The Woodroffe School is a comprehensive school in

Lyme Regis Lyme Regis is a town in west Dorset, England, west of Dorchester and east of Exeter. Sometimes dubbed the "Pearl of Dorset", it lies by the English Channel at the Dorset–Devon border. It has noted fossils in cliffs and beaches on the Herita ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

, England.

Lyme Regis Grammar School

From 1923-1971 the school was known as Lyme Regis

Grammar School A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...

. Lyme Regis Grammar School was the brain-child of a prominent local landowner and educationalist who, in 1922 supervised the construction of the original building on the hillside site overlooking the harbour town of Lyme Regis. For the first forty years, the school was a small mixed Grammar School drawing students from a wide rural and coastal area of West Dorset and East Devon. In 1950, a decision was taken to add boarding houses to the school with strong links being formed with Armed Services parents and those working overseas. In 1963 the Grammar School was reorganised into an 11 - 18 mixed

comprehensive School A comprehensive school typically describes a secondary school for pupils aged approximately 11–18, that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, in contrast to a selective school system where admission is res ...

grant serving 200 square miles or so around Lyme Regis. The school continued to take boarders, who were accommodated on three separate sites. In September 1991 became a grant-maintained school. Today there are 1058 students on roll (Sixth Form 200); boarding has been phased out in line with the national decline in demand for places. The school assumed Foundation status in September 1999.

Development between 1999 and 2010

The school retained most of its grammar school facilities until 2010 when the school's swimming pool was closed and a number of former rooms were converted into computer 'IT' suites. There were plans drawn up in the late 1990s, following the closure of Allhallows, Rousdon, and other private schools in the area due (mainly to declining pupil numbers in these smaller schools) for newer buildings to be established on 'top pitch' but this never came to anything.Local Lyme Newspaper, var. circ 1999 A number of the former huts on the site have been upgraded. It was also during this time that the school received arts college status. In 2011 a OFSTED inspection judged it 'Outstanding', the top mark.

Notable alumni

Adrian Bowyer Adrian Bowyer is an English engineer and mathematician, formerly an academic at the University of Bath. Born in 1952 in London, Bowyer is the older child of the late Rosemary and John Bowyer; the latter was a writer, painter and one of the fo ...

, instigator and head of the global RepRap self-replicating

3D printer 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the Manufacturing, construction of a three-dimensional object from a computer-aided design, CAD model or a digital 3D modeling, 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is ...

project. *

John Denham John Denham may refer to: * John Denham (died 1556 or later), English MP for Shaftesbury * John Denham (judge), (1559–1639), father of the poet below, and one of the Ship Money judges * John Denham (poet) (1615–1669), English poet * John Denham ...

served as

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) for Southampton Itchen from 1992 to 2015. *

Chris Leaver Christopher John Leaver (born 31 May 1942) is an Emeritus Professorial Fellow of St John's College, Oxford who served as Sibthorpian Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford from 1990 to 2007. Education Leave ...

, Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woodroffe School Educational institutions established in 1932 Secondary schools in Dorset 1932 establishments in England Foundation schools in Dorset Lyme Regis