There were attempts to make the always coeducational school single-sex (girls only) during the 1950s but both the school and the Old Issonians Association were opposed to the idea. In 1956, Charles Thompson (Headmaster of Itchen Grammar School 1950-1971) wrote: “The school’s greatest source of strength is to be found in the fact that it is coeducational. From the earliest days of the secondary school, when coeducation was far less common than it is now, social activities involving both boys and girls were a readily accepted feature of the school.”