Few British schools can trace their origins to a single act of Tudor philanthropy. Nottingham High School can. On 22 November 1513, King Henry VIII sealed the foundation deed of a free grammar school in Nottingham, endowed by Dame Agnes Mellers, widow of the two-time mayor Richard Mellers, “evermore to endure” for the teaching of boys in good manners and literature. Five centuries and one dramatic transformation later, that school sits at the summit of East Midlands education – and its latest results suggest the trajectory is still climbing.
In August 2025, Nottingham High School posted what Acting Head Teacher Paul Spedding called “some of the best results in the School’s History.” At A-level, 30 per cent of all passes were at the top A grade, with 69 per cent at A or A, and a 100 per cent pass rate across 133 candidates. At GCSE, 67.3 per cent of grades landed at the equivalent of Grades 8 and 9 – the school’s strongest ever set at this level – with 85 per cent of all grades at Grade 7 or above. Twelve students secured places at Oxford or Cambridge; 21 gained entry to read Medicine. The Sunday Times, which named Nottingham High its East Midlands School of the Year for both 2023 and 2025, now ranks it 49th nationally in its 2026 Parent Power table, placing the school in the top two per cent of all English schools.
These are not the numbers of a school coasting on reputation. They are the numbers of an institution actively re-engineering itself – while keeping one foot firmly planted in a 513-year-old story.
A Foundation Written in Parchment and Charity
The founding narrative is unusually specific for a school of this vintage. Dame Agnes Mellers did not merely donate money; she orchestrated a civic project. After her husband Richard’s death in 1507, she enlisted Sir Thomas Lovell, Governor of Nottingham Castle and Secretary to the Treasury, to petition the young Henry VIII. The resulting charter, sealed in 1513, permitted the school to hold assets – money, property, and land – donated by Agnes, her two elder sons, the mayor, and over eighty other Nottingham tradesmen. Supplementary charters from Philip and Mary, and later Elizabeth I, doubled the endowment from 20 Marks to 40 Marks by 1594.
The school opened on 2 February 1513, initially housed in St. Mary’s Church in the Lace Market. It remained a grammar school for boys for nearly five hundred years. The school’s archive, now partly held at the Nottinghamshire Archives, contains both the original Tudor charter with the Henry VIII seal and the Elizabethan Royal Licence – physical artefacts linking the modern institution to the political and religious upheavals of the sixteenth century.
The University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections have documented this history in a dedicated exhibition, Balls, Boots and Players, tracing how the school’s early efforts to organise education in a small market town helped lay the foundations for a great city driven by learning – connections through the lace industry, international sport, military service, public service, and migration, all woven from a single Tudor charter.
The Quiet Revolution: Going Co-Educational
For most of its history, Nottingham High School was unambiguously a boys’ school. That changed in 2015, when it admitted girls for the first time in its 502-year existence. The decision, announced by then-Headmaster Kevin Fear and covered by ITV News Central, was the most significant structural shift since the school’s Victorian relocation to its current Waverley Mount site.
The transition was not without risk. Long-established boys’ schools that go co-educational frequently face scepticism from parents, alumni, and the wider independent sector – a tension King Edward VI High School for Girls navigates from the opposite direction. But the data since 2015 tells a story of acceleration rather than disruption. The school’s 2025 A-level A*/A rate of 69 per cent is substantially higher than the 57.6 per cent recorded in 2023, and its GCSE performance in 2025 was described as the best in the school’s history. Amelia Briggs-Goode, who became the school’s record holder for the Senior Girls’ 300m at 42.1 seconds, went on to win silver in the 400m Hurdles at the National Athletics Championships in July 2024, finishing fourth in the UK – a concrete marker of the co-educational project producing competitive athletes at national level.
“The last ten years has been such an exciting time as we have become fully co-educational at the same time as enhancing our academic standards,” Kevin Fear said when the school was named East Midlands School of the Decade in 2021. The 513-year-old institution was not merely opening its doors wider; it was performing better because of it.
Results That Speak for Themselves
At A-level, five students gained at least four A grades, and 67 students achieved three A grades or better. The school’s A-B rate reached 92 per cent, while its average A-level points score of 49.76 places it well above both the local authority average of 31.77 and the national average of 35.08, according to The Good Schools Guide’s 2025 data. At GCSE, 37 per cent of all passes were at the highest possible Grade 9, and 20 students each gained the equivalent of at least ten Grades 8-9.
