Surrey personal college to confess boys for first time in 100 years

A prestigious girls’ private school in Surrey will admit boys for the first time in 100 years in order to allow ‘siblings to be educated together’.

Sir William Perkins’s School in Chertsey, Surrey, aims to have mixed classrooms by 2030 following demand from families hoping to send siblings to school together.

The £21,648-per-year school, boasting successful female alumni in Trisha Goddard and Team GB rower Harriet Taylor, became one of the country’s first grammar schools for girls in 1944, having previously catered for boys.

Celebrating its 300th anniversary next year, the school said the needs of the current generation are best met by allowing boys and girls to learn together, SurreyLive reported.

Debbie Picton, the school’s headteacher, said: ‘This is the start of an exciting new chapter in the long history of our school. We are delighted that boys will be able to benefit from our educational excellence and pastoral ethos.’

The school in Surrey said that the change was motivated by demand from parents

TV star Trisha Goddard (pictured on Good Morning Britain in 2019) was educated at the school

From September 2026, the school will look to allow boys between year 7 and year 12 to join some 570 existing students.

Melanie Duke, Chair of Governors, said: ‘We recognise that families increasingly want their children to be educated together.

‘In an area where single-sex schools dominate the independent sector, we are delighted to offer an outstanding alternative choice for both girls and boys.

‘Our vision and ethos remain the same, that every single student at Sir William Perkins’s School is encouraged and enabled in a purposeful environment where everyone thrives.’ 

Ms Picton added: ‘We believe in championing the individual, building each child’s confidence and integrity and ensuring our students are world-ready whatever their ambitions. 

‘We therefore look forward to all the opportunities this move will bring to enrich our School and local community for many generations to come.’

The public school, listed as one of the Sunday Times’ Top 100 Secondary School in the UK last year, opened in 1725 as a school for ‘poor boys’.

By 1736 it was admitting girls for free education – long before the 1880 Education Act made education compulsory for all children between the ages of five and ten, with state funding available.

In practice, many girls from poorer backgrounds continued supporting their families through work, rather than going into education.

Sir William Perkins’s School offered girls free education and clothing nearly 150 years prior.

In 1944, it reopened as a school exclusively for girls, becoming fully independent in 1978.

Last month, Abingdon School in Oxfordshire, charging £49,800-per-year, said it would soon become a co-educational school along with Abingdon Preparatory School.

In a similar statement, the boys’ school said the move was ‘driven by the belief that the best preparation for young people is to educate them alongside one another’.

The school – whose former pupils include the members of Radiohead, the comedian David Mitchell and actor Tom Hollander – said it was ‘delighted to announce that both its schools are to become co-educational’. 

Many independent schools have raised concerns about Labour’s proposals to impose VAT on school fees, and the possibility of closure if unable to raise alternative revenues.

‘[Keir] Starmer should abandon this policy,’ wrote Andrew Maiden, editor of Independent School Management last spring. ‘VAT on fees is an unworkable policy and the country would be better served by a government that focused on other priorities.’

He cited a report commissioned by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) concluding that the sector saves the taxpayer £4.4bn each year.

Team GB rower Harriet Taylor is also among the list of successful alumni from the school

Keir Starmer (pictured this evening) has expressed proposals to impose VAT on private schools

In an open letter to Mr Starmer, Principal Paul Norton of Kings Monkton School in Cardiff said the VAT plan was a ‘tax on parents’ that could result in the school having to close.

‘VAT would inevitably make our education unaffordable for some parents, and risk them having to leave the school,’ he said.

‘This would cause serious disruption for the education of those children involved, and this burden would fall on the parents who work the hardest to support their choice of school.’

Labour says it hopes to raise about £1.5bn through tax changes, which include the 20 per cent VAT imposition, if it wins the next election.

The party previously clarified it would not strip schools of their charitable status, and that private schools would retain some of their tax breaks under a Labour government, should it win the next election.