United Kingdom · Moray
Scotland’s Moray coast, not a Home Counties valley. Weekly boarding prints pounds including VAT. The full-boarding fee page is a form. Ask for that sheet in writing. Do not budget from a novel about princes.
Curriculum as published:GCSE · BTEC · A-Levels
Languages of instruction:English
Gordonstoun is a co-educational day-and-boarding school on a 200-acre woodland campus in Moray, in the north-east of Scotland. Official site gordonstoun.org.uk. The contact page prints Gordonstoun, Elgin, Moray IV30 5RF. Switchboard +44 (0) 1343 837837. Admissions: Chris Rose, +44 (0) 1343 837829, admissions@gordonstoun.org.uk.
It is not Fettes in Edinburgh, not Eton in Berkshire, and not a Home Counties Sunday. The contact page says the campus is 31 miles from Inverness and 65 miles from Aberdeen airport. Peaceful, the school says, not remote. Time that journey in January, not on a June film still.
The school markets itself as one of the last fully boarding houses in the UK — a seven-day week, Saturday school in the Senior years, chapel on Sunday. It still takes day pupils. Prep day children have a Day Pupils’ Coordinator. Senior day pupils are allocated a room in a boarding house, the FAQ says, just as boarders are. If you want a child home every evening, sit with that paragraph.
The contact page names Peter Green as Principal, Simon Cane-Hardy as Head, and Cath Lyall as Head of Prep.
Kurt Hahn founded the school in 1934, after leaving Salem and Germany. The history page is the official telling: Hahn leased and then bought the Gordonstoun estate; Prince Philip arrived the same year at thirteen; the school became fully co-educational in 1972. The motto is Plus est en vous — there is more in you. That is ethos, not a ranking.
The useful questions are: Full boarding, weekly (4 or 5 nights), or day-with-a-house-room? Prep from about 4½, boarding from 8, or a 13+ jump? Can you live with Moray in January? And have you asked for the full-boarding fee sheet — because the public fees page is a form, and we will not invent the missing pounds.
Families who want a Scottish boarding week that is not Edinburgh and not Surrey: English GCSE, then A-Level or BTEC, a service programme the school still names — Fire, Coastguards, Conservation, Community — and a campus that sits between the hills and the Moray coast.
The FAQ’s own snapshot: about 120 in Prep (age 4½ to 12) and about 460 in Senior (13 to 18). The history page says more than 550 across both. One third Scottish, one third from the rest of the UK, one third from overseas; more than 40 nationalities. Treat those as the school’s sentences.
It calls itself non-academically selective. That is the school’s line. It is not a promise that every file is offered a place.
It will not suit a family hunting Highers in an Edinburgh day house — walk George Watson’s — or a full-boarding Edinburgh campus that refuses weekly boarding in the Senior years — that is Fettes. Gordonstoun does print weekly boarding, with a public pound table.
Do not buy the royal-alumni postcard as a pastoral plan. The history page names princes because they were pupils. Your child still has to sleep here on a Sunday in November.
Woodland, coast, and an 80-foot school yacht. Prep boarding talks about Hopeman harbour, a climbing wall, a dance studio, a theatre, a dinghy fleet, and weekends on the Moray beaches. Round Square is a boarding house, the history page says, still in use; it was the circular building on the old estate. Windmill Lodge is named as a Senior house. The boarding page says there are eight boarding houses. We will not invent the other six names from a brochure we did not open.
Prep pupils share rooms of up to six. Senior Year 9, the FAQ says, usually shares with three or four; Year 10 with one roommate; Years 12 and 13 are likely to have a room of their own. One girls’ house gives every student their own room.
House allocation in Senior, unless there is a family tie, mixes nationalities, abilities, and personalities. All Prep boarders sit in the Prep boarding house, with a House Parent, an Assistant House Parent, two live-in Prep assistants, and a Matron.
There are no open days. The FAQ asks you to telephone admissions and arrange a one-to-one talk and tour on a term-time morning — not Sunday.
A Scottish campus that follows the English examination system. The FAQ says that is for continuity and for a community that is not only Scottish. It is not Highers. If the next university conversation is Scottish, ask how this paper is read here.
Prep. The FAQ’s age band is 4½–12. The prep-boarding page talks about boarding options for pupils aged 8–13. Year 8 has Saturday morning school, “preparing them for the exciting move up to Senior School.” Ask where this child actually sits.
