evolved in different ways.
Grammar schools became one of the three tiers of the Tripartite System of state-funded secondary education operating in England and Wales from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s, and continue as such in Northern Ireland. After most local education authorities moved to non-selective comprehensive schools in the 1960s and 1970s, some grammar schools became fully independent schools and charged fees, while most others were abolished or became comprehensive (or sometimes merged with a secondary modern to form a new comprehensive school). In both cases, some of these schools kept "grammar school" in their names. More recently, a number of state grammar schools, still retaining their selective intake, gained academy status are thus independent of the local education authority (LEA). Some LEAs retain forms of the Tripartite System and a few grammar schools survive in otherwise comprehensive areas. Some of the remaining grammar schools can trace their histories to before the 15th century.
With the foundation of the ancient universities from the late 12th century, grammar schools became the entry point to a liberal arts education, with Latin seen as the foundation of the trivium. Pupils were usually educated in grammar schools up to the age of 14, after which they would look to universities and the church for further study. Of the three first schools independent of the church – Winchester College (1382), Oswestry School (1407) and Eton College (1440) – Winchester and Eton were feeder schools to Oxford and Cambridge universities respectively. There is a mention of a grammar school at Shrewsbury in a court case of 1439. They were , so they could educate pupils from anywhere in the nation.
During the English Reformation in the 16th century, most cathedral schools were closed and replaced by new foundations funded from the dissolution of the monasteries. For example, the oldest extant schools in Wales – Christ College, Brecon (founded 1541) and the Friars School, Bangor (1557) – were established on the sites of former Dominican Order monasteries. King Edward VI made an important contribution to grammar schools, founding a series of schools during his reign (see King Edward's School). A few grammar schools were also established in the name of Queen Mary and then of Queen Elizabeth I. King James I founded a series of "Royal Schools" in Ulster, beginning with The Royal School, Armagh. In theory these schools were open to all and offered free tuition to those who could not pay fees; however, few poor children attended school, because their labour was economically valuable to their families.
In the Scottish Reformation schools such as the Choir School of Glasgow Cathedral (founded 1124) and the Grammar School of the Church of Edinburgh (1128) passed from church control to burgh councils, and the burghs also founded new schools. With the increased emphasis on studying the scriptures after the Reformation, many schools added Greek and, in a few cases, Hebrew. The teaching of these languages was hampered by a shortage of non-Latin type and of teachers fluent in the languages.
During the 16th and 17th centuries the establishment of grammar schools became a common act of charity by nobles, wealthy merchants and religious guilds; for example The Crypt School, Gloucester, founded by John and Joan Cook in 1539, Sir Roger Manwood's School, founded in 1563 by Sandwich jurist Roger Manwood, and Spalding Grammar School, founded by John Gamlyn and John Blanche in 1588. Many of these are still commemorated in annual "Founder's Day" services and ceremonies at surviving schools. The usual pattern was to create an endowment to pay the wages of a master to instruct local boys in Latin and sometimes Greek without charge.
The school day typically ran from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a two-hour break for lunch; in winter, school started at 7 a.m. and ended at 4 p.m. Most of the day was spent in the rote learning of Latin. To encourage fluency, some schoolmasters recommended punishing any pupil who spoke in English. The younger boys learned the parts of speech and Latin words in the first year, learned to construct Latin sentences in the second year, and began translating English–Latin and Latin–English passages in the third year. By the end of their studies at age 14, they would be quite familiar with the great Latin authors, and with Latin drama and rhetoric. Other skills, such as arithmetic and handwriting, were taught in odd moments or by travelling specialist teachers such as .
In England, urban middle-class pressure for a commercial curriculum was often supported by the school's trustees (who would charge the new students fees), but resisted by the schoolmaster, supported by the terms of the original endowment. Very few schools were able to obtain special acts of Parliament to change their statutes; examples are the Macclesfield Grammar School Act 1774 and the Bolton School Act 1788. Such a dispute between the trustees and master of Leeds Grammar School led to a celebrated case in the Court of Chancery. After 10 years, Lord Eldon, then Lord Chancellor, ruled in 1805, "There is no authority for thus changing the nature of the Charity, and filling a School intended for the purpose of teaching Greek and Latin with Scholars learning the German and French languages, mathematics, and anything except Greek and Latin." Although he offered a compromise by which some subjects might be added to a classical core, the ruling set a restrictive precedent for grammar schools across England; they seemed to be in terminal decline. However it should be borne in mind that the decline of the grammar schools in England and Wales was not uniform and that until the foundation of St Bees Clerical College, in 1817, and St David's College Lampeter, in 1828, specialist grammar schools in the north-west of England and South Wales were in effect providing tertiary education to men in their late teens and early twenties, which enabled them to be ordained as Anglican clergymen without going to university.
