From the Head Master

Westminster is an exciting place to be. It is an academic school where pupils are taught to think by teachers who inspire them. Westminster's pre-eminence in the League Tables is a result of pupils learning the skills of intellectual enquiry and debate and applying them with relish well beyond the syllabus. Pupils achieve exceptional public examination results therefore, but the School is not an academic hothouse for the passing of exams.

In terms of entrance to university, over the past five years, each year some 50% of pupils were accepted by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 45% chose courses to suit them at the country's other leading universities and 5% have taken up places at universities in America. Westminster parents also choose the School for their sons and daughters (the Sixth Form is fully co-educational) for the astonishing range of opportunities beyond the classroom in music, drama, debating and sport. Pupils are keen to look outward as well and to play their part in the life of the local community; and Westminster is developing close relationships with neighbouring schools, both primary and secondary.

Some third of the pupils board on a full or weekly basis. The School's boarding ethos, for the benefit of both boarders and day pupils alike, with its longer day and week, allows time both for education in depth and for a level of individual care and attention second to none. There is no such thing as a typical Westminster pupil. In addition to their academic development, some are sports-mad while others prefer to spend their time in earnest debate about all matters under the sun. What they have in common is that they emerge from Westminster articulate and confident and ready for university and the wider world.

The School's unique setting, which it has occupied for centuries, between the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, with the use of the Abbey as the School Chapel, embraces us all in a very special atmosphere. The proximity of London's museums, galleries, concert halls and theatres, and our links with the universities and business mean that a Westminster education spreads well beyond the School's boundaries. As a result of recent property acquisitions, the School has been able to put behind it the problems of lack of space. The new Manoukian Music Centre, which has a performance space for more than a hundred, a recording studio and twenty teaching and practice rooms, and the Weston's Building in Dean's Yard, with four floors of new classrooms for the teaching of Modern Languages and the Humanities, are two examples of our expanding facilities.

You will, I hope, get a helpful and informative impression of Westminster from this website. But nothing, of course, can replace a visit to the School. Please look at the heading on this website to see how best to arrange one. I look forward to meeting you and your sons and daughters.

Dr M S Spurr
Head Master