Collegiate School in Bristol is a private day school for boys and girls aged two to eighteen. It was founded in 1710 by Edward Colston as Colston’s Hospital, originally an all-boys charitable boarding school. The school moved to the old Bishops’ Palace in Stapleton in 1861 and gradually evolved into a modern independent school. In 1991 it merged with the former Collegiate School in Winterbourne. In 2022 the school adopted its current name to remove the reference to Colston.
The school motto is Go and do thou likewise. The campus covers about thirty acres on Bell Hill and includes extensive sports facilities, including six rugby pitches, two cricket squares, a floodlit hockey pitch, multiple tennis and netball courts, an athletics field, a fitness suite, squash courts, a sports hall and indoor cricket nets.
Rugby is the school’s flagship sport. Collegiate has won the NatWest Schools Cup at Under 18 level seven times. More than fifty former pupils have played top-tier professional rugby, with several becoming full internationals.
The school offers a wide cultural programme. It stages drama productions across age groups and provides all fourteen GCSE theatre options. The Combined Cadet Force is one of the largest in Bristol and includes Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force sections.
Notable former pupils include rugby internationals Callum Braley, Jake Polledri, Olly Barkley, Lee Mears, Tom Varndell and Amber Reed, as well as poet Thomas Chatterton, MP Robert Syms, cricketer Chris Taylor, physicist Bryan Webber and YouTuber George Clarke.
Jeremy McCullough is the current headmaster.