Magdalen College School (MCS) is a public school (English private day school) in Oxford, England, for boys aged seven to eighteen and for girls in the sixth form. It was founded by William Waynflete about 1480 as part of Magdalen College, Oxford. In 2010 The Good Schools Guide described the school as having "A comfortable mix of brains, brawn and artistic flair but demanding and challenging too. Not what you might expect a boys' public school to look like or feel like." The school was named Independent School of the Year by The Sunday Times in 2004, and 2008, being the first boys' school to attain this accolade twice. The school is run by a headmaster, known since the foundation of the school simply as "the Master" and controlled by a Board of Governors, who appoint the Master. It has both a senior school and a junior school. The Senior School has six houses, each headed by a housemaster selected from the senior members of the teaching staff, of whom there are about 160. There are also six houses in the Junior School. Almost all of the school's pupils go on to university, about a third of them to Oxford or Cambridge. The present Master, Helen Pike, was appointed in August 2016, after previously being Headmistress of the South Hampstead High School and is the first female Master in the school's history. In a review by the Independent Schools Inspectorate in 2017, the school was described as remarkable and providing rich opportunities, where "pupils' academic results are exceptional". History Early history The School was founded by William Waynflete as a department of Magdalen College, to teach the sixteen boy choristers of the college, who sang in the college's chapel, as well as other local children of high academic achievement. The first certain evidence of the school's existence dates to 1480, although the beginnings of the school are probably at least as early as 1478. Since then, it has grown in size from about thirty boys to over 850 children. Over its history, the school occupied various parts of the present-day Magdalen College, firstly the low hall south of the Chapel of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, which before the establishment of Magdalen College by William Waynflete had occupied the present site. This building, replaced by the 15th-century college buildings, stood roughly between the present-day porters' lodge and the