Bury Grammar School

Bury Grammar School was founded in 1570 by the Earl of Derby under letters patent in the reign of Elizabeth I, making it one of the oldest continuously operating educational foundations in northern England — a 456-year history. The school operates today as twin Boys' and Girls' Divisions on adjacent sites in central Bury, Greater Manchester, with a co-educational Sixth Form (Years 12-13). The combined roll is around 1,278 pupils. The Principal is Jo Anderson.

The school is a member of the HMC and the GSA and inspected by the ISI. The two divisions share governance under the Bury Grammar Schools Foundation but maintain separate Headmasters and Headmistresses for the lower years. The Foundation derives in part from the 1726 bequest of the Reverend Roger Kay, a former pupil who became Chaplain to George I and left a substantial endowment to maintain the school.

Bury Grammar's most historically significant alumnus is Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet — twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834-35 and 1841-46), founder of the Metropolitan Police (the police term "bobbies" derives from his name), and the politician who split the Conservative Party in 1846 by repealing the Corn Laws. Peel attended Bury Grammar before going on to Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford. In mathematics, the Cambridge number theorist G. H. Hardy — best known for his collaboration with the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, and for his memoir A Mathematician's Apology — was a Bury Grammar boy in the 1880s.

The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the Bury Grammar Schools Foundation, maintaining the 1570 royal grammar-school principle of educational access for the boys and girls of Lancashire and Greater Manchester regardless of family means.