Tadcaster Grammar School is a secondary school near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England founded in 1557 by Owen Oglethorpe as an all-boys school. The school is no longer situated in the brewery town of Tadcaster, rather in the hamlet of Toulston just outside the town. The school's catchment area welcomes children from Tadcaster and its surrounding villages, as well as traditionally taking students from the York area, from villages like Appleton Roebuck, Copmanthorpe, Bishopthorpe and Bilbrough. It educates children aged 11–18, having a sixth form also on site. Since 1998, the headmaster has been Geoff Mitchell.
The school became a specialist Business and Enterprise College in 2003 and received High Performing Specialist School Status in 2007, with the school achieving some of the best GCSE and A-Level results in the county of North Yorkshire. In May 2012 the school received an OFSTED rating of 'Good' with 'Outstanding' behaviour and safety of students. The school has retained its name but is now a comprehensive school, originally under the grammar school system, pupils who failed their 11 plus exam would have attended Wetherby Secondary Modern School (now Wetherby High School). However, since Tadcaster is now in the district of Selby and Wetherby is in the City of Leeds, it is a difficult and bureaucratic process to educate pupils on the opposite side of the borderline to where they live. Although the school is most commonly organised through vertical forms, there do exist six houses, the established houses of Oglethorpe and Dawson, named after the two merging schools' founders, Fairfax, after English Civil War commander-in-chief and alumnus Thomas Fairfax, and Calcaria, the roman name for Tadcaster, alongside two new houses, Toulston and Wharfe, whose names were selected by students.
Read more about Tadcaster Grammar School: History, Houses, Uniform, Sport, Notable Alumni
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