History
The monastic community was founded in Paris in 1615 and moved to Douai after the French Revolution. The monastery provided educational opportunities from the beginning, but had no formal school in its first decades of existence.
The modern school was formed by the site's pre-existing St Mary's College merging with the school of the incoming Benedictine community that moved from Douai in 1903 due to Waldeck-Rousseau's Law of Associations (1901). The merger produced a school of 109 boy boarders, which had fallen to only 63 by 1911.
Its long history in France and its monastic influence meant that Douai, although an independent boarding school, had in large part escaped the influence of the public school ethos that had developed in 19th-century England. However, in 1920, Douai was admitted to membership of the Headmasters' Conference. In the 1930s David Matthew, later Apostolic Delegate for Africa, congratulated the headmaster, Ignatius Rice, on the fact that: "no Catholic school has been so free from the influence of Arnold of Rugby as Douai has been."
Day boys were admitted from the early 1960s, and by 1984 there were 333 pupils. The school became co-educational in 1993.
Read more about this topic: Douai School
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