St Edward's School, Oxford

St Edward's School Oxford — universally known as "Teddies" — was founded in 1863 by the Revd Thomas Chamberlain, a Church of England priest and friend of John Henry Newman, as an Anglo-Catholic boys' boarding school in the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC) tradition. The school sits today on a 100-acre campus in Summertown, north Oxford, immediately adjacent to the University of Oxford and within an easy walk of central Oxford. The Warden is Alastair Chirnside.

St Edward's became co-educational in 1997 and today educates around 813 pupils with a substantial boarding population. The school is a member of the HMC and the Boarding Schools Association and is one of the substantial number of major UK boarding schools to offer the IB Diploma alongside A-Levels. The geographic proximity to the University of Oxford produces a particularly strong Oxbridge feeder relationship, with substantial numbers of Teddies progressing to Oxford colleges each year.

The school's most internationally significant alumnus is Group Captain Sir Douglas Bader CBE DSO* DFC* — the RAF fighter pilot who, despite having lost both legs in a 1931 flying accident, returned to RAF service in 1939, fought as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, was credited with at least 22 confirmed kills, was eventually shot down over France in 1941 and held by the Germans (despite four escape attempts) at Colditz Castle until 1945. Bader's story was made famous by Paul Brickhill's biography Reach for the Sky (1954) and the subsequent Lewis Gilbert film starring Kenneth More — among the canonical British wartime hero stories. Bader is depicted in stained glass in the school chapel.

The RAF Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC — who led the Dam Busters raid of 16-17 May 1943 against the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams (using Sir Barnes Wallis's bouncing bombs) and was awarded the Victoria Cross — was a St Edward's boy. Both Bader and Gibson were Old Teddies, making St Edward's the only school to have produced two of the most famous individual RAF pilots of the Second World War.

The author Kenneth Grahame — whose The Wind in the Willows (1908) is among the canonical English children's books — was a St Edward's boy. The Oscar-nominated actress Florence Pugh — Lady Macbeth (2016), Little Women (2019), Midsommar, Don't Worry Darling, Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — was a Teddies girl, one of the first generation of co-educational sixth-formers in the early 2010s. The Oxford philosopher Sir Stuart Hampshire — Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, and one of the leading post-war British analytical philosophers — was at St Edward's.

The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the St Edward's School Society.