City of Portsmouth Girls' School
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The City of Portsmouth Girls' School is a single sex 'foundation' comprehensive school for women from the ages of eleven to sixteen in Portsmouth, Hampshire. The school is located on St Marys Road in the Portsmouth central sub district of Fratton near St Marys Church.
The last Ofsted inspection was in 2003, the last before that was in 1998. As of 2003 the school had 990 pupils in attendance. The current headteacher is Sharon Watt. The current head of Governors is Neil Davies. The City of Portsmouth Girls' School has a brother school - The City of Portsmouth Boys' School.
[edit] History: 1890 to 1975
The original school building was St Mary's School build circa 1890. It first became a school for girls in 1930 as the Junior Girls Department of the nearby Penhale Road Board School. The building became one of the early casualties of bombing in Portsmouth during World War II and was subsequently demolished. With post-war reorganisation resulting from the 1944 Education Act, the Kingston Modern School for Girls was created in 1949. This was initially based at the Penhale Road site rather than the St Marys site and had 250 girls on roll. This figure soon increased until it became impossible to accommodate the number of students. By 1954, with numbers still increasing, it became clear that a new building would be necessary at the St Marys site.
The new Kingston Modern School for Girls building opened on its present site in 1957. It cost £105,821 to build and consisted of a main three-story block with 20 classrooms including specialist rooms for science, art, craft and domestic science and a library. There was also a Hall, Stage and a Dining Area (now the foyer), and a gymnasium (now theDining Hall). The site was much smaller then, being surrounded to the North and West by houses that no longer exist today. Numbers of pupils continued to increase and a new extension which is now the current Science and Technology block was completed in the 1960's.
[edit] History: 1975 to the Present
In 1975 education in Portsmouth was again reorganised resulting in the creation of the City of Portsmouth Girls' School as a comprehensive school for girls between the ages of 12 to 16. As a result the site increased in size again, with a large sports field (where the houses used to be), a new sports Hall, and another new complex, which is now the Maths block.
In 1994 education was once again reorganised in Portsmouth and the school became an 11 - 16 comprehensive school, taking girls from age 11. To accommodate additional numbers, another new block for teaching Modern Foreign Languages and technology was added , together with the all weather multi-sport pitch, completed in 1998. practice rooms, additional office space and a new changing room for the dance studio was completed in February 2001.
