Edgbaston High School

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Edgbaston High School is an all girls primary and secondary school in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, England. The current headmistress is Dr. Ruth Weeks. It has over 900 girls, in four departments, aged 2-18.

1 History
2 Departments
3 Ranking
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The school was founded in 1876 making it the oldest all girls' school in the city, at 132 years old. The first headmistress was Miss Alice Cooper. The school used to be a boarding school in a different location.

In 1881, the school staged a cricket match against another school, to which a local newspaper reacted with hostility. It produced a cartoon and wrote a passage of it's opinions towards the upcoming match.^[1]

In 1895 the current school song was written by William Webber. The rousing chorus of "and this as law we will maintain and this we must confess Sir, there is no school in all the land to rank - at which point it is tradition for all girls to stamp the floor - with EHS Sir" remains familiar to this day.

Other more recent traditions associated with the school include the annual Christmas House Gala, the numerous half-termly talent shows and "Muck-up day" - the last official schoolday of the Sixth-form.

[edit] Departments

Westbourne is the Pre-Preparatory Department of the school. It is split into three stages, organised by the age of the child. The Octagon Nursery is available for children from the age of 2½ and above. The nursery opened in September 2004. Following this is the Kindergarten for children of the age of three. In the September following the child's fourth birthday, they can move into Reception.

The Preparatory Department is the second department in the school. It consists of years one to six. Each year is split into four houses; Curie, Frank, Johnson and Nightingale. Years One, Two and Three forms are primarily taught by their form teacher with specialist teaching in French, music and physical education. More specialist teaching is introduced as pupils move from Year Four through to Year Six. The two departments form the Lower School.

The Senior School is third department in the school. It consists of years seven to eleven, preparing the students for SATs and GCSEs. Following this, the students may move on into the sixth form centre, the fourth department. Sixth Form students are allowed to wear their own clothes. There are five houses: St Patrick, St David, St Andrew, St George and St Francis.