The Independent Schools Inspectorate’s February 2024 inspection awarded the highest rating of “Excellent” for both the quality of pupils’ academic achievements and their personal development – a dual distinction only a handful of schools in the country hold. A further Material Change inspection in March 2025 confirmed the school’s trajectory. In the 2026 Sunday Times Parent Power rankings, Nottingham High climbed to 49th nationally – up from 55th – with A-level results of 92.4 per cent A-B and GCSE results of 84.9 per cent at grades A/A/9/8/7, placing it ahead of Wellington College.
The Economics of Excellence
Termly fees for 2025-26 stand at £7,461 for the Senior School (including VAT), translating to an annual cost of approximately £22,383 – a figure that compares favourably with other leading independents profiled in this publication, such as Winchester College. The Good Schools Guide notes this is deliberately lower than many comparable schools: “School works hard to keep fees reasonable and necessary ‘extras’ such as uniform are deliberately kept simple. You can buy an Asda blazer and stick on a Nottingham High badge.”
From Spring 2026, the school is introducing a five per cent discount on termly fees for third and subsequent siblings. But the school’s bursary provision is the more striking figure: 17 per cent of recent Year 7 entrants received means-tested bursaries, with an average award covering 87 per cent of fees. For a school in the top two per cent nationally, that level of financial accessibility is unusual. The school’s development fund provides bursaries of up to 105 per cent – the extra five per cent designed to cover associated costs such as uniform and trips.
Old Nottinghamians: From D. H. Lawrence to Mrwhosetheboss
The school’s alumni list – known as “Old Nottinghamians” – reads as a cross-section of British cultural and public life. D. H. Lawrence attended from 1898 to 1901, though his relationship with Nottingham was complicated by his working-class background in Eastwood. Kenneth Clarke, who later served as Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord Chancellor, was educated here, as was Ed Balls, the Labour politician who served as Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Chancellor.
The military roll includes Albert Ball, the First World War fighter pilot who became the UK’s leading flying ace before his death in 1917 at the age of 20, posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. More recent alumni include Arun Maini, the technology YouTuber known as Mrwhosetheboss, who has built an audience of over 20 million subscribers, and Aleem Maqbool, the BBC journalist who broke the story of the capture of Osama bin Laden in 2011. The Old Nottinghamians’ Society, which traces its origins to 1897, maintains a network spanning six centuries of graduates.
Pastoral Care as Competitive Advantage
The Sunday Times citation for its 2021 School of the Decade award singled out a specific feature: “An exceptional tutor system providing care for each pupil drives Nottingham High School’s success.” The school’s pastoral infrastructure – a dedicated wellbeing centre, a structured tutor system, and a mental health support framework – has been credited by the ISI as contributing directly to the “Excellent” personal development rating.
Paul Spedding’s remarks on GCSE results day were telling: “Not all students have found the past two years straightforward; amongst these results are several individual success stories of students overcoming significant challenges.” The school’s willingness to acknowledge difficulty alongside achievement suggests a culture that has moved beyond the traditional independent school model of stoic self-reliance. Its STEAM programme won the TT Education Community Collaboration STEAM Award in 2023, and its pastoral care has been recognised by Muddy Stilettos as “Outstanding.”
What 513 Years Actually Means
There is a temptation, when writing about schools of this vintage, to treat their longevity as self-evidently impressive. It is not. Longevity without adaptation is stagnation. What makes Nottingham High School notable in 2026 is not that it has existed since 1513 – many institutions have – but that it has used the last decade to fundamentally reshape itself while improving its academic output.
The co-educational transition, the bursary expansion, the STEAM integration, and the pastoral care infrastructure are not peripheral additions to a traditional grammar school model. They are structural changes that have coincided with the school’s strongest ever examination results. The Sunday Times naming it East Midlands School of the Year in both 2023 and 2025 is not a recognition of heritage; it is a recognition of current performance.
Dame Agnes Mellers could not have imagined a world in which her free grammar school for boys would educate girls, produce a YouTube star with 20 million subscribers, or be ranked in the top two per cent of English schools by examination results alone. But her founding intention – that the school should endure – has been honoured not through preservation but through reinvention. At 513, Nottingham High School is not merely surviving. It is, by the most objective measures available, thriving.