The Grammar Schools Act 1840 made it lawful to apply the income of grammar schools to purposes other than those defined in the original endowment eg. teaching of classical languages. Such change however to the intentions of the original endowment required application to and consent of a court of law. In mid C19 therefore, some schools started reorganising themselves along the lines of Thomas Arnold's reforms at Rugby School, and also the spread of the railways supported the success of new boarding schools, teaching a broader curriculum, such as Marlborough (1843), Epsom College (1855) and Framlingham (1864).
The first girls' schools targeted at university entrance were North London Collegiate School (1850) and Cheltenham Ladies' College (from the appointment of Dorothea Beale in 1858). Academically orientated girls' secondary schools were established in the latter part of C19. In locations with an older boys' grammar school they would often be named a "high school" . Examples of the latter are Manchester High School for Girls (1874) and King Edward VI High School for Girls (1883).
Following the Clarendon Commission, which led to the Public Schools Act 1868 which restructured the trusts of nine leading schools (including Eton College, Harrow School and Shrewsbury School), the Taunton Commission was appointed to examine the remaining 782 endowed grammar schools. The commission reported that the distribution of schools did not match the current population, and that provision varied greatly in quality, with provision for girls being particularly limited. The Taunton Commission's report of 1868 proposed the creation of a national system of secondary education by restructuring the endowments of these schools for modern purposes. The result was the Endowed Schools Act 1869, which created the Endowed Schools Commission with extensive powers over endowments of individual schools. It was said that the commission "could turn a boys' school in Northumberland into a girls' school in Cornwall". Across England and Wales schools endowed to offer free classical instruction to boys were remodelled as fee-paying schools (with a few competitive scholarships) teaching broad curricula to boys or girls.
In the late Victorian era there was a great emphasis on the importance of self-improvement. Many schools established at that time emulated the great public schools, copying their curriculum, ethos and ambitions, and some took or maintained the title "grammar school" for historical reasons.
Under the Free Place Regulations of 1907, an increased grant was made available to secondary schools that provided at least 25 percent of their places as free scholarships for students from public elementary schools. Grammar schools thus emerged as one part of the highly varied education system of England and Wales before 1944.
Grammar school pupils were given the best opportunities of any schoolchildren in the state system. Initially, they studied for the School Certificate and Higher School Certificate, replaced in 1951 by General Certificate of Education examinations at O-level (Ordinary level) and A-level (Advanced level). In contrast, very few students at secondary modern schools took public examinations until the introduction of the less academic and less prestigious Certificate of Secondary Education (known as the CSE) in 1965. The story of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) , Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. Until the implementation of the Robbins Report in the 1960's expanding higher education, pupils from public and grammar schools effectively monopolised access to universities. These schools were also the only ones that offered an extra term of school to prepare pupils for the competitive entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge.
According to Anthony Sampson, in his book Anatomy of Britain (1965), there were structural problems within the testing process that underpinned the eleven plus which meant it tended to result in secondary modern schools being overwhelmingly dominated by the children of poor and working-class parents, while grammar schools were dominated by the children of wealthier middle-class parents.Sampson, A. Anatomy of Britain Today, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965, p.195 The Tripartite System was largely abolished in England and Wales between 1965, with the issue of Circular 10/65, and the Education Act 1976. Most maintained grammar schools were amalgamated with a number of other local schools, to form neighbourhood comprehensive schools, though a few were closed. This process proceeded quickly in Wales, with the closure of such schools as Cowbridge Grammar School. In England, implementation was less even, with some counties and individual schools successfully resisting conversion or closure.
The Direct Grant Grammar Schools (Cessation of Grant) Regulations 1975 required direct grant schools to decide whether to convert into comprehensives under local authority control or become private schools funded entirely by fees. Of the direct grant schools remaining at that time, 51 became comprehensive, 119 opted for independence, and five were "not accepted for the maintained system and expected to become independent schools or to close". Some of these schools retained the name "grammar" in their title but are no longer free of charge for all but a few pupils. These schools normally select their pupils by an entrance examination and sometimes by interview.
By the end of the 1980s, all of the grammar schools in Wales and most of those in England had closed or converted to comprehensive schools. Selection also disappeared from state-funded schools in Scotland in the same period. Although almost all former grammar schools ceased to be selective, there are comprehensive schools that chose to maintain the descriptor "grammar" in their nomenclature. Most of these schools do however operate some form of selection in their admission process, due to oversubscription. There is also a small group of formally partially selective schools which select a cohort of pupils based on academic ability. The tripartite system (reduced to grammar and secondary modern schools) does survive in certain areas, such as Kent, where the eleven-plus examination which divides pupils into placement in grammar or secondary modern school is known as the Kent Test.
