We visit an historic Wolverhampton school with royal links which sees the extraordinary in every student

It’s a school which has been a prominent part of the Wolverhampton landscape for more than 170 years.

The Royal School Wolverhampton has gone through several lives, having started out in 1850 as the Wolverhampton Orphan Asylum, then earning the Royal prefix from Queen Victoria in 1891 to become the Royal Orphanage of Wolverhampton.

Granted a Royal Charter in 1900, The Royal Wolverhampton School officially began life in 1944, becoming an independent fee-paying school and, in 1978, admitting day girls for the first time.

Today, it holds a unique place as the only state school of its type in the UK to operate under a Royal Charter, having converted into a co-educational, non-denominational Free School and removing day fees while maintaining its status as a state boarding school.

The school offers a rich and varied curriculum to its students, which are set across its primary and secondary schools and range from ages four to 19, and prides itself on being one of only a handful of free schools in the UK offering an all-through education through academic learning and extracurricular enrichment.

Principal Tom MacDonald has been at the helm for three years, having been headteacher for Kingswinford and Cheslyn Hay Academies, as well as the founding principal of Thomas Telford UTC.

He said he believed he had found his dream role by coming to the Royal School, admitting that he’d taken more than a few lingering looks when driving past it.

He said: “I was setting up the UTC in 2015 and this school was in the process of converting to a free school, so I used to drive past on a regular basis and looked with jealousy at this beautiful building.

“Don’t get me wrong, the UTC has some fantastic listed buildings, but this is something special, and the more I learnt about what the school does and the enrichment opportunities and activities and student success, I got very interested in coming here.

“When I finally got here, I can say I’ve loved it since and it is the last job I ever want to have and I never want to leave this place, plus my son is a student here and I’m hopeful that my daughter will come, because it is a truly wonderful school and the most exciting job I’ve ever had.”

Mr MacDonald said the school was special because of the sense of belonging it instilled in both students and staff, saying that they wanted to be part of everything that went on.

He said: “The staff work harder because they are committed to what goes on here, so they put on more trips and do more activities and get more involved than at other places.

“Also, the history of the place seeps through every pore and you can feel it wherever you walk, so I think the students get that sense of being something more, being different and being a royal.”

The royal links extends to regular visits from the Duke of Edinburgh Prince Edward, who Mr MacDonald said enjoyed his visits to Wolverhampton and remembered plenty of the students from those visits.

This also included visiting the primary school a year ago to open some of the new buildings, with Mr MacDonald saying that the young people there had been delighted to shake his hand and even hugged him, something he joked was not royal protocol, but was lovely to see, and said the school was proud to be associated with the royal family.

The Royal School has had some prestigious alumni as well, with comedian and Python Eric Idle having spent 12 years at the school as a boarder from 1950 to 1962, while Olympic swimming gold medallist from Tokyo 2021 Tom Richards still holds five individual school records.

The school also has a boarding element, with close to 60 students living at the school at present, and Mr MacDonald said it had a true family feeling to it, with a nurturing environment and opportunities to learn and grow as a family.

As a free school, the school is able to pick its own curriculum, with Mr MacDonald saying that the school broadly followed a national curriculum, but also worked to expand out and help develop the students as people.

He said: “I think the area where we expand beyond a subject-based curriculum is in that wider life, the wider curriculum and the development of young people as whole people.

“What I say to staff and what we say to each other is that we want our students to be extraordinary, which might be in French or maths or music, which they do outside of lessons and we do that in a big way here, with what I think it is the largest individual music lesson programme in Wolverhampton.

“If you are here long enough, at the end of the day, you’ll find some of the boarders and the day students will hang around in Victoria Hall, jump on the grand piano and just start playing, so I’ll often leave to the sound of one of the students tinkling the ivories.

“Our school day ends at 4pm from Tuesday to Thursday, giving enough time for students to follow clubs such as Warhammer and darts, and we go on trips all the time, so there is this endless stream of activities, trips and opportunities alongside a curriculum which is underpinned by strong teaching.”

Mr MacDonald said the Royal School was everything he would want out of education, saying that it had something for everything and that excited him.

He said: “I love the ability for students to join us at age four and stay all the way through to 18 and then go off, as a lot have, to universities like Cambridge.

“It’s lovely to see that journey and I think the reason a lot of the students and staff stay is because it’s home, which is why I immediately said I wanted my children to come here.

“It is an extraordinary school, filled with special young people and I think you really see the extraordinary in young people here, so that’s what I love about it.”