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Westminster School

Westminster School is a public school in Westminster, London, England, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. It descends from a charity school founded by Westminster Benedictines before the Norman Conquest, as documented by the Croyland Chronicle and a charter of King Offa. Continuous existence is clear from the early 14th century.[8] Its academic results place it among the top schools nationally;[9][10] about half its students go to Oxbridge,[11] giving it the highest national Oxbridge acceptance rate.[12] In the 2023 A-Levels, the school saw 82.3 of its candidates score A*/A.[13]

For other uses, see Westminster School (disambiguation).

Westminster School

Latin: Dat Deus Incrementum
(God Gives the Increase)

Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560

Henry VIII (1541)
Elizabeth I (1560 – refoundation)

Mark Batten[3]

Gary Savage[2]

105

Boys
Coeducational (Sixth Form)[6][7]

13 (boys), 16 (girls) to 18

747

  Busby's
  College
  Ashburnham
  Dryden's
  Grant's
  Hakluyt's
  Liddell's
  Milne's
  Purcell's
  Rigaud's
  Wren's

  Pink

The Elizabethan

Boys join the Under School at seven and the Senior School at 13 by examination. Girls join the Sixth Form at 16.[14] About a quarter of the 750 pupils board. Weekly boarders may go home after Saturday morning school.[15] The school motto, Dat Deus Incrementum, quotes 1 Corinthians 3:6: "I planted the seed... but God made it grow."[16] Westminster was one of nine schools examined by the 1861 Clarendon Commission[17] and reformed by the Public Schools Act 1868.


The school has produced three Nobel laureates: Edgar Adrian (Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1932), Sir Andrew Huxley (likewise in 1963) and Sir Richard Stone (Nobel Prize in Economics in 1984). During the mid-17th century, the liberal philosopher of the Enlightenment, John Locke, attended the school, and seven UK prime ministers also then attended, all belonging to the Whig or Liberal factions of British politics: Henry Pelham and his brother Thomas Pelham-Holmes, Charles Watson-Wentworth, James Waldegrave, Augustus Fitzroy, William Cavendish-Bentinck, and John Russell.


Westminster School is included in The Schools Index of the world's 150 best private schools and among top 30 senior schools in the UK.[18]

Years 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 are called Fifth Form, Lower Shell, Upper Shell, Sixth Form and Remove, respectively.

Green is Dean's Yard.

Yard is Little Dean's Yard.

School is the main school hall, where Latin Prayers, exams and major plays and talks take place.

Sanctuary is the area outside the Great West Door of the Abbey off Broad Sanctuary.

Fields is Vincent Square.

The preposition "up" is used to mean "at" or "towards" (hence up School). At my house (boarding/day) and home can be differentiated thus, up House means at School and at my house means at home.

The Greaze has been held "up School" (in the School Hall) on Shrove Tuesday since at least 1753.[97] The head cook ceremoniously tosses a horsehair-reinforced pancake over a high bar, which was used from the 16th century to curtain off the Under School from the Great School. Members of the school fight for the pancake for one minute, watched over by the Dean of Westminster, the Head Master, and the upper year groups of the school[98] and distinguished or even occasionally royal visitors. The pupil who gets the largest weight is awarded a gold sovereign (promptly redeemed for use next year), and the Dean begs for a half-holiday for the whole school. Weighing scales are on hand in the event of a dispute. A cook who failed to get the pancake over the bar after three attempts would formerly have been "booked" or pelted with Latin primers, but that tradition has long lapsed.[99][100]


The privilege of being the first commoners to acclaim each new sovereign at their coronation in Westminster Abbey is reserved for the King's (or Queen's) Scholars. Their shouts of "Vivat Rex/Regina" ("Long live the king/queen!") are incorporated into the coronation anthem "I was glad".[101] The tradition dates back to the coronation of King James II.[102]


Despite the formal separation from the abbey,[103] the school remains Anglican, with services in the abbey attended by the entire school at least twice a week, and many other voluntary-attendance services of worship. The school was expressly exempted by the Act of Uniformity to allow it to continue saying Latin prayers despite the Reformation. Every Wednesday there is an assembly Up School known as Latin Prayers, which opens with the Head Master leading all members of the school in chanting prayers in Latin, followed by notices in English. The school's unique pronunciation of formal Latin is known as "Westminster Latin",[104][105] and descends from medieval English scholastic pronunciation: Queen Elizabeth I, who spoke fluent Latin, commanded that Latin was not to be said "in the monkish fashion", a significant warning upon loyalties between Church and State. The School commemorates its benefactors every year with a service in Westminster Abbey in Latin in which the Captain of the King's Scholars lays a wreath of pink roses on the tomb of Elizabeth I: the service alternates between Little Commem, held in Henry VII's Chapel and involving just the King's Scholars, and the Big Commem, to which the whole school community is invited.[106]


Since the monastic Christmas revels of medieval times, Latin plays have been presented by Scholars, with a prologue and witty epilogue on contemporary events. Annual plays, "either tragedy or comedy", were required by the school statutes in 1560, and some early plays were acted in College Hall before Elizabeth I and her whole Council. However, in a more prudish age, Queen Victoria did not accompany Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales to the play, and recorded in her diary that it was "very Improper". Today, the play is put on less frequently, any members of the school may take part, and the Master of the King's Scholars gives the Latin prologue. The 1938 play caused a diplomatic incident, with the German ambassador withdrawing offended by the words Magna Germania figuring in extenso on a map of Europe displayed.


