It was the first local authority boarding school to be set up, following the recommendations of the 1943 Fleming Report, which were implemented in the Butler Education Act, of the following year.
School fees were subject to a means test, the poorest students receiving a bursary from the county council if their parents applied for one.
[2][3] SCC had purchased the estate in 1945, after the war, during which time much of it had been used by the Ministry of Defence, as a vehicle park, and, for a while, the giant US Mobil petroleum company had its UK headquarters in the imposing mansion building, with its magnificent formal gardens.
They renovated classrooms for local Primary Schools, erected bus shelters, built accommodation for the Cheshire Foundation, helped on the newly formed Ockenden Venture and constructed a Youth Club building in Camberwell.
Dodds was a Cambridge graduate, previously a housemaster at St Peter's York, a justice of the peace, Samaritan and founder of the Boarding Schools Association.
But, at that size, which gave it a lower student to teacher ratio than the most exclusive public schools, the Conservative Party (UK) politicians who ran Surrey county council, did not think it represented value for money.
After Ottershaw School closed, Dodds first became a Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) civil servant, before being appointed personal assistant to the Bishop of Southwark, the Right Reverend Ronald Bowlby.
His son Richard Dodds OBE, who grew up at the school, is a former English field hockey player and was captain of the gold medal-winning Great Britain squad in the 1988 Summer Seoul Olympics.
Financial considerations were always a concern for the cost-cutting Surrey County Council chiefs, despite the economies achieved by the school's frugal organisation.
However, despite vigorous political lobbying taken to the House of Commons by students, staff, parents and friends of Ottershaw, the county council took the decision to close the school in 1980.