Education

Stamford has five state primary schools - Bluecoat, St Augustine's (RC), St George's, St Gilbert's and Malcolm Sargent, and the independent Stamford Endowed Schools Junior School, a co-educational school for children from ages two to eleven.^[35]
There is one state secondary school in the town itself: Stamford Welland Academy (formerly Stamford Queen Eleanor School). This was formed in the late 1980s after the dissolution of the town's two comprehensive schools - Fane and Exeter. It became an academy in 2011. In April 2013, a group of parents announced their intention to establish a Free School in the town^[36] but their proposal did not receive government backing. Instead, the multi-academy trust which had submitted the Free School bid was invited to take over the running of the existing school.^[37]
Stamford School and Stamford High School are long established independent schools with approximately 1,500 pupils combined. Stamford School (boys) was founded in 1532, with the High School (girls) founded in 1877. The schools have taught co-educational classes in the sixth form since 2000.
Most of Lincolnshire still has grammar schools. In Stamford, the place of grammar schools was long filled by a form of the Assisted Places Scheme that provided state funding to send children to one of the two independent schools in the town that were formerly direct-grant grammars.^[38] The national scheme was abolished by the 1997 Labour government. The Stamford arrangements remained in place as an increasingly protracted transitional arrangement. In 2008, the council decided no new places could be funded and the arrangement finally ended in 2012. The rest of South Kesteven, apart from Market Deeping, has the selective system.
Other secondary pupils travel to nearby Casterton College or further afield to other schools such as The Deepings School or Bourne Grammar School.
New College Stamford offers post-16 further education: work-based, vocational and academic; and higher education courses including BA degrees in art and design awarded by the University of Lincoln and teaching related courses awarded by Bishop Grosseteste University.^[39] The college also offers a range of informal adult learning.
In 1333-4, a group of students and tutors from Merton and Brasenose Colleges, dissatisfied with conditions at their university, left Oxford to establish a rival college at Stamford. Oxford and Cambridge universities petitioned Edward III, and the King ordered the closure of the college and the return of the students to Oxford. Oxford MA students were obliged to swear the following: "You shall also swear that you will not read lectures, or hear them read, at Stamford, as in a University study, or college general", an oath which remained in place until 1827.^[40] The site, and limited remains, of the former 'Brazenose College, Stamford' where the Oxford secessionists lived and studied, now forms part of the Stamford School premises.^[41]