Whitgift School

Whitgift School is an independent day and boarding school for boys aged 10-18 in South Croydon, London, founded in 1596 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift. The Archbishop's charter established the Whitgift Foundation — still the school's owner today — and was directed to the benefit of "the poor, needy and impotent people of the parishes of Croydon and Lambeth." The school opened in 1600 and moved to its present 45-acre Haling Park campus in 1931. The Whitgift Foundation also owns Trinity School of John Whitgift, the foundation's sister school for boys.

Whitgift is a member of the HMC and educates around 1,478 pupils. The current Head Master is Toby Seth, appointed in 2024 from Bedford School. The school is known nationally for its sporting programme. Whitgift's playing fields include a county-standard cricket ground that hosts Surrey CCC second-XI matches and historic county fixtures; the school has produced numerous Surrey first-team cricketers including the current England Test wicket-keeper Ben Foakes. The football academy has been an unusually strong pipeline into the Premier League: alumni include the Nigerian international and Chelsea Premier-League title-winner Victor Moses, the England international Callum Hudson-Odoi (also of Chelsea), and Tariqe Fosu.

In the arts, Whitgift's most celebrated former pupil is the British modernist painter Sir Stanley Spencer, whose Resurrection (Cookham) and depictions of the Berkshire river-town imagined the New Testament's final judgement set among his Whitgift contemporaries. The school combines a strong academic record with one of the best-resourced sports programmes among London independent schools, supported by the Whitgift Foundation's substantial bursary funding.