Pocklington School

Pocklington School was founded in 1514 by John Dolman, a Tudor cleric, as a grammar school in the Yorkshire market town of Pocklington. The school is trusteed by the Worshipful Company of Skinners, one of the twelve Great Livery Companies of London. Pocklington became co-educational in 1989 and today educates around 730 pupils with a substantial boarding population. The Headmaster is Toby Seth. The school is a member of the HMC and the Boarding Schools Association.

The school's most historically significant alumnus is William Wilberforce — the Yorkshire MP whose forty-year parliamentary campaign for the abolition of the British slave trade culminated in the Slave Trade Act 1807 (abolishing the British transatlantic slave trade) and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire), making Wilberforce one of the most consequential moral-reform politicians in British history. Wilberforce attended Pocklington from 1771 to 1776 before reading at St John's College, Cambridge, and entering Parliament as MP for Hull in 1780. The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the Worshipful Company of Skinners.