Senior, 13–18.
Learning support and EAL are named. Weekly tutor meetings and subject clinics sit in the Senior copy.
Services are not an optional club in the school’s telling. Students join uniformed community and rescue work. The history page says girls at Gordonstoun became some of the first female firefighters in the UK after 1972, attending emergencies in the school’s engine as part of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Ask what this child’s service actually is in the first term.
Telephone 01343 837829 and ask for a morning visit. We will not invent an entrance-exam date, a registration close, or a Common Entrance requirement the pages we opened do not print. Final decisions, other official pages say, are reviewed by the Principal’s office. Write the truth: the year of entry, boarding or day, and whether this is a Forces file.
The main fees page asks for a name and email before it will show the termly table. We will not invent full-boarding pounds. Ask Chris Rose for the 2026–27 sheet, including VAT, and for what “all-inclusive” actually includes for your child.
Weekly boarding is public. The weekly-boarding page prints, including VAT, three terms a year, 4 or 5 nights a week, agreed with the Housemaster or Housemistress:
| School | Weekly boarding, per term, inc. VAT |
|---|---|
| Prep | £13,010 |
| Senior | £17,538 |
That is weekly, not full board. Transport to and from areas such as Aberdeen and Inverness is included in the weekly-boarding fee on the prep-boarding page. Flexi boarding — occasional nights — is named for Prep. We will not invent the flexi price.
CEA +10%. The military page prints Continuity of Education Allowance rates from 1 August 2026: Junior £9,184 per term; Senior £11,586 per term. For families in receipt of CEA, it says a boarding place “now starts from less than £4500 in Prep and less than £6500 in Senior school, per year.” That is the school’s marketing sentence on top of CEA, not a civilian fee. Eligibility lines the same page prints: full-time HM Armed Forces, family accompanied at the duty station, likely to move within four years, not within 12 months of standard discharge, children boarding from the academic year of their 8th birthday.
For families not on CEA, other official pages offer a 15% discount to full-time regular members of the UK Armed Forces and FCDO families, plus means-tested and service-specific bursaries. A Military and FCDO visit day is named for 22 May 2026.
Local families: the school says it is a registered WAC provider for those who are eligible. Ask what that means for a Moray day pupil.
We are not ranking Gordonstoun against Eton, Fettes, or Salem. We are not inventing the full-boarding termly fee. We are not treating “less than £4,000 a year” or “less than £4,500 / £6,500” as a civilian price — those lines sit on CEA pages. We are not calling 2019 inspectorate adjectives a 2026 score. We are not turning Prince Philip into a reason to send a child to Moray.
Ask for the full-boarding 2026–27 table as a PDF, including VAT, extras, and what happens on leave-out weekends if home is not Scotland. Ask whether this child would be weekly, full, or day-with-a-room. Ask which house, and whether the girls’ one-room-each house is even in the conversation. Ask how a one-year GCSE has gone for a child who arrived from a different system. Ask what service this age actually does.
If you can, stay for a Sunday evening. The prize-giving is not the product.
The boarding index is the short map of houses we have portraited. The United Kingdom country page is the wider walking list. Edinburgh is a different Scottish Tuesday.
Official pages and documents we read. If a figure matters to your budget or your application, open the link and confirm it is still current.
Friendly orientation, not an application. Dates, fees, and programme details move. Confirm everything with the school.
A co-educational day school on Townley Road, four to eighteen. Same Dulwich neighbourhood as the College, not the same gate. Registration for 2027 opens 1 September 2026 and closes at midday on 13 November for 11+.
LondonA large boys’ campus on Dulwich Common, with a co-ed early-years house and boarding from Year 9. The 2026–27 fee table lives on the college’s own page. We will not guess the numbers the site keeps behind a script.
Eton, BerkshireThe useful Eton story is not the novel. It is the 31 August registration date, the house, three Halves at the published fee, and an inspection that both praised the co-curricular life and asked the school to keep working on relationships education.
EdinburghScotland is not a footnote to an English independent-school list. Fettes is a co-ed day-and-boarding campus on East Fettes Avenue, ten minutes from the New Town if the lights are kind. Senior boarders stay the weekend. Confirm the 2026/27 fee page before you budget, including VAT.
Some children bloom down a corridor of trunks and cocoa. Some need their own bedroom and the dog. Both are allowed. The commute is also a kind of boarding.
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