Gordonstoun

The best classrooms don’t have walls

Gordonstoun’s stunning location on the sunny Moray Coast provides the background for its famous outdoor education programme. This was the inspiration for the Duke of Edinburgh Award as well as the Outward Bound programme. Through expeditions and sailing, including week-long adventures on the school’s own sail training vessel, students develop essential skills for life. They must be both leaders and team players, they learn to consider the needs of others and they become resilient to everything that life throws at them.

Service to the community comprises a core part of Gordonstoun’s ‘working week’.«This includes the Coastguard and Fire Service, where older students respond to genuine emergencies in the local area.

Safe and nurtured

One of the core values of the approach at Gordonstoun is compassion: the school constantly seeks to help students discover the rewards of being kind, considerate and compassionate towards others. Activities like the school Pipe Band give older children an opportunity to nurture younger ones and help everyone feel that they’re part of a big family. The school’s peaceful and safe campus allows students to develop lasting friendships away from the pressures of city life. Gordonstoun’s pastoral support was judged to be ‘a model of best-practice’ by inspectors.

Academics

With a staff/pupil ratio of 1:7 and every child’s progress carefully overseen by their tutor, students go on to universities and colleges all over the world. But the life skills they develop at Gordonstoun enable them to have careers which make a difference.

‘Being a retained firefighter at the age of 17 certainly helped me stand out at interview!’ – Former student