King Henry VIII School

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King Henry VIII School is an independent school comprising a senior school (ages 11–18) and associated junior school (ages 7–11) located in Coventry, England. The senior school has approximately 800 pupils (120 in each of years 7–11 and 100 in each year of the Sixth Form), the majority of whom pay full fees of approximately £6,600 per year, though some means-tested scholarships are awarded. Some pupils commute daily from as far as Northampton (30 miles away), usually by train.

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[edit] History of the school

The school was founded on 23 July 1545 by John Hales as the Free Grammar School under letters patent of King Henry VIII. It spent over 300 years in the former Hospital of St. John the Baptist (Henry having dissolved the Hospital) just north of the city centre, before moving to its present site on the south side of the city in 1885, a building there having been designed for it by Edward Burgess. Much of this original redbrick still stands despite war damage as well as many expansions.

For a period until 1994 it was part of the Coventry School Foundation, jointly administered with Bablake School under a common Board of Governors and principal Roy Cooke, at which time its official name was Coventry School, King Henry VIII. When Cooke retired, the schools became more administratively independent, although the Board of Governors remains and the Coventry School Foundation has expanded to include Coventry Preparatory School as well as the new junior school at Bablake. The schools have mutual arrangements such as a common entrance examination, shared astroturf pitches, and similar school uniforms, differing only in the colour of tie and the crest on the blazer.

Girls were first admitted to the school in 1975.

[edit] Houses

The four modern-day houses are:

  • Hales'
  • Holland's
  • Sherwyn's
  • White's

A fifth house called Kings was abolished in 1996, following a decision to reduce the number of houses to four by eliminating whichever house came in overall last place that year. Its loss was particularly notable since up until a change of leadership only a few years previously it had consistently dominated the house competitions, winning the overall competition almost every year for some decades.

[edit] Famous Old Coventrians

The school's best-known alumnus is probably Coventry poet Philip Larkin. Other alumni include:

[edit] Infamous former teachers

In a scandal in 1999, a mathematics teacher and the then headmaster of King Henry VIII were convicted of possession of child pornography. It appears that British customs officers first intercepted illegal magazines which John Skermer, who had taught mathematics at the school for many years, had ordered from abroad. A raid on his home revealed that Skermer, a keen amateur photographer as well as a part-time sports teacher, had also covertly photographed schoolboys in the shower and developed the films using the school facilities.

Routine raids on other members of staff at the school then turned up more child pornography in the possession of Terence Vardon, FRCO, who had recently been appointed from outside as headmaster after three senior figures of the school administration retired within two years. Vardon was fined and he chose to emigrate to Dresden, Germany to escape stigma. He died of a heart attack on 19 January 2001. See also this local news report from 1999.

Another teacher who taught at King Henry VIII in the 1980s, John Randall, wrote a book entitled "Childhood and Sexuality: A Radical Christian Approach" which was published in 1992. He argues in the book that healthy sexual development is helped by sexual information and sexual exploration during childhood, and this has been widely used by the paedophile community to support their argument that sexual activity between an adult and a child is not necessarily wrong. The first chapter of the book can be read here.

[edit] References

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