The King's Scholars have privileged access to the House of Commons gallery, said to be a compromise recorded in the Standing Orders of the House in the 19th century, to stop the boys from climbing into the Palace over the roofs.


There is a Westminster jargon little known to the general public:

For the , at ages 7, 8, and 11, judged by a combination of internal exam and interview.[107]

Under School

For the Great School for entry at age 13, judged by either the , a standardised, national set of exams for entrance to independent schools,[108] for standard entry; a second-round set of internal examinations in English and Mathematics; or the Challenge, an internal set of exams for scholarship entry; as well as an interview.

ISEB Common Entrance Examination

For the Great School for entry at age 16, judged by subject-specific exams and interviews and conditional upon results. This is the only point of entry for girls, and only a handful of boys join at this point each year.

GCSE

There are four main points of entry for pupils:


As well as the normally eight annual King's Scholarships, which pay 80 per cent of boarding fees, there are Honorary Scholarships for boys who pass the Challenge and could have been scholars but do not want to board, and Exhibitions for a few candidates who were close to scholarship standard – however, neither of these carry any fee reduction or other financial benefits. Notably, Stephen Hawking was entered for the Challenge in 1952, but fell ill on the day of the Challenge examination. His parents could not pay the fees without the financial aid of a scholarship, and so he did not attend school.

(rowing coach, later headmaster of Shiplake College)

Nick Bevan

(English Master)

John Sargeaunt

Controversies[edit]

Fee fixing[edit]

Between 2001 and 2004, the school was one of fifty independent schools involved in the independent school fee fixing scandal in the United Kingdom. It was subsequently found guilty of operating a fee-fixing cartel by the Office of Fair Trading. The commission argued that until 2000, the practice had been legal and that the commission had not been aware of the change to the law.[125]

Rape culture and racism[edit]

Two independent reviews were commissioned after national campaigns from Everyone's Invited and Black Lives Matter prompted evidence of rape culture and racism at Westminster School.[126] In March 2022, the school issued a "sincere and unreserved" apology for harm caused by racism, sexual harassment and other harmful sexual behaviour.[126][127]

(1553–1616), writer[133]

Richard Hakluyt

(1556–1607), clergyman and translator[134]

Thomas Braddock

(1573–1637), poet and dramatist[135]

Ben Jonson

(1579–1651), alchemist and royal physician

Arthur Dee

(1593–1633), public orator and poet[136]

George Herbert

(1631–1700), poet and playwright[137]

John Dryden

(1632–1704), philosopher[138]

John Locke

(1632–1723), architect and scientist, co-founder of the Royal Society[139]

Sir Christopher Wren

(1635–1703), scientist[140]

Robert Hooke

(1659–1695), composer

Henry Purcell

(1704–1732), poet admired by Alexander Pope[141]

Joseph Thurston

(1707–1788), Methodist preacher and writer of over 6,000 hymns[142]

Charles Wesley

(1714–1788), banker and Lord Mayor of London (1757–1758)

Sir Charles Asgill, 1st Baronet

(1725–1786), First Lord of the Admiralty

Augustus Keppel, 1st Viscount Keppel

(1735–1811), Prime Minister

Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton

(1737–1794), historian[143]

Edward Gibbon

(1740 – 25 February 1802), British military officer in the Seven Years' War, American War of Independence, and French Revolutionary War, later Governor of Gibraltar

Charles O'Hara

(1746–1825), ADC to Washington 1777, defeated by Jefferson in 1804 in contest for Presidency

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

(1748–1832), lawyer, eccentric and philosopher[144]

Jeremy Bentham

(1750–1828), American soldier, politician, and diplomat

Thomas Pinckney

(1762–1823), British soldier and principal in the Asgill Affair

Sir Charles Asgill, 2nd Baronet

(1774–1843), poet, historian and biographer[145]

Robert Southey

(1775–1818), novelist and dramatist[146]

Matthew Lewis

(1788–1855), lost his right arm at Waterloo, C-in-C in the Crimea who is honoured with a statue in Dean's Yard

FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan

(1792–1878), Prime Minister

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

(11 June 1802 – 5 October 1883), the first Anglican bishop of Adelaide, South Australia

Augustus Short

(1852–1935), electrical engineer, author and editor.[147]

Harry Robert Kempe

(1882–1956, QS), author and journalist[148]

A. A. Milne

(1893–1972), Cabinet Minister during World War II, chairman of the National Theatre Board

Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos

(1882–1964), former Prime Minister of Iran

Hossein Ala'

(1889–1983), conductor

Sir Adrian Boult

(1889–1977) Nobel prize winner

Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian

(1903–1946), pioneer aviator

Charles William Anderson Scott

(1904–2000, GG), actor and director[149]

Sir John Gielgud

(1909–1981), historian[150]

Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith

(1912–1988), high-ranking member of British intelligence, one of the Cambridge Five and NKVD/KGB double agent

Kim Philby

(1913–1990), portrait and fashion photographer

Sir Norman Parkinson

(1913–1991), winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics[151]

Richard Stone

(1914–2007), publisher and railway photographer[152]

Roger Kidner

(1917–2012), Nobel prizewinning physiologist

Sir Andrew Huxley

(1921–2004), actor, writer, director and raconteur[153]

Sir Peter Ustinov

(1923–1995), fashion photographer

John Cole

(1925–2014), politician[154]

Tony Benn

(1925–2022, LL 1937–1938), theatre director

Peter Brook

(1932–2023, WW 1945–1950), former Chancellor of the Exchequer, father of Nigella Lawson

Nigel Lawson

(1936–2008, WW 1949–1954), playwright and diarist[155]

Simon Gray

(born 1942, LL 1956–1960), journalist, author and former Editor of The Observer and South China Morning Post

Jonathan Fenby

(born 1947) Professor of Chemistry and narrator of The Periodic Table of Videos[156]

Sir Martyn Poliakoff

(born 1948, QS 1960–1965), composer and producer[157]

Andrew Lloyd Webber

(born 1952, WW 1966–1970), director, playwright and television dramatist[158]

Stephen Poliakoff

(born 1954), disgraced Liberal Democrat politician

Chris Huhne

(born 1956), former attorney-general and pro-European politician

Dominic Grieve

(born 1957), Professor at the University of Cambridge

Jon Crowcroft

(1957-2023, AHH 1972–1973), musician

Shane MacGowan

(born 1959), journalist, broadcaster and author

Adam Boulton

(born 1960), art critic and writer

Andrew Graham-Dixon

(born 1960), author and journalist[159]

Edward St Aubyn

(born 1960), Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University

Timothy Winter

(born 1961), film producer[160][161][162]

David Heyman

(born 1963), arts administrator

Alexander Beard

(born 1963, RR 1978–1981), broadcaster[163]

Matt Frei

(born 1964), classical tenor

Ian Bostridge

(born 1965), musician, songwriter, and lead singer with rock band Bush

Gavin Rossdale

(born 1965), banker

Michael Sherwood

(born 1966), writer and critic

Lucasta Miller

(born 1966, LL 1982–1984), actress[164]

Helena Bonham Carter

(born 1967), pianist and composer

Jason Kouchak

(born 1967, CC 1983–85), economist and campaigner

Noreena Hertz

(born 1967, LL), Liberal Democrat leader, MP for Sheffield Hallam, former Deputy Prime Minister[165]

Nick Clegg

(1968–1972, GG), broadcaster

James Robbins

(born 1968, DD 1984–86), cabinet minister[166]

Ruth Kelly

(RR 1981–83), journalist

Afshin Rattansi

(born 1968), novelist and broadcaster[167]

Marcel Theroux

(born 1968), broadcaster, director and screenwriter

Joe Cornish

(born 1969), comedian

Adam Buxton

(born 1969, RR 1982–1988), journalist

Giles Coren

(born 1970), documentary film-maker[168]

Lucy Walker

(born 1970), broadcaster

Louis Theroux

(born 1970), artist

Jonathan Yeo

(born 1971, WW, 1987–1989), British musician under the name "Dido"

Dido Armstrong

(born 1972) Director of the Chemical Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Polly Arnold

(born 1973), head of Digital Public Services[169]

Martha Lane Fox

(born 1974), BBC News presenter

James Reynolds

(born 1977), artist

Conrad Shawcross

(born 1978, HH 1994–1996), documentary film-maker

Pinny Grylls

(born 1978), playwright

Benjamin Yeoh

(born 1978), Harry Potter actor

Christian Coulson

(born 1979), Chairman of the London Contemporary Orchestra

Simon Ambrose

(born 1979), conductor

Alexander Shelley

(born 1983), novelist

Anna Stothard

(born 1983), musician under the name "Mika"

Michael Penniman

(born 1985), actor

Jack Farthing

(born 1985), cellist in the band Clean Bandit

Grace Chatto

(born 1988), Harry Potter actor

Alfred Enoch

(born 1990), captain of winning University Challenge team 2010

Alexander Guttenplan

(born 1995), racing driver

Jack Aitken

(born 1997), artist and model

Blondey McCoy

(2021-2023), singer

Olivia Hardy

List of the oldest schools in the world

Old Westminsters F.C.

Schools' Head of the River Race

The Old Boys' Network

Official website