Colyton Grammar School (commonly abbreviated to 'CGS') is a co-educational grammar school (and Academy) located in the village of Colyford in East Devon, England that caters for pupils aged 11 to 18. The school has been classified by Ofsted as 'Outstanding' in three successive reports. As of 2023 it was ranked by The Sunday Times as the ninth best state school in the country, and the second best in the South West. Founded by local merchants in 1546, the school is situated on an 18-acre site near the Devon coast. History In 1546 a group of twenty yeomen and merchants petitioned the Crown to buy back the confiscated property of the executed Earl of Devon. They were granted this land and property in a Royal Charter in 1546 by a deed of enfeoffment there by becoming the Feoffees of Colyton, one of the 80 oldest charities in England still operating today. Their first act was to endow a grammar school in the later half of the 16th century and by a second Royal Charter granted by Elizabeth I directing a school be maintained with a grant of £5.00 a year "for the goodly and virtuous education of 20 poor boys forever". The existing school was a petty school situated in a single room, the parvise room, over the porch of the parish church where the local priest educated the son of local merchants and yeomen until the Feoffees converted The Church House (a property confiscated from the Earl of Devon) in 1612, the first real home of Colyton Grammar School remaining there until 1927 when the school moved to its present site in Colyford. The first headmaster on record was William Hull, who joined the school in 1603, for a salary of £5 a year. The first headmistress – Mrs. Susanah Stokes – was appointed in 1792. It was only in 1875 that the school was established as a day and boarding school with its current name – Colyton Grammar School. On 20 June 1876, the school population reached a record low of just one pupil. Numbers steadily increased again and by August 1884, there were 33 pupils. The school was closed in 1900 due to a lack of pupils and remained closed until 1905, when it was re-opened with a new headmaster. In 1913, a change made in the school's constitution allowed girls to be admitted for the first