About Us
Our Mission: To inspire lives of character, scholarship, leadership, and service within a diverse, inclusive, and close-knit community.
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Groton is different. Here's why ...
Everyone Belongs
In a school of 380 students, you can be yourself and feel at home. Groton's small, close-knit, and cohesive community is essential to who we are—on the Circle, students are united by a deep commitment to each other and to the community. The school celebrates diversity as integral to an outstanding education and fosters an inclusive community that embraces varying backgrounds and viewpoints.
Exceptional Scholarship
Groton sets high academic standards and provides an exceptional academic experience, going well beyond knowledge and achievement to instill a love of learning. Believing that adolescents should expand, not narrow, their vision, Groton avoids the contemporary emphasis on specialization. The outstanding faculty support students in exploring new talents and passions while developing existing ones.
Character and Leadership
On the Circle, we celebrate goodness and kindness, integrity and civility. Groton is committed to developing strong and ethical leaders, and the school is structured to teach and enable leadership. Every Sixth Former leads in a dorm, and many also assume other “prefect” roles throughout the school. Students graduate with a sense of their leadership style and capabilities.
Spirituality
Spirituality can help us make sense of a complicated world. Weekday Chapel services provide grounding and daily wisdom, while classroom study instills religious literacy, a critical component of a well-rounded education. Students attend weekly services in their religion of choice, reflecting the inclusivity embraced by Episcopal schools like Groton.
The Circle
Groton's property, 35 miles northwest of Boston, stretches across 480 acres but centers around the Circle—a setting so scenic that Architectural Digest named it the most beautiful independent school in the state. Designed by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the Circle is purposefully open to the West, with mountain vistas suggesting infinite possibility.
Traditions
Groton traditions range from morning Chapel and Roll Call to handshaking every night and at the end of each school year. Parlor, Surprise Holidays, St. Mark’s Days, the school birthday dinner, Lessons & Carols, and other beloved traditions serve not as empty rituals, but rather as significant practices that build our sense of community.
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Inclusion, Affordability, and Belonging
Groton School is committed to inclusion, affordability, and belonging and embraces a diverse community, with varying backgrounds and viewpoints, which is integral to an outstanding education. As the leader among its peers in affordability, Groton provides the opportunities and support needed so that every student has equal access to success at Groton.
How is this possible? Through the GRoton Affordability and INclusion (GRAIN) initiative.
Adopted as the school's #1 strategic priority in 2014, GRAIN has raised more than $100M in support of tuition cost containment and financial aid. Through GRAIN's success, Groton has contained tuition while increasing the number of students on financial aid, all while guaranteeing that all applicants are considered without regard for their ability to pay.
Our Headmaster Temba Maqubela
From the moment Headmaster Temba Maqubela first stepped on the Circle in 2013, he has been sharing his message of inclusion. As an anti-apartheid activist in his native South Africa, the fight for inclusion is deep within Mr. Maqubela’s heritage, and as a life-long educator, he helps others to understand that it is deep within theirs, too.
Learn more about our visionary headmaster, his inspiring life story, dedication to teaching, and the impact he has on Groton today.
For Whom Service Is Perfect Freedom
CUI SERVIRE EST REGNARE
The school's motto, Cui Servire Est Regnare, derived from the Book of Common Prayer, originally referred to a person's service to God. The motto is now accepted more broadly to connote service to the community and the world, and it inspires many Grotonians to make community service part of their lives. Groton had two earlier mottos, before the turn of the twentieth century: Esse quam videri (To be rather than to seem) and the lesser-known Deo Magistro Semper Condiscipuli (Forever fellow-learners, God, our Master, blessing).
Our History
In many ways, Groton School history is American history. Commencement speakers have included President Theodore Roosevelt, a close friend of founder Endicott Peabody’s, and Franklin D. Roosevelt (Groton Form of 1900). Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the school in 1963, just months before his “I Have a Dream” speech. Groton graduates are an important part of school history, as many make an impact on the country and the world.