Earlier in the year the Gresham’s Foundation received a remarkable donation from a most generous Old Greshamian (OG). £1 million was donated to endow a scholarship programme that will give US pupils the chance to come and study at Gresham’s.

The donation will ensure the scholarship programme will be in place in perpetuity. It will restart the influential English-Speaking Union programme (ESU) at Gresham’s – a programme that a great number of OGs were a part of when they came to the School from the US between 1960 and 1998. The donor wishes to remain anonymous.

Douglas Robb, the Headmaster, said: “We are thrilled to be in receipt of such a generous donation, and most grateful to the OG for having revived and endowed a scholarship programme that was in place at Gresham’s for many years and which had a lasting impact on the School community. Their support will ensure there will always be a US scholar at the School, giving them the chance to expand their horizons and benefit from a Gresham’s education before they embark on the next stages of their educational and professional journey. The scholars will enrich our community, and the programme will also enable us to strengthen our ties with leading US institutions. We look forward to welcoming our first scholar next year.”

The programme will see one student per year from one of the ESU’s US partner schools come to Gresham’s upon completion of their studies at high school. Each scholar will stay at Gresham’s for one academic year, with the first scholar joining the School in September 2023.

Separate to the endowed scholarship, there will also be an opportunity every year for current Gresham’s pupils to apply to study at a US high school for a year. Although the ESU offers a smaller number of fully funded scholarships for UK students to go to the US, the School’s hope is that a number of pupils over the coming years will be successful in applying for a scholarship and thereby get to experience the final year of high school in a prestigious US institution.