As houses appeared on drained marshland, schools were needed too. The situation was one such as Woodard knew in Bethnal Green and Old Shoreham. National and other schools taught poor children, but private 'proprietory academies' provided for the middle-classes. Such was a boys' boarding-school established in Deansgate by Walter Lord Browne, formerly a master at Cranbrook School in Kent. His school is believed to have been located at the offices of Wilkin and Chapman before moving to Bargate in the early 1850s. The school became important in the town, its pupils wearing mortarboards and Eton suits in church on Sundays. This was also the time of religious revival in England.

The Parish church was restored, a new organ was built, and choral services were started. From 1867 to 1879 an Oxford graduate, James Peter Young, was a curate there and then vicar until 1898. He shared Woodard's belief in education and music in worship. When he became vicar he wanted the parish church to have a choir school, like cathedrals, to give the choristers both musical training and a general education. In 1880 he established St James' Choir School in the Aqua Rooms, an auctioneer's premises. When it succeeded, he wished to provide education also for the boys, when they outgrew the choir. In 1882 Browne retired and sold his school to Young, who made it into St James' College, a day-school for the older boys. They had, advertisements stated, tuition in book-keeping, art, football, daily drill, a hard playground and 'frequent opportunities for sea-bathing in season'. Later school rules stated, 'Catapults and articles of an inflammable nature must not be brought upon the premises'. As its patron, the Earl of Yarborough gave it a large number of books, which are still in the library.



The Aqua Rooms did not suit the Choir School, and Board Schools established under the Education Act of 1870 threatened both schools. In 1897, therefore, the Choir School moved to Bargate, and in 1904 more new buildings were provided there for the united school called St James' Choir School.
 
Since 1975 its name has been St James' School, but its link with the parish church remains. The choristers are educated there, receive a choral training and sing Evensong three times a week in the church as well as the services on Sundays and major festivals. The lay clerks and organist are connected with the school in various ways, and some ex-choristers sing in the choir as choral scholars. 
 
The school has now purchased several more adjoining large detached Victorian houses built in the prosperous part of the town during its rapid expansion, including Pelham House, so-called because it housed the Pelham School, a girls' school founded during the 1870s. This school had moved to Pelham House when the Lettons, well known local fish merchants, sold their house in the mid-1960s, but it unfortunately closed in 1972. There is now a Nursery and Preparatory Department founded in 1957 and a VI Form in 1959, so there are now pupils between two-and-a-half and eighteen years. Weekly boarders were taken in 1959 and termly boarders as well in 1964. Girls were admitted as day-pupils in 1973 and as boarders two years later. There are now about 200 day-pupils, and 40 boarders in three Houses.
 
It became an associated Woodard school in 1968 and was incorporated in 1985, which involved the alteration of its constitution which had previously required pupils to come from 'in and near Grimsby', so that now pupils arrive from all over the world to be educated at St James'. It lacks a chapel, but has a chaplain, and prayers are held on weekdays and Holy Communion during Lent, and pupils are prepared for confirmation. Every term ends with a service in the parish church, and team vicars regularly visit the school to take Friday assemblies, as well as leading beginning of term services in school. As a choir school and a Woodard school, it is faithful to the ideals of its original founders and of Nathaniel Woodard himself.