Maidstone Grammar School

Maidstone Grammar School was founded in 1549 to teach Latin grammar to Maidstone's students. For those who wish to take it, we can still teach Latin, but it is no longer the main focus of the school. Since then, it has had many sites, and moved to the present site of approximately 16 acres in 1929. It has been extended twice, with one of the developments winning an award. Click here for a detailed history of MGS. Maidstone Grammar School takes pupils from the ages of eleven to eighteen, selecting students from the top 25% of the ability range. We offer a wide range of exam courses, GCSEs and A-Levels. In 1995 the Financial Times described MGS as the top state-run school in the town, offering all students excellent opportunities at higher education or employment, should they wish to take them up. We regularly send students to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Every year, our students have the opportunity to participate in foreign exchanges with students from many other countries, including France, Germany, Spain and the Ukraine . The school has a large library containing around 15,000 books and a selection of videos and CD-ROMS. It was recently updated with new computers to allow students to research via the internet. It holds books on every subject taught in the school along with a large fiction section, many books of general interest and a large careers section to allow students to make the best possible choices at all stages in their schooling, along with prospectuses for every University in Britain and various software packages to enable students to find information about particular institutions or search a large database of information to find which institutions meet their criteria. We have many societies which students may join if they wish, including a large range of musical groups, a Debating Society and Bridge and Chess clubs. We are situated a short walk from Maidstone Town Centre and immediately next to a large park with additional rugby and football fields, a large Leisure Centre with two swimming pools, and many possible routes for cross-country runs. Former pupils of the school include a previous leader of the Red Arrows; Anthony Whiteman, who competed in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Games in the 1,500m; David Sayer who played cricket for Kent; Mark Watts former European Member of Parliament for East Kent; James Burke, who has been a television presenter for the BBC, reporting on the Apollo space mission in the 1960s; and Lord Beeching, former government minister for railways and responsible for closing much of the railway network. Former staff include William Golding who wrote "Lord of the Flies" and Jonathan Nunn who was a chess master and a young undergraduate reading maths at Oxford at the age of 13.