Liz Truss has claimed to be the first Prime Minister to have attended comprehensive school in her Conservative Party conference speech.
According to fact checking group Full Fact this isn’t correct. At least one other previous Prime Minister attended a comprehensive school. Theresa May’s biography on the government website says that she received some private education, but also went to a comprehensive. This appears to be a reference to Wheatley Park, a former grammar school near Oxford that became a comprehensive in 1971, when Mrs May was 14.
A spokesperson for Wheatley Park told Full Fact that Mrs May joined the school when she was 13 “when the Upper School site was still Holton Girls Grammar School, and left it after her Sixth Form by which time it was the Upper School site of Wheatley Park Comprehensive School. The school was officially a comprehensive from September 1971" and a 2016 BBC report on Mrs May’s school days refers to her as a pupil there in 1974.
