St Paul's School, London

St Paul's School is a selective independent day school (with limited boarding) for boys aged 13–18, founded in 1509 by John Colet and located on a 43-acre site by the Thames in London.

St Paul's was one of nine English schools investigated by the Clarendon Commission, which subsequently became known as the Clarendon schools. However, the school successfully argued that it was a private school and consequently was omitted from the Public Schools Act 1868, as was Merchant Taylors', the other day school within the scope of Lord Clarendon's terms of reference. Since 1881, St Paul's has had its own preparatory school, St Paul's Juniors (formerly Colet Court), which since 1968 has been located on the same site.

The school has been included in The Schools Index every year since the index began in 2020 as one of the world's top 150 private schools, of which 25 are in the UK.

St Paul's School takes its name from St Paul's Cathedral in London. A cathedral school is recorded as early as 1103, though it had declined by the early 16th century. In 1509, John Colet, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, established a new school on land north of the cathedral.

The eldest son of Sir Henry Colet (a member of the Mercers' Company and twice Lord Mayor of the City of London), John Colet inherited a substantial fortune and used a great part of it for the endowment of his school, having no family of his own; his 21 brothers and sisters all died in childhood and he was a celibate priest. He wrote in the school's statutes that his aim was "desyring nothing more thanne Educacion and bringing upp chyldren in good Maners and litterature."

Originally, the school admitted 153 boys of "all nacions and countries indifferently", focusing on literature and etiquette. The number 153 relates to the miraculous draught of fishes recorded in the Gospel of John; the school still awards Junior Scholars a silver-fish emblem. At its foundation, St Paul's had a High Master earning a mark per week—twice the Eton headmaster's pay. The scholars were not required to make any payment, although they were required to be literate and had to pay for their own wax candles, which at that time were an expensive commodity.

Colet was an outspoken critic of the powerful and worldly Church of his day, and a friend of both Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Erasmus wrote textbooks for the school and St Paul's was the first English school to teach Greek, reflecting the humanist interests of the founder. Colet distrusted the Church as a managing body for his school, declaring that he "found the least corruption" in married laymen. For this reason, Colet assigned the management of the School and its revenues to the Mercers' Company, the premier livery company in the City of London, with which his father had been associated. In 1876 the company was legally established as trustee of the Colet estate, and the management of the school was assigned to a Board of Governors consisting of the Master, Wardens and nine members of the company, together with three representatives from each of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London. The Mercers' Company still forms the major part of the School's governing body, and it continues to administer Colet's trust.^{[citation needed]}

One of the early headmasters was Richard Mulcaster, famous for writing two influential treatises on education (Positions, in 1581, and Elementarie in 1582). His description in Positions of "footeball" as a refereed team sport is the earliest reference to organised modern football. For this description and his enthusiasm for the sport he is considered the father of modern football.