From CITY OF OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL MAGAZINE VoL. LIII, ill JULY 1961 No. 172
School Notes
It should not pass without comment that the School has now been running for 80 years. So much has been said or hinted about the School’s future that when an opportunity arises to say something definite we should do so.
That occasion has now arrived and the new School is in process of being a reality and the first necessary legal steps have been taken. Both Schools have posted notices terminating their respective existences and presumably there will be no last-minute application to the Minister to hold an enquiry. There is no case now for recrimination but rather an earnest looking-forward to the prospect of the new School rising on the ashes of the two former ones, combining the best traditions of both and anticipating a future of usefulness to the City which has had so much good service from them in the past. It is hoped that the next steps can go smoothly and speedily so that as little dislocation as possible may be caused to the education of indivi-duals. If all is well, building should begin in 1963 and the doors of the new School, whose name even is not yet known, can be opened in September 1965.
Eighty-four years then will have seen the opening and closing of the historic experiment that T. H. Green and his co-workers pertormed not only for the City of his adoption but the cause of secondary education generally. The path has been a somewhat stormy and indeed a tortuous one. A success can sometimes sow the seeds of a failure and it was the School’s success that defeated the move to the new site at Cutteslowe in 1932. It was the Second World War that first postponed and then defeated the move to Marston Ferry. Let us hope that nothing can now stand in the way of the present scheme to give Oxford the School which has been so long delayed.