Under the Labour government's School Standards and Framework Act 1998, grammar schools were for the first time to be designated by statutory instrument.. The Act also defined a procedure by which local communities could petition for a ballot for an end to selection at schools. Petitions were launched in several areas, but only one received the signatures of 20% of eligible parents, the level needed to trigger a ballot. Thus the only ballot held to date was for Ripon Grammar School in 2000, when parents rejected change by a ratio of 2 to 1. These arrangements were condemned in 2004 by the Select Committee for Education and Skills as being ineffective and a waste of time and resources.
There remain 163 grammar schools in England (out of some 3,000 state secondaries in total). BBC: Family and education: 8 September 2016 Only a few areas have kept a formal grammar school system along the lines of the Tripartite System. In these areas, the eleven plus exam is used solely to identify a subset of children (around 25%) considered suitable for grammar education. When a grammar school has too many qualified applicants, other criteria are used to allocate places, such as siblings, distance or faith. Such systems still exist in Buckinghamshire, Rugby and Stratford districts of Warwickshire, the Salisbury district of Wiltshire and most of Lincolnshire, Kent, Reading and Medway. Of metropolitan areas, Trafford and most of Wirral are selective.
In other areas, grammar schools survive mainly as very highly selective schools in an otherwise comprehensive county, for example in several of the outer boroughs of London. These schools are often heavily oversubscribed, and award places in rank order of performance in their entry tests. In some LEAs, as many as 10–15% of 11-year-olds may attend grammar schools (for example in Gloucestershire), but in other LEAs it is as low as 2%. These very highly selective schools also tend to dominate the top positions in performance tables.
In addition to and distinct from grammar schools, selection for entry to state schools also continues at partially-selective schools (sometimes known as bilateral schools). While technically classified as comprehensive schools, they occupy a middle ground between grammar schools and true comprehensives, and many of the arguments for and against grammar schools also apply to these schools.
Further radical change was opposed by both Conservative and Labour governments until September 2016. Although many on the left argue that the existence of selective schools undermines the comprehensive structure, Labour governments have delegated decisions on grammar schools to local processes, which have not yet resulted in any changes. Moreover, government education policy appears to accept the existence of some kind of hierarchy in secondary education, with specialist schools, academies and similar initiatives proposed as ways of raising standards. Many grammar schools have featured in these programmes, and a lower level of selection is permitted at specialist schools.
In September 2016, Prime Minister Theresa May reversed the previous Conservative Party policy against expansion of grammar schools (except to cope with population expansion in wholly selective areas). The government opened a consultation on proposals to allow existing grammar schools to expand and new ones to be set up. The Labour and Liberal Democrat parties remain opposed to any expansion.
The Democratic Unionist Party claimed to have ensured the continuation of the grammar school system in the province as part of the St Andrews Agreement in October 2006. By contrast, Sinn Féin claims to have secured the abolition of the 11-plus and a veto over any system which might follow it.
The last government-run 11-plus exam was held in 2008 (for 2009 entry), but the Northern Ireland Assembly has not been able to agree on a replacement system for secondary transfer. The grammar schools have organised groupings to run their own tests, the Post-Primary Transfer Consortium (mostly Catholic schools) and the Association for Quality Education. The Northern Ireland Commission for Catholic Education did accept continued selection at Catholic grammar schools as a temporary measure, anticipating them to end the practice by 2012. As of September 2019, the practice continues.
With the exception of the non-denominational Sydney Grammar School (1857) and Queensland grammar schools, all the grammar schools established in the 19th century were attached to the Church of England (now the Anglican Church of Australia). In Queensland, the Grammar Schools Act 1860 provided for the state-assisted foundation of non-denominational grammar schools. Beginning with Ipswich Grammar School (1863), ten schools were founded, of which the following eight still exist: Grammar Schools Act 2016, Queensland Government.
In the 1920s grammar schools of other denominations were established, including members of the Associated Grammar Schools of Victoria,McCallum (1990), p. 45. and the trend has continued to the present day. Today, the term is defined only in Queensland legislation. Throughout the country, "grammar schools" are generally high-cost private schools.
The nearest equivalents of contemporary English grammar schools are . The New South Wales public education system operates 19 selective public schools which resemble the English grammar-school system insofar as they engage in academic selection by way of centralised examination, they do not charge tuition fees and they are recipients of a greater degree of public funding per pupil than is afforded to non-selective government schools.
Finding the grammar schools unsuitable as preparation for university, Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colborne founded Upper Canada College as a superior grammar school.Gidney and Millar, pp. 82–84. Legislation in 1839 allowed for more than one grammar school in a district, triggering a rapid but unstructured growth in numbers over the following two decades to 86 in 1861. The schools became more independent of the Church of England and began to admit girls However, the schools were unsupervised, often underfunded and of varying standards. Some, like Tassie's School, in Galt, provided a traditional classical education, but many provided a basic education of poor quality.Gidney and Millar, pp. 86–114.
