Royal Wolverhampton School

The Royal Wolverhampton School is a non-selective, independent day and boarding school in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England. It has been granted provisional opening as a free school in September 2016 and will become one of a handful of state boarding schools in the country.HistoryThe Royal Wolverhampton School was founded as The Wolverhampton Orphan Asylum in 1850. It was founded by John Lees, a local lock-manufacturer and freemason, after a cholera epidemic ravaged the town and left many children orphaned. The orphanage was completely funded by voluntary subscription and was dedicated to the education and maintenance of children who had lost one or both parents.The Royal Orphanage of Wolverhampton was created in 1891 when Queen Victoria gave permission for the prefix 'royal' to be used. The charity carried on using this title until the late 1940s when King George VI permitted it to be re-styled The Royal Wolverhampton School.The following decade saw a rapid decline in the number of pupils as the newly formed Welfare State took over some of the school's responsibilities. The cost of caring for orphans also dramatically increased and so the constitution was controversially changed to allow the admission of full fee-paying pupils. Their proportion has steadily grown to the extent that they now constitute around 90% of its students.