Derby Grammar School is a selective independent school in

Littleover Littleover is a village and suburb in the city of Derby, in Derbyshire, England, between Rose Hill, Normanton, Sunny Hill and Mickleover, about southwest of Derby city centre. History The history of Littleover's name is simple. It is der ...

near the city of

Derby Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby g ...

, England. Founded in 1995, to recreate the historical

Derby School Derby School was a school in Derby in the English Midlands from 1160 to 1989. It had an almost continuous history of education of over eight centuries. For most of that time it was a grammar school for boys. The school became co-educational an ...

, (which had become mixed-Comprehensive in the 1970s, and then changed name in 1989), it educates boys between the ages of 4 and 18 and girls in the

Sixth form In the education systems of England, Northern Ireland, Wales, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and some other Commonwealth countries, sixth form represents the final two years of secondary education, ages 16 to 18. Pupils typically prepare for A-l ...

. The school currently has about two hundred and forty pupils. The Sixth form has been co-educational since September 2007, and an Infant school was opened in September 2019.

Admissions

The school is academically selective; scholarships and bursaries offering a discount on the school's fees are available.

Premises

The school occupies Rykneld Hall, a Grade II listed 18th-century country house at

, built in 1780 as a private residence and used as a hospital in the second half of the 20th century. After conversion, the school was opened in 1995. Teaching buildings for Humanities, Sciences, Design and Technology, and Arts have been added to the campus, along with the main school hall, which is linked with the old quadrangle and contains a stage and an organ, with an attached kitchen. The new block, called the Bagshaw Building, was opened in 2000. There is also a cricket pavilion. The woodland, mature trees, grassland, and water areas in the school's grounds are designated as Wildlife Site 38 and safeguarded in the City of Derby's

Local Plan A development plan sets out a local authority's policies and proposals for land use in their area. The term is usually used in the United Kingdom. A Local Plan is one type of development plan. The development plan guides and shapes day-to-day dec ...

, Policy E4 (Nature Conservation). Such sites are "considered irreplaceable". New school sports facility, Rykneld Sports Centre, located a short distance away from the main site, was opened in September 2017.

Curriculum

The curriculum is built around teaching for GCSE and A-level. Subjects taught include English, Latin, French, German, Spanish, Classics, Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, History, Ancient History, English Literature, Geography, Religious Studies, Art, Music, Design Technology and Economics.

Sport

The main sports offered at the school are

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...

, and

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In it ...

, plus

athletics Athletics may refer to: Sports * Sport of athletics, a collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking ** Track and field, a sub-category of the above sport * Athletics (physical culture), competi ...

, cross country,

swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...

squash Squash may refer to: Sports * Squash (sport), the high-speed racquet sport also known as squash racquets * Squash (professional wrestling), an extremely one-sided match in professional wrestling * Squash tennis, a game similar to squash but pla ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

and

badminton Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players p ...

Extra-curricular

Activities include school dramatic productions, the

Duke of Edinburgh Award The Duke of Edinburgh's Award (commonly abbreviated DofE) is a youth awards programme founded in the United Kingdom in 1956 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, that has since expanded to 144 nations. The awards recognise adolescents and young ...

, public speaking, World Challenge, debating, a School choir and orchestra, adventure training and the Arts Award examined by

LAMDA LaMDA, which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, is a family of conversational neural language models developed by Google. The first generation was announced during the 2021 Google I/O keynote, while the second generation was ...

. There are music and drama workshops, some being joint events with Derby High School for Girls and the Hot House Music Schools youth music group. The School supports various charities, including YMCA Derbyshire and the Gedeli B School in the

Mwanza Region Mwanza Region (''Mkoa wa Mwanza'' in Swahili) is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions The region covers a land area of . The region is comparable in size to the combined land area of the nation state of North Macedonia. Njombe Region i ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

. It raises money annually for both projects and sends Sixth Form students out every year to Gedeli B School to assist with teaching, maintenance of classrooms and other tasks.

School motto, arms and badge

The school's coat of arms, badge, and motto, are all based on those of the former Derby School. The motto, ''Vita Sine Litteris Mors'' (Life without learning is death), is that of the former school and is a quotation from

Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extrat ...

Epistulae morales ad Lucilium The ' (Latin for "Moral Letters to Lucilius"), also known as the ''Moral Epistles'' and ''Letters from a Stoic'', is a collection of 124 letters that Seneca the Younger wrote at the end of his life, during his retirement, after he had worked for ...

Old Derbeians

The term "Old Derbeians" originally meant only former pupils of

, but the Old Derbeians Society is now open also to ex-pupils of the new school, who are called both New and Old Derbeians. Those educated at the new school include: * Ben Bradley (born 1989), Conservative member of parliament Katy Balls
Coffee House Interview: New Tory vice-chair – Toff can help solve the Conservative youth problem
''The Spectator'', 11 January 2018
archived
accessed 11 July 2022

References

Derby Grammar School at BBC Education League TablesDerby Grammar School at dfes.gov.ukIndependent Schools Inspectorate report of Derby Grammar School 2005 inspectionDerby Grammar School buildings by Rothera Goodwin, website no longer active

External links

Derby Grammar School – official siteWeb site of the Old Derbeians Society"Derby School – the Sixties Revisited" a short film shot in St Helen's House in 2012
---- {{authority control Boys' schools in Derbyshire Independent schools in Derby Member schools of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference Member schools of the Independent Schools Association (UK) Educational institutions established in 1995 1995 establishments in England