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Millfield is a public school (English fee-charging boarding school and day school for pupils aged 13–18) located in Street, Somerset, England. It was founded in 1935.
Millfield is a registered charity and is the largest co-educational boarding school in the UK with approximately 1,330 students, of whom over 990 are full boarders from 75 different countries. Millfield Development and the Millfield Foundation raise money to fund scholarships and bursaries. The school is a member of the G20 Schools Group and a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The Millfield campus is based over 240 acres in Somerset, in and around Street, in the South West of England.
Millfield has its own pre-prep and preparatory school, Millfield Preparatory School (also known as Edgarley) in nearby Glastonbury, which takes children from 2 to 13 years old. The prep school shares some of Millfield's facilities. It acts as a feeder school, with over 90% of its pupils typically moving up to Millfield each year.
Meyer, educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, adhered to the philanthropic aim, known at the school as The Millfield Mix: "...to nurture talent by providing the very best facilities, teaching, coaching and opportunities in which young people can exercise and explore their abilities; and to give awards to those in financial need."
In 1939, the school became one of the first independent schools to become co-educational. Over the years, the school acquired land and houses around the locale, and as a result there were many boarding houses within a 10-mile (16-kilometre) radius of the original site; this resulted in boarders living at houses or billets in the outlying villages – being bussed in and out for lessons and meals. The girls' boarding house was at Ashcott House from 1967 until 1984.'Ashcott', in A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 8, the Poldens and the Levels, ed. Robert Dunning (London, 2004), pp. 13–25. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol8/pp13-25 accessed.
Over recent years, many of these houses have been sold and the proceeds invested in new on-campus boarding houses. There are three remaining country boarding houses occupied by male pupils.
In the 1990s, the school gained a reputation for drug and alcohol use among the pupils and a teacher was charged with assaulting a female pupil. Any pupils found with any illegal substances are immediately expelled.
In 2005, the school was one of fifty independent schools found guilty of running an illegal price-fixing cartel, exposed by The Times, which allowed them to drive up fees for thousands of parents. Each school was required to pay a nominal penalty of £10,000 and all agreed to make ex-gratia payments totalling £3 million into a trust designed to benefit pupils who attended the schools during the period in respect of which fee information was shared.
In 2018, the school made national news when allegations of bullying arose after a student reported that Year 10 pupils were beaten with cricket bats and belts for an initiation ceremony. After the parent of the student reported these allegations to the headmaster, an investigation was conducted and two pupils were suspended. Headmaster Gavin Horgan said: "I believe passionately in pupils having a voice and their wellbeing continues to be our top priority. Our rigorous safeguarding procedures mean any concerns that arise at school are dealt with quickly, transparently and fairly." According to a Freedom of Information request the school left the Teacher's Pension Scheme on 31 August 2021.
Here are the latest academic results for Millfield:
GCSE Results (2023): 47% achieved grades 9-7, with 95% achieving grades 9-4.
A Level Results (2023): 31% A*/A grades, with 61% achieving A*-B.
There are fourteen boys' and nine girls' houses; the oldest house is Millfield House, which is the original building in which the school first began operating. The house opened when the school was established in 1935 and is now one of Year 9 boarding houses. The house, designed by the architect George Skipper, and built in 1888, used to be the mansion of the Clark family, whose shoe business, C. & J. Clark, is based in the town.
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Millfield has an indoor and outdoor riding arena and golf courses, as well as a 50 metre swimming pool, which appeared as a venue in the official London 2012 Pre-Games Training Camp Guide. The Russian swimming team used the school as its training base before the London Olympics, and the Great Britain modern pentathlon squad also used the school's facilities in preparation for the games.
Meyer's philosophy was "...to nurture talent by providing the very best facilities, teaching, coaching and opportunities in which young people can exercise and explore their abilities; and to give awards to those in financial need."
A pre-preparatory department was initially started at the 19th-century house, The Hollies, in the centre of Glastonbury in the mid-1980s, later moving to the main preparatory school site.
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