From the Liverpool Institute to LIPA

The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys

Paul McCartney attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys on Mount Street from 1953 to 1960, and George Harrison was there from 1954 to 1959. The school closed in 1985. After a project that took about seven years and cost around £20 million, the Grade II listed building reopened as the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, LIPA, which Queen Elizabeth II officially opened on 7 June 1996.

The Institute had a long history before the Beatles. It began in 1825 as the Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts and grew into one of the city's leading boys' grammar schools. Entry depended on passing the eleven-plus exam, and Paul won his place that way, moving up from Joseph Williams Junior School in 1953.

Paul and George were far from the only pupils who ended up in the Beatles story. Neil Aspinall, later the band's road manager and for decades the head of Apple Corps, was at the school from 1954 to 1959, the same years as George. Len Garry of the Quarrymen was there too, and so was Ivan Vaughan. Other old boys include the BBC newsreader Peter Sissons, who was in Paul's year, and the theatre producer Bill Kenwright.

Paul, George and the School Bus

Paul and George met through school. George was about eight months younger and a year below Paul, and the two got to know each other on the bus journeys to and from the Institute, bonding over guitars and rock and roll. When Paul joined John Lennon's group, the Quarrymen, in 1957, he soon recommended George, and George impressed John by playing the instrumental 'Raunchy', traditionally said to have happened on the top deck of a Liverpool bus in early 1958.

The Institute connection went further. Ivan Vaughan, the Institute boy who introduced Paul to John at the Woolton fete on 6 July 1957, was born on the same day as Paul, 18 June 1942. Next door, on Hope Street, stood the Liverpool College of Art, where John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe studied. The two buildings stand side by side, and in the late 1950s Paul and George regularly slipped round to the art college to meet John at lunchtimes.

Paul's English teacher, Alan Durband, himself a former Institute pupil and later one of the founders of the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, appears often in Paul's accounts of his schooldays. Paul has credited him with opening up literature for him, including Chaucer, and with showing that serious writing could be enjoyed rather than just studied.

The Schooldays in Paul's Later Work

Paul's school years have never been far from his songwriting. In the late 1950s he and John often skipped lessons to write songs at 20 Forthlin Road while his father was at work, and several of the earliest Lennon-McCartney songs date from that period, when Paul was still, officially, an Institute pupil working toward his exams. He stayed on into the sixth form, and teacher training was a real possibility, before the Beatles' first trip to Hamburg in August 1960 pulled him into music full time. George had left a year earlier to work as an apprentice electrician at the Blacklers department store.

Those years came back strongly with The Boys of Dungeon Lane, Paul's twentieth solo studio album, released on 29 May 2026 and co-produced with Andrew Watt in sessions that began in 2021. The album looks back at his childhood and teenage years in post-war Liverpool and at the early friendships with George and John, and the title refers to Dungeon Lane, a road in Speke that runs down to Oglet shore on the Mersey; the phrase itself first appeared in 'In Liverpool', a song Paul demoed in 1991. It went to No.1 in the UK. Our review of The Boys of Dungeon Lane goes through it track by track.

More than seventy years after Paul first walked through the Mount Street doors, the building is full of young performers, and Paul is still writing about the boy who walked in.

Closure in 1985 and Paul's Plan

The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys closed in 1985 after 160 years, as Liverpool's schools were reorganised. The building on Mount Street was left empty and fell into serious disrepair, and for a few years it looked as if the school where two Beatles had studied might simply decay.

Paul decided to save it. His partner was Mark Featherstone-Witty, an educational entrepreneur who had already established the BRIT School in London and was introduced to Paul by George Martin. Together they set out to turn the building into a school for the performing arts. The plan took seven years and around £20 million to deliver. Paul contributed his own money and time, and helped raise funds from a mix of public bodies and private donors.

The restored building kept the historic facade, the entrance hall and a modified version of the old school hall, while the rest was rebuilt for modern teaching, with studios, rehearsal rooms and performance spaces. In March 2012 LIPA bought the former Liverpool College of Art building next door for £3.7 million, and after its renovation was completed in 2016 John's old art school became part of the same campus as Paul and George's old grammar school.

LIPA Today

LIPA was designated a higher education institution in 2006 and offers undergraduate degrees across music, acting, dance, sound technology, theatre and performance design, management and related disciplines, along with foundation and postgraduate courses. For most of its history its degrees were validated by Liverpool John Moores University. On 7 August 2025 LIPA was granted its own degree awarding powers by the Office for Students, and the 2025 to 2026 intake became the first to enrol on degrees validated directly by LIPA.

The teaching model is practical. Students are trained not only to perform but also to manage, produce and support performances. Graduates include the Wombats, who met as students in 2003, singer-songwriter Sandi Thom, who graduated the same year and later had a UK No.1 single, and Jessica Staveley-Taylor of the Staves, plus many people working behind the scenes in theatre, music and television.

LIPA also ran a primary free school, opened in 2014, and a sixth form college, opened in 2016, both of which were scheduled to close in July 2026. LIPA's part-time academy for performers aged 4 to 19 has run since 2003.

Instead of honorary degrees, LIPA awards 'Companionships' to people from the arts and entertainment industries, usually presented by Paul at graduation. Nile Rodgers was made a Companion in 2018, and Stephen Fry and Rowan Atkinson in 2019.

Paul's Continuing Role

Paul is LIPA's lead patron and has stayed personally involved for three decades. He regularly attends the annual graduation ceremonies, where he shakes hands with each graduating student and presents them with a LIPA pin badge.

He has also run songwriting sessions with LIPA students over the years, in the building where he went to school. Paul often points out that he never learned to read music, and LIPA gives students the kind of structured performing arts training that did not exist in Liverpool when he was a teenager.

June 2026 marked 30 years since LIPA's official opening. For background on Paul's Liverpool, our list of the best Beatles books includes the major histories of the band's early years, and our Liverpool Beatles trip guide covers how to see the building for yourself.

Why the Story Matters to Fans

Many Beatles sites in Liverpool preserve the past: the rebuilt Cavern, the National Trust homes restored to their 1950s look. LIPA is different. It is a working institution in the building where Paul and George had their lessons, joined since 2016 by the art school where John studied.

For a visitor, the best route is to stand on Mount Street, look at the columned facade Paul walked through every school day, then walk round the corner to Hope Street. Within a few yards are the two buildings where John, Paul and George were educated as teenagers, and the Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub, a haunt of John's art school crowd, is a short walk further along Hope Street.