Grantham and eminent past students. Britain's first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, attended Kesteven and Grantham, and Isaac Newton famously attended The King's. Both have remained single-sex up to the age of 16. In 1970, Kesteven County Council (based in Sleaford) announced plans to turn the grammar schools into co-educational comprehensives for ages of 11–16 and leave Grantham College the only sixth form for the town. Later it was proposed to create two sixth-form colleges from one of the grammar schools. Other parts of Kesteven became comprehensive but responsibility for education passed to Lincolnshire under the local government reorganization of 1974,
Francis Newton Parsons Francis Newton Parsons Francis Newton Parsons VC (23 March 1875 in Dover – 10 March 1900) was educated at Dover College, joined the Essex Regiment and served in the Second Boer War. He was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. Parsons was a chorister educated at King's College School, Cambridge from where he proceeded to Dover College, and then to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and on graduation was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the