Located in Leicester, Regent College had a history stretching back well before its time as a sixth form college. Originally operating as Wyggeston Girls’ Grammar School, it was a selective institution where pupils were required to pass an entrance exam based on academic ability. The school transitioned into a sixth form college in 1976 under the name Wyggeston Collegiate Sixth Form College, before being renamed Regent College in 1996. In 2018, it was merged into the nearby Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College, bringing its independent existence to a close.
Notable Alumni
The school produced a remarkable range of women who went on to significant careers. Biddy Baxter MBE, who attended between 1944 and 1951, went on to create the long-running BBC children’s programme Blue Peter. Joanna David, the actress who married Edward Fox in 2004 and is the mother of Emilia Fox and Freddie Fox, was also a pupil, as was poet and novelist Elaine Feinstein. Ruth Henig, Baroness Henig, served as chairman of the Security Industry Authority from 2007 to 2013. Other former pupils include Dinah Nichols CB, who chaired Keep Britain Tidy from 2012 to 2016, Faith Jaques, who illustrated Roald Dahl books and designed the Royal Mail 1978 Christmas stamps, and Helen Koppell, an Olympic diver in the 1970s who later emigrated to Canada to work as an anaesthetist. Linda Stratmann, the true crime writer, attended between 1959 and 1964, and Mary Stott, a Guardian journalist and feminist, was a pupil as far back as 1918 to 1925.
Teachers and Earlier History
Among the school’s former teachers was Ruth Railton, a music teacher who, in the mid-1940s, came up with the idea for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Clara Collet, a social reformer who worked to improve women’s working conditions and was an acquaintance of Karl Marx, taught at the school from 1878 to 1885. Historian Ruth Bird and art teacher Robert Purdy MBE are also among those who taught there. Enid Essame, who was headmistress of Queenswood School from 1943 to 1971, attended the school between 1918 and 1923, connecting the institution to a broad history of women in education and public life.