The Abraham Moss opened in 1973 as a multipurpose integrated centre with lower school, and upper school seamlessly joining to a FE college, a library and a leisure centre. The first principal was Ron Mitson, with Dave Shapcott being head of school. It aimed to teach through independent resource-based learning- staff developed and pasted up their own materials which were then taken to the printroom, where the masters were allocated an accession number and the printroom staff would print the required number of copies on offset litho machines. It was referred to as a school without books. The building was featured in a DES best practice building report.