Bedford Modern School

Bedford Modern School (BMS) was founded in 1764 by the Harpur Trust as one of four independent schools in Bedford established under the William Harpur educational endowment (the others being Bedford School, Bedford Girls' School and Pilgrim School). The original BMS was the "Writing School" within the wider Bedford School foundation but split off as a separate institution to provide a curriculum focused on practical commercial subjects — writing, arithmetic, mathematics — rather than the classical Latin and Greek that defined Bedford School proper. The two schools have operated side-by-side in Bedford for 260 years, both governed by the Harpur Trust.

BMS today is a co-educational HMC day school of around 1,207 pupils aged 7-18. The Headmaster is David Payne. The Chair of the Harpur Trust is Sally Peck. The school occupies a town-centre campus that includes the Grade II* listed Old Bedford Modern School Tower (the surviving fragment of the school's 1834 building, now incorporated into a modern complex).

The school's traditions are strong in sport — particularly rugby. Old Bedford Modernians (OBMs) include the England rugby international Allan Towell; the England rugby international Rob Hardwick; and Rochelle Clark MBE, who became the most-capped player in England women's rugby history and a World Cup-winning member of the 2014 squad. The Everton manager John Moore was educated at BMS.

In academia, BMS produced Sir Percy Nunn — the early-twentieth-century educationalist whose theoretical work shaped UK secondary education through the inter-war period — and Edward Mann Langley, the founder of the Mathematical Gazette and the geometer whose 1922 puzzle "Langley's Adventitious Angles" remains one of the best-known elementary geometry challenges. The first Professor of Botany at the University of Birmingham, William Hillhouse, attended BMS. In literature, the Carnegie Medal-winning historical novelist for children Ronald Welch (Knight Crusader) was an OBM.

BMS shares its rowing programme on the River Great Ouse with Bedford School, and the Harpur Trust funds a substantial bursary programme across all four Bedford schools.