City of London School

The City of London School (CLS) or City is a boys' independent day school on the banks of the River Thames in the City of London, England. It is the brother school of the City of London School for Girls (a girls' school within the City) and the co-educational City of London Freemen's School (a day and boarding school in Surrey). It is also a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC).

The School was founded by a private Act of Parliament in 1834, following events starting from a bequest of land by John Carpenter, Town Clerk of London in 1442, for four poor children in the City of London. The original school was established at Milk Street, with the school moving to the Victoria Embankment in 1879, and then to its present site on Queen Victoria Street in 1986. Today, the school provides day education to about 900 boys aged 10 to 18 and employs approximately 100 teaching staff and around another 100 non-teaching staff including contractors. The majority of its pupils enter at age 11 into the first form, with somewhat fewer at age 13 into the third form and some at age 16 into the Sixth form. There is a small intake at age 10 into Old Grammar, a year group consisting of two classes equivalent to primary school Year 6. Admissions are based on an entrance examination and an interview.

Among the many Old Citizens who have attained eminence in various fields are the Liberal Prime Minister (1908–1916) Herbert Asquith (as well as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary Charles Ritchie and Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu), the war hero Theodore Bayley Hardy, the cellist Stephen Isserlis, the Nobel Prize winning founder of Biochemistry Frederick Gowland Hopkins, the Justice of the Supreme Court Lawrence Collins, the England cricket captain Mike Brearley, the physicist Peter Higgs, the cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne and the Booker Prize winning authors Kingsley Amis and Julian Barnes