Westminster School

Westminster School is the perfect environment for happy and purposeful pupils. Pupils are intellectually, socially, ethically and politically engaged and our aim is to ensure that their enthusiasm for learning is developed further, allowing them to take full advantage of the opportunities presented to them in the future.

While the School is one of the foremost centres of academic excellence in the country, its commitment to academic life does not make it a hothouse for passing examinations. Pupils’ success at examinations and entry to leading universities is instead a result of their enjoyment of academic enquiry, debate and search for explanation, well beyond published syllabuses. It is important also that pupils have the freedom to lead on projects outside of the classroom and embrace a whole range of extra-curricular activities and interests. A host of pupil-led Societies take place every week at the School and pupils can choose to study an additional language, play an instrument or two, volunteer in the local community, row along the Thames, take part in plays and musicals, and much more.

The School’s ethos resides in the enduring values of the liberal tradition reflected in the 1560 Charter of Westminster’s Elizabethan foundation, where it is stated that: ‘the youth which is growing to manhood, as tender shoots in the wood of our state, shall be liberally instructed in good books to the greater honour of the state’. Whilst academic and cultural attainments are highly prized at Westminster, the School is fully committed also to nurture each pupil’s spiritual, moral, emotional and physical development and wellbeing – with a particular emphasis on drawing out individual talent wherever it lies – and to prepare young people for fulfilled private and public lives.’