The King's School was founded in 1502 within the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Macclesfield. It was re-founded by Edward VI in 1552 as the "Free Grammar School of King Edward VI". It moved to Cumberland Street, 300 metres further from the town square, in 1844. In July 2020 the school moved to a new location adjacent to its long-held Derby Playing Fields, on the outskirts of Macclesfield.[1]
In 1844 a Modern School, with a more commercial and technical curriculum, was built by the governors to run in tandem with the Grammar School. It merged with the Grammar School in 1912.[2]
The school operated as a direct-grant school and offered scholarships for boys from state elementary schools from 1926 until 1966, when its application to continue as a direct grant grammar school was refused and it became fully independent.[3][4]
The boys' junior school was opened in 1947. In 1993 girls from age 11 to 16 were admitted and housed with co-educational juniors, and later infants, at the old Macclesfield High School site on Fence Avenue. The Sixth Form had been co-educational since 1986.[5]
The King's School's 2020 development plans involved closing the two existing school sites in Macclesfield and opening a new single site school in Prestbury, near Macclesfield.[6] The development plans involved selling off the two existing school sites for housing development to fund the new school site.[7] The school acquired greenbelt farmland adjacent to its Derby Fields site for which it subsequently sought planning permission in order to develop the existing school site and the farmland for housing.[8] Planning permission was granted to the school to build more than 250 houses on the greenbelt land in Macclesfield in July 2016.[9] The new school was built on green belt land in nearby Prestbury. Planning permission for all sites was confirmed when the Secretary of State declined to call in the plans for further scrutiny in September 2016.[10]
In July 2020 King's School left Macclesfield after more than 500 years of continuous operation in the town and relocated to Prestbury.[1] In 2024, after 500 years of teaching Latin, King’s school controversially withdrew Latin from its curriculum. This led to parents making a formal complaint to an independent body regarding this decision and the lack of transparent decision making by the school’s governing body.[11]
Academia
The school follows the National Curriculum for GCSE in Years 10–11 and A-Levels in the sixth form. In 2012, pupils achieved A*/A in 41% of all exams and A* – B in three-quarters of exams. Pupils achieved the best-ever GCSE results in 2012 with 33% of grades at A* grade, more than 63% of grades at A*/A and 86% at A* – B grade.
In 2011, pupils achieved 75% A* to B grade at A-level, with a 99.7% pass rate, and 60% As and A*s at GCSE.[12]
In 2023, pupils achieved at GCSE level 43% of all grades at 9/8 (A*) , 65% grades 9-7, 83% 9-6. For A-Levels, 48% of all grades were A*/A , 80% of all grades were A*-B, with 7 students getting 3 A*s. [13]
Extra-curricular activities
Music
In 2003 the school's Foundation Choir won BBC Songs of Praise Choir of the Year.[14] It takes bi-annual trips to perform across Europe, having visited Barcelona, Levico Terme, Strasbourg, Lake Geneva and Budapest. In 2016 the choir performed in Prague. The choir and numerous bands also perform at nearby St Michael's Church.[15] The school's music department is equipped with a recording studio and practice rooms and offers instrumental lessons to the students.[16]
The department also performs musicals such as The Revenge of Sherlock Holmes,[17][18] a West End musical, in 2012.
Drama
The school performs two to three plays a year; one by the Boys' Division/Sixth Form, one by the Girls' Division, and one by the Juniors. Recent plays include Cinders,[19]Arabian Nights,[20] and The Ramayana. Now that the school is completely co-educational, there are performances in Infants, Junior divisions respectively and the Seniors and Sixth Form perform together. In 2023, they performed Bleak Expectations.[21] In 2024, they performed Guys and Dolls.[22]
School trips
Trips abroad are arranged by individual departments, including those by the History and Classics departments, in addition to annual foreign language exchange visits.[23] Pupils are involved in biennial World Challenge Expeditions and recent expeditions have been to Morocco,[24]Ecuador, India and most recently Namibia.[25]
The school's Outdoor Activities Club organises regular trips to Yorkshire[26] or the Peak District, that include walking, climbing and caving. [citation needed]
In 2023, the school undertook a 3-week expedition to Borneo. [27]
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations.(May 2020)
