Building on Distinction

Priorities for Development 2021-2025

In Building on Distinction, covering the period 2021–2025, we set out our updated vision and priorities as Queen Elizabeth’s School presses onwards from its current place of national pre-eminence to an even more successful future.

This new plan takes all that is best from QE’s illustrious past and from our stellar achievements of recent years and then synthesises a new vision suitable for the 2020s. We have re-cast our mission, thinking afresh about the attributes that the rising generation of Elizabethans will need, so that they can take up their places as leaders of the future, making their contribution to society in a globally connected world rich in opportunity and in challenges to be solved.

We seek to be both bold and wise, eschewing complacency, welcoming new perspectives and embracing beneficial change, while at the same time cleaving to the academic focus and to the time-honoured traditions that have brought such distinction to Queen Elizabeth’s School.

“Confident, able and responsible”

Our film provides a quick introduction to Building on Distinction, our 2021–2025 School Plan. At the heart of the plan is a re-imagining of our mission to ‘produce young men who are confident, able and responsible’. Hear current pupils explains what this means.

Read the full plan

Our richly illustrated plan explains our vision for equipping our pupils to live successful and worthwhile lives in a fast-changing world replete with opportunity. Comprehensive in its scope, the 34-page plan looks at the attributes boys will need, identifies ten overall priorities for the School, and sets out our specific commitments to working these priorities out in every area of life at QE.

Starting from a firm foundation

At Queen Elizabeth’s School, we are proud of our heritage; the Building on Distinction plan provides snapshots of a number of key events in our long history. As we look forward to celebrating our 450th anniversary in 2023, we continue to stand on the firm foundation laid for us by our Tudor forebears and to embrace the twin insights of our 1573 Charter, namely that the best education encompasses both academic accomplishment and the development of character.

And it is not only our ancient history but also our recent past that inspires us today. In the last three decades, QE has become firmly established as one of the UK’s leading schools. There is much to be proud of, and while the plan is certainly forward-looking, we honour our past and seek to build from the starting point of our hard-won position of distinction.

Our Mission

Our Priorities

Enabling The Vision