Chief Superintendent of Education Egerton Ryerson attempted to reform the schools in the 1850s and the 1860s by moving control of the schools from counties (the former districts) to city authorities, securing their funding and introducing inspectors. However, his efforts to convert the schools into classical schools for only boys were unsuccessful.Gidney and Millar, pp. 150–174. In recognition of the broad curricula offered, grammar schools were redesignated as secondary school by the Act to Improve the Common and Grammar Schools of the Province of Ontario of 1871. Schools that offered classical studies were given additional funding and operated as collegiate institutes.Gidney and Millar, pp. 196–198. The secondary–school collegiate–institute system was also emulated in several other provinces in Western Canada.
New Zealand did not establish a state education system until 1877. The absence of a national education system meant that the first sizable secondary-education providers were grammar schools and other private institutions. The first grammar school in New Zealand, Auckland Grammar School, was established in 1850 and formally recognised as an educational establishment in 1868 by the Auckland Grammar School Appropriation Act. In 1888, Auckland Girls' Grammar School was established. In 1917 Auckland Grammar School's sister school was established, Epsom Girls' Grammar School. In 1922, Mount Albert Grammar School was established as part of Auckland Grammar School. Both schools have since become separate institutions. Takapuna Grammar School was established in 1927 and was the first co-educational grammar school to be established in New Zealand.
The British then opened up their schools to children from English mixed marriages, or to those with English descent. During the late colonial period, these schools expanded and also schooled descendants of the very few mixed English and Straits-Chinese families, and descendants of some rich Straits-born Chinese merchant class families, who were educated in Oxbridge or had London trade ties. Initially these schools were run exactly like their counterparts in England, and taught by the English.
The oldest of these, Raffles Institution, was founded in 1823 by Sir Stamford Raffles to educate sons born and living in the Crown Colony, often to fathers in Crown colonial service. Single-sex classes were set up for daughters of the British ruling class in 1844, and later became Raffles Girls' School, officially founded in 1879. After independence it became the Raffles Girls' School (Primary School), distinct from the branch school established by the local government after independence, the Raffles Girls' School (Secondary School).
The French Roman Catholic Orders later opened up their ministries and boarding schools to children of mixed marriages, and racial segregation was also relaxed to some extent in the English schools. The French Catholic missions and schools, but not the English schools, also accepted orphans, foundlings, and illegitimate children abandoned by mothers ostracized for breaching racial purity laws.
The CHIJMES building has commemorative plaques for these abandoned babies. The children were termed "children of God" and raised as Catholics. When laws banning polygamy became strictly enforced in Singapore after 1965, these schools extended their English-speaking classes to girls from families of any socio-economic background. The British grammar schools in Singapore imitated much of this education system, with Catholicism replaced by Anglicanism. Later the Anglican High School of Singapore was set up. Australian Methodist missionaries started UK-style grammar schools with American and British Methodist church funds. They founded the Anglo-Chinese School (1886) and Methodist Girls' School (1887).
When Singapore became independent from the United Kingdom, the Singapore government established publicly funded bilingual schools based on the existing grammar school system. Since the 1960s their mission was to provide a high-quality elite education to the top 10% in national annual IQ tests, regardless of socio-economic background. These bilingual schools were influenced by the US educational system, and termed "high schools" rather than "grammar schools". Other, less elitist, state schools were called simply "secondary schools", similar to the UK equivalent of "comprehensive schools". High schools include Dunman High School (co-educational), Nanyang Girls' High School, Maris Stella High School (for boys only) and Catholic High School (all-boys). Within these schools there are academically top classes, the very competitive Scholars' class or "A" class. Graduates tend to become part of the upper class. These schools recruit pupils worldwide, particularly from large emerging Asian economies. Recruitment is carried out under the auspices of the Special Assistant Plan Scholars programme, the ASEAN Scholars programme, and the India and China Scholars programmes. Gifted pupils, such as winners of Mathematical Olympiads, international violin and piano competitions, Physics Olympiads and child inventors are particularly sought after.
In addition to religious missions and the new high schools, the less selective Singapore Chinese Girls' School was set up by several Peranakan business and community leaders. The Ministry of Education published annual rankings, but discontinued them after criticism of excessive academic stress placed on schoolchildren, some of whom committed suicide in response to perceived failure. After the 1990s all schools were integrated into a unified national school system, but the elite schools distinguished themselves by descriptions such as "independent" or "autonomous".
The name "grammar school" was adopted by state school for children from 10 to 14 years of age, following a primary stage from 5 to 9 years of age. These types were gradually combined around 1900 to form elementary schools, which were also known as "grammar schools".See definitions of grammar school in most U.S. dictionaries.
An analogous concept to the contemporary English grammar school is the magnet school, a state-funded secondary institution that may select students from a given school district according to academic criteria. (2026). 9781136610219, Routledge. ISBN 9781136610219
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