Outwood Academy City

Outwood Academy City is a co-educational secondary school with academy status located on Stradbroke Road in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.HistoryBefore being renamed as The City School, in 1969, the Stradbroke Road establishment had been City Grammar School . CGS itself had previously occupied premises in Sheffield city centre where, until 1941, it had been the Sheffield Pupil Teacher Centre . The original institution dates from the 1890s.The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 13 in England and Wales and established local School Boards. The main function of these bodies was to use local rates to finance the building of schools in cases where the range of existing establishments was inadequate. A driving force behind the Act was a perceived need for Britain to remain competitive in the world by being at the forefront of manufacture and improvement. The only existing formal education until this time had been in Church schools and some ragged schools for the poor. Between 1870 and 1880, 3,000 - 4,000 schools were started or taken over by school boards.The resulting new schools consequently required larger numbers of teachers. Furthermore, higher standards of educational attainment came to be expected in schools, so the quality of the teachers also needed to be raised. It became necessary, therefore, to develop efficient and affordable methods of improving the standards of teacher training. The solution adopted, along the 1870s, 80s and 90s, was the education of "pupil teachers" for a four-year period in specific training Centres.