The initial intake of 369 included the pupil-teachers from two centres opened by the school board in 1894 and given permanent buildings in Russell Road (1896) and Water Lane (1897).

[citation needed] When the school moved to the newly developed Upton Lane site in 1958 a statue of an owl was mounted near the main entrance.

This was a reference to the owl puppet on the popular children's TV programme Tuesday Rendezvous with this name.

At this time pupils were assigned to one of four houses: Fry (green), Gurney (blue), Langthorne (yellow) and Lister (red) named after Elizabeth Fry, Samuel Gurney, Stratford Langthorne Abbey, and Joseph Lister.

Each pupil is also in one of six houses, Curie, Noether, Euler, Crick, Hawking, Berners-Lee; each denoted by a different colour stripe on their tie.