The Royal College of Elizabeth, better known as Elizabeth College, is a co-educational independent school in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey. A member of the HMC (The Heads' Conference), it is a public school in the sense of the term used in England and Wales. Founded on 25 May 1563 by royal charter from Elizabeth I, it is one of the oldest schools in the British Isles and the oldest public school in the Channel Islands.
The school endured a turbulent two and a half centuries after its foundation, with several principals being dismissed or resigning following disputes with the local authorities. In 1824, it was re-chartered with new staff and an improved curriculum to attract fee-paying pupils from England. During the German occupation of the Channel Islands, the school was evacuated to Great Hucklow, Derbyshire. Having been a boarding school since its foundation, the decline in the number of pupils admitted as boarders following the world war period meant the school became a day school in 1996. The school became co-educational in 2021.
The school teaches around 570 pupils aged 11 to 18. As a selective school, prospective pupils must pass an entrance exam to be offered a place, although the school accepts pupils from a wide ability range. The school charges £5,216 per term, with three terms per academic year, (or £15,648 per annum) as of 2024/2025. There is an associated junior school for ages 2½ to 11 on adjoining sites at the nearby Acorn House (pre-school), in King's Road, and Beechwood (primary school), in Queen's Road.
Alumni of the school are known as Old Elizabethans. Since 1824, pupils have been allocated a unique, sequential school number. Among these alumni are multiple Olympians, several Bailiffs of Guernsey and other notable persons. Noted in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries for producing students who later joined military colleges in the UK, the school's alumni includes four Victoria Cross recipients.
History Foundation In the mid-sixteenth century, the Queen's Commissioners raised concern over the civil, political and religious administration of Guernsey. In the year the school was founded, three people were burned for witchcraft. The Privy Council thought, therefore, that the island required secondary education in the hope that students might go on to preach as clergymen on the island in line with principles of the Protestant Reformation. They recommended the establishment of a school by royal charter, whereby a free grammar school would be founded by the States of Guernsey with a master appointed by the island's Governor. The school was founded on 25 May 1563 as Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School by a patent roll from Elizabeth I which read:
Also since there is no grammar school in the isle, to erect a free grammar school there called Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School under the seal of the isle; the schoolmaster thereof to be appointed and removable by the Captain (except the Queen shall otherwise order); the school to be endowed with wheat rentes of 80 quarters a year found to belong to the Queen by the late Commissioners.
It was the fourth school to be established on the island. To create a site for the school, Franciscan friars were moved from land at La Rue Des Frères. The first schoolmaster was Belgian scholar, Adrian Saravia. Saravia left the island by 1571, describing the local population as an "uncivilised race" which "hates all learning". Over the next two and a half centuries the school struggled to survive, in large part due to shortcomings with the statutes on which the school was founded: the raising of funds was a near-constant issue, with buildings being abandoned and land alienated; principals (then known as masters) came and went; the pupil roll never exceeded 29 and, for several periods, there were no students at the school at all.
Reform and reconstruction In 1824, due to increased demand for a higher standard of local education, including at the school, the island's Lieutenant Governor, John Colborne, established a committee to review the school. It was re-chartered that year, and on 19 October 1826 the foundation stone of a new school building to be designed John Wilson was laid by Colborne and the school was renamed the Royal College of Elizabeth. The reform introduced a register of pupils, whereby pupils are allocated a unique, sequential school number.Elizabeth College Register 1824–1873 published by Frederick Clarke 1898
After the re-chartering, Charles Stocker was appointed principal and developed a reputation for flogging. He set out to raise the academic standing of the school and oversee the construction of the new main building. In the school's first year after the re-chartering, there were more than 100 boys on the school roll. However, over the next couple of years, the number of new entrants decreased to as low as 17 in 1827. In 1829, three years after the laying of the foundation stone, the new building was ready for use.
The school expanded its teaching and extra-curricular facilities in the latter half of the nineteenth century, building a gymnasium on the main site and purchasing fields in Kings Road for a cricket ground which was completed in 1888. The original school building was converted into a science laboratory. Some of the biggest developments came under principal William Penney, appointed in 1888, who identified faults with the quality of teaching and attended to the school's main building which was badly in need of repair. Penney revised the syllabus, introduced masters' meetings to be held twice a term and had reports sent to parents every half term. He revised the punishment system too, only allowing himself and the vice-principal to use the cane, oversaw the reincarnation of The Elizabethan magazine, and formed the Old Elizabethan Association, which set about wiping the school's debts by 1898 through a variety of money-raising ventures.
