The schools were opened in 1915, replacing the schools in Outram Street.

The W.I. History of Ripley, written in 1931, gives this summary: “They were designed by Mr B. Widdowes, and a model of them was thought worthy of a place in the Education section of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley (in 1924 and 1925). With their light and airy classrooms, open quadrangles with green turf and shrubs, long open corridors, woodwork and housewifery centres, and great central halls, they are schools of which any town might be proud.”

They were effectively four schools in one : senior boys’ and senior girls’ schools and junior boys’ and girls’ schools, which at some point included the infants. From 1960 they became an infants and a junior school, as secondary education was provided elsewhere.

In the 1930s, Mabel Turner was Senior Mistress of the senior girls’ school whilst her sister Marion was the headmistress of the junior girls’ school. They were both among the five women who in 1931 wrote the History of Ripley, which won the national Rose Bowl in a W.I. competition, and is available in facsimile from RDHT.

In 1960 secondary age children were moved to Benjamin Outram secondary school, or Ripley Technical School, though some continued to attend grammar schools in Swanwick, Heanor or Belper.

In 1980, when education was reorganised, the Shirley Road schools were closed and pupils moved to new schools : Ripley Infant and Junior Schools, St John’s CE Primary School and the Lons Infants school.

The Shirley Road schools were demolished and housing built on the land.