Latymer Upper School is a co-educational public school in Hammersmith, London, England, between King Street and the River Thames. The school has approximately 1,200 pupils, and is highly selective, accepting under 10% of applicants. Most are admitted through examination and interview to the Upper School at the age of eleven, with some entering into the Sixth Form at 16. The school's origins can be traced to a charity school for boys founded by the English merchant Edward Latymer in 1624. It moved to its present site in 1863 and in the mid-20th century became a direct grant grammar school. It has been independent since the abolition of that system of funding in the 1970s. The school remained single-sex until Sixth-Form admissions were opened to girls in 1996; the remainder of the school became coeducational in the first decade of the 21st century. Latymer has been consistently ranked among the leading schools in the country academically. Its list of alumni include diplomats, numerous former and current members of both Houses of Parliament, the winners of several Olympic medals, and many prominent figures in the arts and sciences. History Origins Latymer Upper School was founded in 1624 by Edward Latymer, a wealthy lawyer and puritan, who left part of his wealth for the clothing and education of "eight poore boyes" from Hammersmith. For the next twenty years, local boys were educated in a school erected in Fulham's churchyard, moving in 1648 to another school built in Hammersmith. Later, in 1657, a parochial charity school was set up, which served as the Latymer legacy for the following century until it was rebuilt in 1755. A new facility was built on what is now King Street in Hammersmith in 1863, and was replaced in 1890 with a new building between King Street and the Thames. This structure persists to the present day as the core of the Upper School. The site also includes Latymer Prep, a preparatory school, which takes pupils aged 7 to 11. Recent history In the 1950s, the school was a direct grant grammar school, which took large numbers of state school pupils, whose fees were paid by the local authority, solely on the basis of merit. At the same time, it continued to take some fee-paying pupils. The Direct Grant system was abolished from 1975, and the school became fully independent of government funding. The Sixth Form has been co-educational