to the Butler Education Act in 1944, which abolished grammar school fees in order to provide secondary school education for all. Itchen Grammar School Itchen Secondary School became a Grammar School in 1946 in order to accommodate the rising pupil numbers. There were attempts to make the always coeducational school single-sex (girls only) during the 1950s but both the school and the Old Issonians Association were opposed to the idea. In 1956, Charles Thompson (Headmaster of Itchen Grammar School 1950-1971) wrote: “The school’s greatest source of strength is to be found in the fact that it is coeducational. From the earliest days of the secondary school, when coeducation was far less common than it is now, social activities involving both boys and girls were a readily accepted feature of the school.” Itchen Grammar School thrived under Charles Thompson's twenty-one years of leadership and some of the reforms he implemented at the school were: banning the use of the cane; abolishing single-sex staff rooms; building the school swimming pool and observatory; and replacing the ‘temporary’ huts. The swimming pool was built using money raised during the 1956 Jubilee Celebrations and was the first school swimming pool in Southampton. With the huts demolished, long-awaited science laboratories were built in 1964, improving teaching as well as student satisfaction. These reforms and extensions brought Itchen Grammar School up to then-current standards. The largest extension – designed by architects Messr Richard Sheppard, Robson and Partners of London - saw all classrooms moved to the first and second floors, with the open-plan student areas on the ground floor, opening up to the playing fields. New facilities within the extension included: science laboratories; needlework and housecraft rooms; and geography classrooms with a terrace that linked them to the observatory on the roof. Itchen Sixth Form College In 1966 there was debate in the Southampton Education Committee about turning to a comprehensive education system. The Committee favoured the introduction of Sixth Form Colleges and three were selected as initial options for Southampton: Richard Taunton's Grammar School; the Girl's Grammar School; and Itchen Grammar School, the latter being the only coeducational Sixth Form College in Southampton. Philip Vennis was appointed as Principal of the new Itchen Sixth Form College in 1971 and remained until his retirement in 1988. He was a strong advocate for open access, stating: “the position is that pupils can transfer from neighbourhood comprehensives without any