The John of Gaunt School

The school's predecessors were Trowbridge Girls' High School and Trowbridge Boys' High School, both single-sex grammar schools. These formed a co-educational grammar school, the Combined High Schools, on 14 April 1969.

In 1974 the school became a coeducational comprehensive school and was renamed The John of Gaunt School. Previously a community school administered by Wiltshire Council, The John of Gaunt School converted to academy status on 1 April 2012. However, the school continues to coordinate with Wiltshire Council for admissions.

The John of Gaunt School offers GCSEs and BTECs as programmes of study for pupils, as well as some vocational courses offered in conjunction with Wiltshire College.[3] Students in the sixth form have the option to study from a range of A-levels and further BTECs.[4]

• Prof Harry Coles, former Professor of Photonics of Molecular Materials at the University of Cambridge,[5] and Professor from 1991 to 2002 at the University of Southampton Southampton Liquid Crystal Institute, recipient of a medal from the British Liquid Crystal Society
• Sir William Richard Joseph Cook FRS, mathematician, who largely led the British hydrogen bomb programme in the 1950s
• Kenneth Harris CBE, former chief interviewer for The Observer newspaper
• Tony Lane FRS, nuclear physicist[6]
• John Henry Pyle Pafford, librarian and editor
• James Rodway, botanist
• Alan Smith, Bishop of St Albans since 2009, and Member of the House of Lords

• Janet Anderson (briefly), Labour MP from 1992 to 2010 for Rossendale and Darwen
• Maureen Duffy author
• Prof Joan M. Hussey, Professor of History from 1950 to 1974 at the University of London
• Deborah Meaden, businesswoman and television personality on Dragons' Den
• Bel Mooney, journalist and broadcaster
• Marjorie Reeves CBE, historian