St Dunstan's College

St Dunstan's College is one of the oldest schools in London. The institution's lineage runs back to approximately 1446, when an earlier school was endowed at the church of St Dunstan-in-the-East in the City. The original foundation lapsed during the Reformation; the present St Dunstan's College was re-established at Catford in south-east London in 1888 by the Charity Commissioners using the residual endowment of the medieval foundation. The school today is a co-educational HMC day school of around 1,043 pupils aged 3-18, in the London Borough of Lewisham. The Head is Nick Hewlett.

St Dunstan's modern academic and cultural alumni list is unusually strong. The most internationally significant is Sir Martin Evans, who shared the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of knockout-mouse genetics — the technique that allowed scientists to study the function of individual genes by selectively disabling them in mice, with profound consequences for medical research. The senior media figure Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Michael Grade) — Chairman of the BBC, Chairman of Ofcom and former executive Chairman of ITV — was educated at St Dunstan's, as was the journalist Matthew d'Ancona, former editor of The Spectator.

In music, the keyboardist Steve Nieve (born Steve Nason) of Elvis Costello and the Attractions — whose work defines records like Pump It Up, Watching the Detectives, Oliver's Army and the entire This Year's Model and Imperial Bedroom albums — was a pupil at St Dunstan's. In military aviation, the Royal Air Force fighter ace Robert Stanford Tuck DSO DFC AFC, who flew through the Battle of Britain and the Battle of France, achieving 29 aerial victories before his shooting-down and capture, was one of "the Few" educated at St Dunstan's.

In public life, recent alumni include Sir Chuka Umunna, the former MP for Streatham who served in Labour's shadow cabinet before joining Change UK and then the Liberal Democrats; Lord Drayson, the former defence-procurement minister; Sir William Castell, former Chairman of the Wellcome Trust; and Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, the international war-crimes barrister who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević at the ICTY. The school operates a substantial bursary programme.