About the School

The Dragon is a co-educational boarding and day school situated in the leafy suburbs of North Oxford and it is a school with a remarkable ethos and history.

For many years the School was run by the Lynam family, and it was very much due to them that the Dragon became arguably the best known of all preparatory schools.

The School has an ethos that hinges on "robust informality and relaxed rigour" and relies on common sense and individual responsibility rather than a weighty rulebook. Hence the children have a high degree of self-confidence and it is not unexpected that amongst its old pupils can be found a large number of successful men and women.

Boys and girls leave the Dragon, usually at thirteen, to join any one of nearly a hundred different schools all over the United Kingdom and abroad. Even after leaving the Dragon, and in a way more akin to senior schools and universities, the children remain a cohesive group with friendships that survive the years.

The Dragon School was founded as the Oxford Preparatory School in 1877. It moved to its present site on the northern edge of Oxford University soon afterwards, where its fifteen acres run along the banks of the River Cherwell. For the past fifty years it has been a charitable trust dedicated to providing all that is best in education for boarding and day children up to the age of 13. The school is administered by a governing body.