Queen Elizabeths School

About the School

For well over four hundred years, successive generations of boys have benefited from an education at Queen Elizabeth’s School.

Its rich heritage is reflected in the School Chronicle, which is read annually on Founder’s Day and which records the Governors’ requirement that the education we provide should be as much in “good manners as in nurture for learning”. Similarly, the school mission has long been “to produce young men who are confident, able and responsible”. In its strategic vision plan, Building on Distinction, Queen Elizabeth’s School has re-defined what that means for the 2020s, gleaning the best from its historic traditions and from its experience as one of the country’s leading academic schools, and then combining that with the qualities which a new generation of Elizabethans will need to flourish in an inter-connected and fast-changing world.

To this end, staff are committed firstly to the pursuit of academic development at the highest level. Queen Elizabeth’s School lays good foundations such as hard work and perseverance, and, as a meritocracy, it regularly celebrate intellectual accomplishment. The School seeks to nurture broad, analytical thinkers who will thrive at university and beyond. The fruit of this approach is seen in public examination results: Queen Elizabeth’s School is consistently placed at or very near the top of national league tables.

Secondly, they aim to inculcate in all boys attributes such as resilience and the ability to act appropriately in any situation, helping them to become principled young men secure in their own identity. This is achieved partly through a bespoke tutoring system and carefully structured pastoral arrangements, and partly through an expectation that all boys participate fully in the life of the School. Queen Elizabeth’s School has an exciting, diverse range of extra-curricular activities through which every boy can pursue his interests and stretch himself as he learns new skills and talents.

An emphasis on service within the School and through initiatives such as the Sixth Form external volunteering programme, Queen Elizabeth’s School promotes generosity of spirit and civic engagement, with boys learning to devote time and energy to the greater good. Staff emphasise kindness, consideration and compassion, encouraging boys to play their part in fostering a happy, inclusive School community.

Queen Elizabeth’s School offers a meticulous and richly faceted holistic approach to the education of the boys in its charge. It is this approach, combined with excellent facilities and a proud history dating back to 1573, that make the Queen Elizabeth’s School experience truly a state school experience like no other.