Westminster School will admit girls to all year groups for the first time, according to a report.
The private school, located in Westminster Abbey, has been a boys’ school for centuries, with girls only allowed to join its sixth form since 1967.
A spokesperson for the school told the Telegraph that it was responding to an increasing number of parents, pupils and staff who had asked about girls joining.
The school will seek to become fully co-educational by 2030 though no dates have been confirmed, the newspaper reported. Changes will apply to both the primary and senior school.
A spokesperson said: “Although no dates are yet confirmed, we look forward to reaching the point at which we can make this significant change to our school, enabling any child who would flourish here to be able to come, irrespective of gender.”
Westminster sends around 40 per cent of its pupils to Oxbridge and has educated six former prime ministers. Other alumni include Louise Theroux, Christopher Wren, Nick Clegg and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Last year, Fiona Scolding KC recommended that the school allow girls to join from a younger age in response to allegations of sexual harassment posted anonymously on the Everyone’s Invited website.
In a review of the school, she said that “a considerable number of interviewees amongst pupils and staff commented that both male and female pupils joining the sixth form from single-sex environments may, in some cases, be naive and may have had limited experience of interacting with the opposite sex in an academic setting”.
She added: “Some staff felt that sixteen was the most challenging age at which to make a single sex school co-educational.”
Dr Gary Savage, who joined the school in 2020, last year issued a “sincere and unreserved” apology following the report’s publication.
Charterhouse, formerly an all-boys public school, became fully co-educational in 2021.
The Standard has contacted Westminster School for further comment.
