Exhall Grange School

Exhall Grange School

Exhall Grange School and Science College is a community special school located in Ash Green just outside Coventry in Warwickshire, England. The school caters for pupils ranging in age from two to 19 years, and who have a range of disabilities and learning difficulties, including physical disability, visual impairment and Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Opened in 1951 as a school for visually impaired pupils, Exhall Grange was the first school to cater exclusively for partially sighted children. It later widened its remit to include pupils with other disabilities, and became a grammar school in 1960. Under the stewardship of one of its best known headmasters, George Marshall OBE, the school gained an international reputation for the quality of its education, while Marshall himself became a leading expert on the education and welfare of visually impaired people. Marshall's successor, Richard Bignell, steered the school towards a more comprehensive approach to education, and as a visually impaired person himself championed the use of computers as an aid to learning.

The school was a boarding school for many years, but significantly reduced its boarding facilities during the 1990s and 2000s as its role as a special school changed, and it is now a day school. In 2001 Exhall Grange began to share its campus with RNIB Pears Centre for Specialist Learning (then known as RNIB Rushton School and Children's Home), an RNIB school which relocated there from Northamptonshire. A children's hospice also occupies part of the site. Exhall Grange was the first special school to be awarded science college status in 2003, and celebrated its Diamond Jubilee year in 2011.