Verulam School is a state secondary school for boys with academy status in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England, founded in 1938 as St Albans Boys' Modern School. The name was changed in the 1940s to St Albans Grammar School for Boys and in 1975 to Verulam School, based on the Roman name for St Albans (Verulamium). The school caters for boys between the ages of 11 and 19. Boys can stay on into the Sixth Form, which also welcomes male and female students from other schools. The school works in partnership with two neighbouring schools,

Sandringham School Sandringham School is a secondary school with academy status in Marshalswick, St Albans, Hertfordshire. It was established in 1988 following a merger of two local schools, Marshalswick School and Wheathampstead School. It occupies the former Ma ...

and Beaumont School, to enhance post-16 educational provision. The partnership, named 'BeauSandVer' enables students to consort between schools for varying A Level subjects.

School performance

A Herts for Learning review in January 2018 rated the school 'Good' and highlighted improvements in the areas criticised by an Ofsted inspection in 2017. A further inspection by Ofsted in July 2018 reached the conclusion that Safeguarding is effective and noted that the school had responded to the October inspection "with great urgency". In September 2018 the school joined the Alban Academy Trust. An Ofsted inspection in October 2018 judged the school to be Good. In a Kirkland Rowell independent survey of Parents in February 2020, 89% of parents said they would recommend the school.

Houses

Prior to the school's turning comprehensive in 1975, there were four houses, named after the four streets forming a rectangle around the school site. These were Brampton, Hamilton, Jennings and Park. From 1975 onwards, with the increase in the yearly intake, two further houses were added, York and Churchill, also named after nearby roads.

Extra-curricular

The school participates in the

Duke of Edinburgh Duke of Edinburgh, named after the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, was a substantive title that has been created three times since 1726 for members of the British royal family. It does not include any territorial landholdings and does not produc ...

award scheme, taking students through all of the phases from bronze to gold, with expeditions in places such as The Chilterns and The New Forest on Bronze, the

South Downs The South Downs are a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, in the Eastbourne Downland Estate, East Sussex, in the east. ...

and Dorset Coast on Silver, and Scotland, New Zealand and Morocco on the expeditions for the Gold award. The school runs a student

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

– Swing band, the Verulam Big Band. The latter have gone on a European tour.

Alumni

Colin Blunstone Colin Edward Michael Blunstone (born 24 June 1945) is an English singer, songwriter and musician. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Blunstone came to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the English rock band the Zombies, whi ...

(b. 1945) pop singer and songwriter, member of The Zombies pop group, together with Chris White, also an alumnus. *

Jeremy Butterworth Jeremy "Jez" Butterworth (born March 1969) is an English playwright, screenwriter, and film director. He has written screenplays in collaboration with his brothers, John-Henry and Tom. Life and career In March 1969, Butterworth was born in Lo ...

(b. 1969) playwright, film-script writer and film director. * Simon Evans (b. 1965) comedian *

Peter Rehberg Peter Rehberg (29 June 1968 – 22 July 2021), also known as Pita, was a British-Austrian composer of electronic audio works. He was the head of Editions Mego, which he founded in 2006 as a successor to Mego. Early life Rehberg was born in To ...

(1968-2021) electronic musician, founder of the

Mego (label) Mego was an experimental electronic music independent record label based in Vienna, Austria. The label has been superseded by a new company, Editions Mego, which was set up both to keep Mego albums in print and to issue new albums, run by Peter ...

. *

John Sessions John Marshall (11 January 1953 – 2 November 2020), better known by the stage name John Sessions, was a British actor and comedian. He was known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as ''Whose Line Is It Anyway?'', as a panellist o ...

(1953-2020) British actor and comedian

References

{{authority control Educational institutions established in 1938 Academies in Hertfordshire Boys' schools in Hertfordshire 1938 establishments in England Schools in St Albans