Dauntsey's School

Dauntsey’s is a fully co-educational school with a Christian ethos, providing a friendly and supportive atmosphere where staff and pupils have every opportunity to fulfil their potential and to achieve their aspirations, both academically and otherwise. The School is lively, creative and caring and is a happy place with a strong family atmosphere; independent minds, a sense of adventure and spirituality, social responsibility and moral values are encouraged.

In fulfilling our ethos, we seek to achieve the following aims:

• To maintain the School's strong academic profile by providing a balanced, progressive and innovative curriculum, delivered by a talented and committed teaching staff.
• To provide a range of opportunities for pupils to become flexible thinkers, by stimulating intellectual curiosity through academic enrichment, independent learning and a complementary curriculum.
• To maintain and develop the School's outstanding pastoral care, within a diverse and inclusive community, ensuring the well-being of pupils and staff.
• To provide a school environment which promotes self-confidence, well-being, a feeling of self-worth and emotionally resilient pupils.
• To provide a broad range of extra curricular activities and opportunities, which develop pupils as adventurous, confident, articulate, tolerant and responsible individuals who are ready to take their place in the modern world.
• To maintain the School's strong commitment to boarding.
• To nurture and develop the School's commitment to the local community and to broaden access through a bursary scheme.

Dauntsey's School was founded in West Lavington, Wiltshire, in 1542, under the will of Alderman William Dauntesey, Master of the Worshipful Company of Mercers.

From these humble beginnings over four and a half centuries ago, Dauntsey's has grown into a thriving, modern co-educational school with more than 800 pupils, with continued links with the Mercers' Company.

William Dauntsey, born in Wiltshire in 1483, was the youngest son of four, and went to London at an early age to try his fortune in trade. There he was apprenticed to William Lambert, Master of The Mercers' Company, and completed his apprenticeship in 1504. He was elected Master of the Mercers' in 1531, and became an extremely prosperous man, making frequent purchases of lands and houses in Wiltshire, London and elsewhere. On 10th March 1542, he signed the will by which The Mercers' Company later received his London properties, with the obligation to maintain the School and Almshouses which his executors were to build in West Lavington.