In the 2014–2015 academic year, the school had over 1,000 pupils including students attending the sixth form, which is also open to girls.

The original school building was in use for 313 years from 1617 to 1930, and still stands near to All Saints' Church.

It became a science college in 2003, a foundation school in 2008, and converted to academy status on 1 July 2013.

The remaining four were named after the school benefactors Francis Earl Cowper KG and Richard Benyon Croft; and former pupils Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Page, DSO and bar, and the evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace.

[4] These five houses remained for several decades until a sixth house called "Kinman" was added to the growing school, named after the headteacher Major George Kinman who organised the school's move in 1930.