World war period
In the nineteenth century, the school gained a reputation for catering for the sons of British government officials employed across the British Empire, many of whom followed distinguished colonial careers. In this era, the school was noted for producing students who would later join military colleges in the United Kingdom. 662 alumni served in World War I, 105 of which were known to have been killed and many more died of injuries sustained in battle, meaning approximately one in five of all the boys who had joined the school since the re-chartering had served in the Great War. A roll of honour is displayed in the main hall to commemorate those who fought and died in the war. Four alumni have been awarded the Victoria Cross: Duncan Home in 1857, John McCrea in 1881, Lewis Halliday in 1900 and Wallace Le Patourel in 1943.
In 1939, the school remained largely unaffected by the transition from peace to the Phoney War, with many believing the Channel Islands to be the safest place in the British Isles. Precautionary measures were taken nonetheless: air-raid shelters were dug in front of the school's main building and black-out regulations required some school activities and societies to be curtailed. The air-raid shelter was later converted by German forces into a secure holding area for weapons and ammunition. Following developments in the war in May 1940, senior boys were required to join the Local Defence Volunteers and came to school with rifles slung across their shoulders. Many school activities continued uninterrupted at this point, with cricket and swimming continuing in the unusually fine weather. In June however, the extent of the dangers of war were realised. French resistance collapsed, after which the island's army and RAF units left the island. Fearing imminent occupation by German forces, an evacuation scheme was quickly assembled by the school governors with Jersey and the Home Office. On the evening of Thursday, 20 June the school was evacuated to Great Hucklow, Derbyshire, where it would spend five years during which pupils had little or no contact with their parents.
At the start of the occupation, the school buildings were home to the States Controlling Committee, but in 1941 the German authorities demanded the use of the school buildings as its headquarters. A strongroom bunker was built inside what is now the 'AJ Perrot' room, which remains to this day, albeit without the door. Despite the shortages in staff, facilities and money, eight pupils receiving scholarships to the University of Oxford in this period. The official liberation announcement by Brigadier Alfred Ernest Snow was made from the steps of the school in 1945 to a crowd of cheering locals. However, it was not until August that boys were able to return home and continue their education on island. German prisoners of war were tasked with cleaning up and repairing the damage to the building, which was not as bad as feared initially.
Modern period The school's uptake increased at such a rate after the war that, for the first time since 1829, the main building was too small to accommodate the students. Rapid development followed, including the purchase of Beechwood, a former nursing home, in 1948 which was converted into a boarding house. A squash court was added, the nearby Grange Club was purchased in 1950 and converted into a library, land was acquired at Footes Lane for a cricket field and a new science block was built.
The 1990s saw the refurbishment of the science laboratories, improved facilities for sport and physical education and the development of a purpose-built art department. In 1992, the school accepted a group of girls into the sixth form from the relocating Blanchelande College. They were the first girls to be officially registered and receive college numbers, and provoked the first discussions about the possibility for a mixed-sex sixth form run in co-operation with the Ladies' College sixth form. Having been a boarding school since its re-chartering in 1824, the end of the 20th century saw a gradual decline in the number of children being sent to the island to board, not helped by the increasingly high fares on air and sea routes from the mainland. There was also a growing requirement for independent infant schooling in Guernsey, and so the King's Road boarding house was reopened in October 1996 as Acorn House pre-school and pre-prep. David Toze's appointment as principal in 1998 saw a large number of changes implemented at the school. He appointed the first-ever female headteacher of Beechwood in 2000, oversaw the merging of Acorn House and Beechwood into the Elizabeth College Junior School and drove forward the link between the Ladies' and Elizabeth College sixth forms.
Having appointed its first-ever female principal, Jenny Palmer, in 2017, in January 2020 the school announced that "in recognition of the needs of contemporary society", girls would be admitted to the upper school into year seven and into the sixth form from September 2021 as part of plans for the school to be entirely coeducational by 2025.
School structure The school operates a house system with four houses—Country, North, South and Town—referring loosely to the four parts of the island. Previously, pupils were assigned to a house based on where they and their families lived, but are now assigned arbitrarily. Year groups are divided into four roughly equal-sized tutor groups divided by house, each overseen by a dedicated tutor.
Teaching at the school is delivered over thirty-five periods per week, divided into 45-minute lessons in years seven and eleven and between 45 and 55 minutes in the sixth form, with a typical school day starting at 8:25 am and finishing at 4 pm. Lower down the school, students are divided into class groups by house, except for creative subjects which are taught in smaller mixed-ability groups. Further up the school, however, class groups combine students from all four houses and are determined by ability and/or subject choice.
Governance