The King's School, Macclesfield, is one of the oldest schools in the north of England, founded in 1502 by Sir John Percyvale, a former Lord Mayor of London, as Macclesfield Grammar School. It was re-founded by Edward VI in 1552 as the Free Grammar School of King Edward VI, and it has carried a royal name ever since.
After more than 500 years of continuous operation in the centre of Macclesfield, the school moved in July 2020 to a purpose-built single-site campus in nearby Prestbury, Cheshire, alongside the Derby Playing Fields that have been its sporting home for generations. Today King's is a co-educational private day school and a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, educating around 1,340 pupils from age 3 through to 18. Its journey to full co-education was gradual: the sixth form admitted girls in 1986, a Girls' Division opened in 1993 on the site of the old Macclesfield High School, and the 2020 move brought the whole school together on one campus. Pupils belong to one of four houses named after Cheshire estates - Gawsworth, Adlington, Tatton and Capesthorne - and the school's guiding principles are to challenge, develop, foster and support. Academically it is consistently strong, with roughly two-thirds of GCSE grades and around half of A-level grades at the top bands in recent years. Life beyond the classroom is a defining feature.
The Foundation Choir won BBC Songs of Praise Choir of the Year in 2003 and tours Europe regularly, the drama programme stages several productions a year, and pupils take part in World Challenge expeditions that have reached Morocco, Ecuador, India, Namibia and Borneo. Rugby sits at the heart of the school's sporting tradition, alongside hockey, netball, cricket and a nationally successful cheerleading squad. Old Maxonians have earned international caps across five decades: Steve Smith captained England and toured with the British and Irish Lions, winning 28 caps between 1973 and 1983, while Richard Pool-Jones, Jos Baxendell and Tommy Taylor all followed him into an England shirt. The most recent is Cameron Redpath, capped by Scotland in 2021 and now at Bath, with Tom Hudson of Gloucester also among the school's professional products. King's has also produced England cricket coach Peter Moores, along with an eclectic list of former pupils that includes Joy Division's Ian Curtis and Stephen Morris, The 1975's Matty Healy, Turner