Alumni

We are delighted that old boys and girls of Oxford Spires Alumni are looking at our website. You are forever a friend of Oxford Spires and even more importantly you are Oxford Spires Alumni. This brief alumni page will tell you of opportunities for alumni to join in school events, contact details to enable you to subscribe to receiving the Oxford Spires termly newsletter and some brief history so that we welcome our alumni from many decades ago to the present day.
We are particularly keen that our alumni with skills and knowledge that can support the growth of our current students make contact. If you would like to make contact with one of our governors who is keen to grow our alumni network please contact us.

History of Oxford Spires Academy

OXFORD SPIRES ACADEMY (OSA) opened in 2011 under the sponsorship of the Centre for British Teachers (CfBT). It is quite unique amongst the academies within the city in that its history can be traced to the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The Central Boys’ School opened in 1871 and the City of Oxford Technical Day School in 1894 with the latter becoming the Municipal Secondary School in 1921. Both institutions merged in 1934 to form Southfield Grammar School in 1934 on the current site of OSA. Perhaps the most famous alumnus of the school is television and film actor Patrick Mower who left school to become a draughtsman before being accepted by RADA.

The City of Oxford High School for Boys was founded in 1881 jointly by Oxford City Council and the University of Oxford to ‘complete the ladder of learning’ between school and university. Until it became a grammar school following the 1944 Education Act it had been a fee paying school but with fifty annual scholarships for the sons of families with limited means. Its most famous alumnus was T. E. Lawrence better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Other famous alumni include actor and comedian Ronnie Barker, former Master of Jesus College, Oxford, Lord Krebs and Professor Heinz Wolff. The original school building in George Street was designed by Sir Thomas Jackson and is currently used by the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford.

The City of Oxford High School and Southfield School merged in 1966 to become Oxford School until the late 1990s when it became Oxford Community School. Alumni include former government Minister, the Rt. Hon. Lord Hunt, former MEP Lord Harrison who was also Head of Trevelyan House at Oxford School and Harry Gibson who wrote the stage adaptation for Trainspotting.