Dragon School

The Dragon School in Oxford was founded in 1877 by a group of Oxford academics seeking a high-quality preparatory school for their sons, and rapidly developed under its first long-serving Headmaster Charles Lynam (always known as "the Skipper") and his nephew Charles Cotton Lynam into the most distinguished preparatory school in England. The school sits today on a central Oxford campus on the east bank of the River Cherwell, immediately adjacent to the University of Oxford. The Head is Emma Goldsmith.

The Dragon was one of the very first English prep schools to become co-educational — admitting girls from 1934 — and today educates around 796 pupils ages 4-13 across a Pre-Prep and Prep School, with a substantial boarding population. The school is a member of the IAPS and the Boarding Schools Association. The Dragon is the single most distinguished preparatory-school feeder in the United Kingdom to the major British public schools — Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, Marlborough, Charterhouse, St Paul's and Radley all receive substantial intakes of Dragon boys and girls each year, and many of the most distinguished pupils of those schools were Dragon boys before progressing to their senior school at 13.

The Dragon's alumni list reflects its role as the entry point of the senior public-school elite. The barrister and novelist Sir John Mortimer — barrister of Rumpole of the Bailey, autobiographer of A Voyage Round My Father, and one of the great voices of late-twentieth-century English liberal letters — was a Dragon boy. The Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell (Labour Leader 1955-63 and the politician who substantially created the modern post-war Labour Party before his early death in 1963) was at the Dragon. The actor Hugh Laurie CBE (Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster, House MD) was at the Dragon before Eton. The Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer, Baron Falconer (Lord Chancellor 2003-07 under Tony Blair) was at the Dragon. The novelist and political satirist John Wells was a Dragon pupil.

The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the Dragon School Trust, intended to provide educational access for academically able children regardless of family means.