In September 1955, four days before the school was due to open, the Minister of Education, Sir David Eccles, intervened to stop the comprehensive plan.

The Minister thought the council's plans were too rudimentary, uneconomic, not thought-through (especially two sites for a school being half a mile apart) and a little rushed and ill-conceived.

The council was resolute in opening the school as a two-site comprehensive in September 1955, claiming it was just too late for the plans to be reversed.

Mitzi Cunliffe, of Didsbury, made a sculpture for the West Wythenshawe technical schools.

The comprehensive change was incremental, and the last grammar school intake left as sixth formers in 1973.

In late 1985, there was a dispute over five boys, who were expelled in June 1985 for obscene graffiti describing ten teachers (and their wives).

When they were reinstated, by the local council, this prompted 47 out of 61 teachers to refuse to teach them, which involved virtually closing the school for approximately seven months.

The site became a small, discrete housing development within the greater Woodhouse Park estate.

Wythenshawe is a part of Manchester with social problems, and this may have been reflected in the school's troubled life as a comprehensive.