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King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon

school in Warwickshire, UK

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ6411533 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Grammar School of King Edward VI at Stratford-upon-Avon (known as King Edward VI School or shortened locally to K.E.S.) is a grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. It was originally for boys only but since September 2013 has admitted girls into the Sixth Form. William Shakespeare may have attended the school, leading to K.E.S. widely being known as "Shakespeare's School". It is a former voluntary aided school and became an academy on 17 August 2011.

History

There has been an educational facility at the current site of the school since at least the early thirteenth century - established by the Guild of the Holy Cross. The School can trace its origins to May 1295, when in the Register of Deacons of the Diocese of Worcester there is the record of the ordination of Richard as rector scholarum, to teach the basics of learning the alphabet, psalters, and religious rites to boys. A schoolroom, schoolhouse and payment of £20 per annum for a master was one of the provisions of King Edward VI's charter which established Stratford-upon-Avon as a borough in June, 1553. The school was re-founded as one of King Edward's schools nine days before the young king died of tuberculosis and is the last of the King Edward VI Schools. A history of the early years of the school has been published by the former chairman of the governors Levi Fox.

Playwright and poet William Shakespeare may have attended the school between the ages of seven and fourteen.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon” is school in Warwickshire, UK. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through King, Edward and School, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2013, 2011, 1295, 1553—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1201-01-01, 2011-08-17—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, King, Edward and School is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “school in Warwickshire, UK” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6411533. VIAF identifies the subject as 305264117. The Library of Congress control number is n85037707. Authority coordinates are 52.190, -1.708. 5 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2011, 1295 and 1553.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon primary sources, King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon archive and King research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.