RGS Guildford
High Street, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 3BB
Welcome
Headmaster's Welcome
Welcome to the website of the Royal Grammar School, Guildford. RGS, Guildford was founded in 1509 and has a long and distinguished history of educating boys in this region. It is renowned for its academic standards which place it among the very finest schools in the country, but it also offers a rich provision of extra-curricular activities so that our pupils experience as exciting and diverse an education as possible. We are also proud of our sense of community at the RGS. Our latest ISI inspection report commented on the ‘striking culture of mutual support’ at the RGS and this caring community is something we hold very dear. I hope that the information contained in this website is of interest and I look forward to welcoming you to the School at some stage in the future.
Dr JM Cox
Headmaster
I am pleased to announce that the Royal Grammar School was awarded an Independent School Award 2010 for Outstanding Community/Public Benefit Initiative. This accolade was earned as a result of the RGS’ commitment to engage with our local community through the many educational schemes involving our local primary schools and, in particular, for our Primary Schools' Tudor Experience Day. We are delighted that the hard work of so many people at the RGS has been recognised in this way.
Pounding the Boards
On Friday 26th April our cohort of AS Drama and Theatre students performed a 25 minute extract from A Butcher of Distinction by Rob Hayes along with a self chosen monologue each for an external examiner. This “one chance only performance” is worth 60% of their AS qualification and can be an intense and stressful experience. It was a wonderful chance for the boys to really demonstrate their ability to sustain subtle and demanding acting roles whilst appearing to remain cool and indeed relishing the pressure of the evening!
Thomas Hosking, Alex Pusey and Benedict Philipp were absolutely fantastic in not only drawing us into the frighteningly tense world of the play but creating clearly etched and imaginative characterisations for their respective roles. Teddy, the brutal “East End” gangster who is casually flippant towards the use and abuse of his “boys” was chillingly and believably portrayed by Thomas. Alexander developed a nervous schizophrenia for the role of Hartley, expertly controlling the delivery of lines to go from wit and word play one minute to the dark menace of the psychopath the next. Benedict Philipp playing Hugo, the rather hapless younger twin, who suffers terribly at Teddy’s behest, was incredibly moving at points in the play contrasting superbly with his apparent innocence and lack of guile at the start of the play and his focused white-hot revenge at the end.
The boys’ monologues were equally well executed; Benedict choosing to play a character called “He” from Leonid Andreyev’s Expressionistic play He Who Gets Slapped, Thomas playing Morgan Evans from The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams and Alexander playing Jimmy Porter from Look Back in Anger by John Osborne.
My thanks must go to the audience, made up of parents, staff, peers (several from GHS) and those with a strong interest in drama, who were extremely important in creating a supportive, friendly atmosphere for this significant event.
iffy Success
Four Economics students attended the National Finals of the ifs Student Investor Challenge – the ‘Flash Crash Algos’ comprised Alex Pound, Ben Seed, George Simmons and Josh Voller.
Success on the Boards
On Tuesday 23 April the Chess team travelled to Millfield School to play a quarter-final game in the plate section of the National Competition. The match was very close but RGS just managed to win by 3 1/2 - 2 1/2 and now progress to the final stages which will be played at Uppingham School in July. Congratulations to everyone involved.
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