Round Square

History

Between 1962 and 1963 Jocelin Winthrop Young and Roy McComish listed all the schools which they considered to have adopted the educational ideas of Kurt Hahn or had included them at their foundation. These schools were: in Scotland, Rannoch School and Dunrobin School; in England, Abbotsholme School, Battisborough and Milton Abbey; in Germany Louisenlund; in Switzerland Aiglon College, in Ghana Achimota School; in India The Doon School; Welham Girls' School, Dehradun and the soon to open Athenian School in California. Salem, Gordonstoun, Anavryta and Box Hill were 'taken for granted' as the already established and pre-eminent Hahnian schools.

On 5 June 1966, Kurt Hahn's 80th birthday was celebrated at Schule Schloss Salem, and as the headmaster of the school Winthrop Young invited the headmasters of Box Hill School, Gordonstoun, Louisenlund, Anavryta, Battisborough, the Athenian School, and the recently opened Atlantic College, to discuss the establishment of a Hahn schools conference. This meeting was chaired by King Constantine and during its course an agreement was reached on naming the conference "The Hahn Schools", it was then decided that the first conference would be held at Gordonstoun in 1967. At this first conference at Hahn's insistence the name "The Hahn Schools" was dropped in favour of a new name "The Round Square" after an iconic building at Gordounstoun. Six of the schools that attended this first conference and were the founding members of the Round Square: Box Hill School, Gordonstoun, Anavryta Experimental Lyceum, Schule Schloss Salem, Aiglon College and Abbotsholme School. At the second Round Square conference held at Box Hill, the principles of the association were established and co-education was the first of the sequence of conference themes that were discussed. At a later conference held at Box Hill in 1980, the Round Square International Service (RSIS) was created to promote and organise overseas voluntary service projects in much the same way as the project in Cephalonia. Winthrop Young retired as headmaster of Salem in 1974 but continued to run the Round Square association as Honorary Secretary and later as Director until he retired from that position in 1992.