Marling School

History

Marling School is the oldest secondary school in Stroud, having been founded in 1887 by Sir Samuel Marling, a local cloth manufacturer and former Liberal Member of Parliament, along with Sir Francis Hyett and Mr S.S. Dickinson.

In 1882, Sir Samuel Marling offered £10,000 towards the building of the school, and the school also inherited a number of endowments from the Red Coat School which was founded in 1642 by Thomas Webb, the St Chloe School founded at Amberley by Nathaniel Cambridge in 1699, and the educational charities established in the 17th and 18th centuries by William Johns and Robert Aldridge.

The left hand side of the school shield contains the Marling family crest while the right hand side relates to the marriage of Samuel Stephens Marling to Margaret Williams Cartwright of Devizes.

The new school opened to fee-paying pupils in 1889 and in 1909 the school became a public secondary school. Its endowments, along with those of the Stroud School of Science and Art and the Stroud High School for girls, were placed under the administration of a body called the Stroud Educational Foundation.

The original buildings were built shortly after the school's foundation.

In 1965, the school was amalgamated with the Stroud Technical School for Boys which had been founded on a neighbouring site in 1910. The Technical School buildings now form the Art and Drama departments.

Following the appointment of Dr Stuart Wilson as the new headteacher in 2010, Marling School converted to an academy in August 2011.

Facilities

Marling School has a programme of rebuilding and refurbishment to improve the learning environment. The school benefits from modern facilities including a sports hall situated opposite the School House adjacent to Cainscross Road, a music block which includes a recording studio and music technology classrooms as well as a large Music Hall used for concerts. The school has four large IT suites and a Computing Laboratory. A new science building, consisting of 2 new class rooms, has recently been completed. A new building for maths, geography, religious education and includes a new canteen has also just been constructed and currently a new building for art is nearly complete.

Following a successful bid to the EFA, the school was awarded a grant of £3.7 million to build a new block that will house the Geography and Mathematics departments and a new dining hall overlooking the cricket pitch and pavilion. The design and technology block incorporates teaching rooms for food technology, graphical products, resistant materials and electronics, many of the rooms are shared with Stroud High School. The South Block built in 2005 houses English, History, Foreign Languages, Computing Science and Religious Education. The old gymnasium has been refurbished and repurposed as a library and school archive.

The School has also recently replaced the Art and Drama block with a new building, situated in the east campus of the school next to the sixth form car park, in which is housed new facilities, including a much improved new drama studio.

A modern sixth form block serves the students of both the Marling School and Stroud High School sixth forms.

Awards and recognition

The school is a Directly Licensed Centre for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme. The school is a Lead School for the Teaching of Computer Science (Computing at School, British Computer Society, DfE). The school has successfully completed the Schools Build a Plane Challenge. The school was rated as 'Outstanding' overall and in each major area in its Ofsted report of November 2013.

Notable alumni