page_title: Magdalen College School, Oxford
section_title: Grant-aided status
hierarchical_section_title: Magdalen College School, Oxford / History / Grant-aided status
caption_attribution_description: Choristers' tunnel under w:Magdalen Bridge running from w:Magdalen College School, Oxford to the Waynflete Building of w:Magdalen College, Oxford. Photograph taken by me.
context_page_description: Magdalen College School is an independent day school in Oxford, England, for boys aged seven to eighteen and for girls in the sixth form. It was founded by William Waynflete about 1480 as part of Magdalen College, Oxford.
  In 2010 The Good Schools Guide described the school as having "A comfortable mix of brains, brawn and artistic flair but demanding and challenging too.. Not what you might expect a boys' public school to look like or feel like."
  The school was named Independent School of the Year by the Sunday Times in 2004, and again in 2008, becoming the first boys' school to gain this accolade twice.
  The school is run by a headmaster, known since the foundation of the school simply as "the Master", and controlled by a Board of Governors, who appoint the Master. It has both a senior school and a junior school. The Senior School has six houses, each headed by a housemaster selected from the senior members of the teaching staff, of whom there are about 160. There are also six houses in the Junior School.
  Almost all of the school's pupils go on to universities, and about a third of them to Oxford or Cambridge.
context_section_description: After the First World War, the school opted into the arrangements of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act 1907, and as a grant-aided secondary school had to guarantee a quarter of its places as free scholarships for boys from public elementary schools. Of this decision, Stanier, a former Master and the author of the school history, writes:
  To allow the School to develop into another rich man's Public School would have been to betray a heritage and a tradition. Magdalen School had never been a school of rich men's sons, and genuine democracy had flourished in it, not only through the conscious efforts of such Masters as Millard, Ogle, and Sherwood, but also through the peculiar nature of Oxford.
  The origins of the present-day school site begin in the late 19th century, when the school was occupying part of the college grounds alongside Longwall Street. It was slowly relocated by a few hundred feet, over Magdalen Bridge, onto the present site on Cowley Place began under the tenure of W. E. Sherwood in 1891 when, after an outbreak of scarlet fever in the old boarding house on the corner of Longwall Street and the High Street (ascribed partly to the dilapidated state of the building and in particular to the drainage) plans for a new school house were laid out. The new building on the Plain, which forms the modern-day School House, was first used in September 1894 when boarders at the school moved into it.
  At that time, teaching still took place on the Longwall Street site. Boarders thus had a short daily walk over Magdalen Bridge to the College. The choristers still today make this short daily journey, but using a tunnel under Magdalen Bridge to avoid crossing the busy road. 
  The school continued to grow during the early 20th century, and by 1925, there were about 170 students.
caption: Choristers' tunnel under Magdalen Bridge running from Magdalen College School to the Waynflete Building of Magdalen College
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