Bedford Girls' School

Bedford Girls' School traces its history to 1882, when Bedford High School for Girls was founded by the Harpur Trust — the charitable trust descended from the 1566 royal endowment of Sir William Harpur, Lord Mayor of London 1561-62, who left funds for the education of "the poor children of Bedford." The Harpur Trust today operates four schools: Bedford School (boys, ages 7-18), Bedford Modern School (co-ed, ages 7-18), Bedford Girls' School (ages 7-18) and Pilgrims Pre-Prep (ages 3-7). Bedford Girls' School in its current form was created in 2010 by the merger of Bedford High School for Girls with the neighbouring Dame Alice Harpur School. The school is girls-only, educating around 906 pupils ages 7-18. The Head is Jo MacKenzie.

The school is a member of the GSA and inspected by the ISI. The campus sits in central Bedford on the banks of the River Great Ouse, with rowing facilities at the Bedford Rowing Club and extensive playing fields on the Bedford School / Harpur Trust shared sites. The school maintains the traditional GSA girls' school co-curricular profile — music, drama, modern languages and sciences — with a particular strength in the sciences and modern languages.

The Harpur Trust schools are remarkable in that the four-school combined foundation produces one of the highest concentrations of Oxbridge offers in any single English town outside London, Oxford and Cambridge themselves, with Bedford Girls' contributing strongly to that record. The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the Harpur Trust, intended to maintain the 1566 Sir William Harpur foundation principle of educational access for the children of Bedford regardless of family means.