Downside School Competitors

As one of the world’s leading schools, we go beyond academic excellence to develop the whole person. We look outwards, to the world beyond school and to our pupils’ futures.

Tonbridge is one of the leading boys’ boarding and day schools in the UK for boys aged 13-18. The School occupies an extensive site of 150 acres in Kent – just a 40-minute train journey from London Charing Cross. Tonbridge School has an outstanding academic reputation. In the latest Sunday Times ‘Parent Power’ league table, Tonbridge was the 6th highest ranking independent school in the country, and the top boarding school. Tonbridge encourages its students to make connections – connections between subjects, between people, between cultures: with the aim of producing fine minds and good hearts. The School’s ethos is summed up in just two words: ‘Only Connect’.

Oundle School is situated in the quintessentially English market town of Oundle, about 90 miles north of London. The School’s buildings, dating from the 17th, are dispersed throughout the town, which is, to a large extent, its campus. The School’s history dates back to 1556, when Sir William Laxton, Master of the Worshipful Company of Grocers and Lord Mayor of London, endowed and re-founded the original Oundle Grammar School, of which he was a former pupil. In 1876, the Grocer’s Company divided the School into two parts; Laxton Grammar School, primarily for the inhabitants of the town, and Oundle School, primarily for pupils from further afield. In 2000, the Grocers’ Company reunited the two schools under the common name of Oundle School and retained the name of Laxton for the day House. At the beginning of the 20th century, Oundle was put firmly on the map of leading English public schools by its most famous headmaster, F W Sanderson, who established Oundle’s reputation as one of the great science and engineering schools, a reputation still renowned today. In 2016, the School completed its ambitious SciTec project, uniting Science, Mathematics, Design, Technology and Engineering both physically and philosophically, enabling pupils to move seamlessly from theory to practice and from pure science to the achievement of a workable technology. The development includes the ground-breaking Patrick Engineering Centre, a new Mathematics department and an extension to its sixteen state-of-the-art Science laboratories. In 2020, the Oundle School Sports Centre was opened, which is the flagship of the Sports MasterPlan. It is central to the expansion of the sports programme, and offers pupils a wide range of both sport and leisure-based facilities and activities. There are currently 1,130 pupils on roll at Oundle School, with 820 boarders and 310 day pupils. Also within the Corporation of Oundle School is Laxton Junior School, a day school for children aged 4 to 11.