page_title: Outwood Academy City
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Outwood Academy City / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Former Sheffield City Grammar School, on Orchard Lane. Now part of the Leopold Square development.
context_page_description: Outwood Academy City is a co-educational secondary school with academy status located on Stradbroke Road in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.
  The school is operated by Outwood Grange Academies Trust, the current principal is Andrew Downing.
context_section_description: Before being renamed as The City School, in 1969, the Stradbroke Road establishment had been (1964–1969) City Grammar School (CGS). CGS itself had previously occupied premises in Sheffield city centre where, until 1941, it had been the Sheffield Pupil Teacher Centre (SPTC). The original institution dates from the 1890s.
  The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 13 in England and Wales and established local School Boards. The main function of these bodies was to use local rates (taxes) to finance the building of schools in cases where the range of existing establishments was inadequate. A driving force behind the Act was a perceived need for Britain to remain competitive in the world by being at the forefront of manufacture and improvement. The only existing formal education until this time had been in Church schools and some ragged schools for the poor. Between 1870 and 1880, 3,000–4,000 schools were started or taken over by school boards.
  The resulting new schools consequently required larger numbers of teachers. Furthermore, higher standards of educational attainment came to be expected in schools, so the quality of the teachers also needed to be raised. It became necessary, therefore, to develop efficient and affordable methods of improving the standards of  teacher training. The solution adopted, along the 1870s, 80s and 90s, was the education of "pupil teachers" for a four-year period (14–18 years of age) in specific training Centres.
  In Sheffield, the number of such Centres peaked at 11 establishments in the period 1881 to 1884, but it was later decided that the system would become more efficient with the centralisation of teacher training activities of this type in just one Centre. In 1894 the School Board purchased the premises formerly occupied by the old Free Writing School in School Croft, in the city centre, and in February of that year Mr. J. G. Picknet became head of the "Central Higher School". Two years later it was decided that this old building should be scheduled for demolition and that a new Centre should be constructed at a nearby site at the corner of Orchard Lane and Holly Street.
  The new Sheffield Pupil Teacher Centre building was inaugurated on 9 October 1899 by Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire. An Alumni Association, the "Holly Guild" was formed around 1904 and the first official number of the school magazine "The Holly Leaf: A Chronicle of the Sheffield City Grammar School" was printed in 1907 (up to this time it had been distributed in handwritten format).
  Pupil numbers declined from 376 in 1906 to 143 in 1912, but subsequent rapid increases in the period 1915 to 1920 
  led to the necessity to contract thirteen additional members of staff and classes also had to be held at other 
  premises at Carver Street, Townhead Street, Arundel Street (College of Arts and Crafts) and the Central School in 
  addition to the Centre itself. In 1922 the Centre implemented an annual admission of four forms of boys and girls who had qualified via the 11-plus, and it effectively became a Secondary School.
  The idea of pupil-teachership lost support over the following two decades and Sheffield was one of the last two surviving urban authorities to maintain a Centre of this type. (The system was eventually discontinued in the city in 1944). The SPTC moved into premises at Orchard Lane on 11 September 1933 and changed its name to the City Secondary School shortly after the appointment of the new Head Master, Mr Northeast, in 1935. In 1941 it was again renamed, becoming City Grammar School.
  The United Kingdom's secondary education structure was organised according to the Tripartite System between the 1944 Butler Education Act and 1976. This was known colloquially as the grammar school system. Secondary schools were divided into three categories, Grammar schools, Technical schools and Secondary Modern Schools. Pupils were allocated to each according to their performance in the 11-plus examination.
  The new
caption: Former buildings along Orchard Lane
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