As the Edinburgh Academy prepares to launch its major fundraising campaign ‘TO24’ in the 10 years leading up to the School’s bicentenary in 2024 it has received the most powerful endorsement and vote of confidence in its ethos, values and achievements from former pupil and international businessman Eric Stevenson.
He has left a legacy to establish the Eric H Stevenson Charitable Trust for the benefit of the Edinburgh Academy and its pupils. Current indications show that the Trust will receive in excess of £16m depending on Lloyds’ distributions and market fluctuations. By the end of this calendar year the Eric H. Stevenson Charitable Trust expects to have funds invested of £14m, with the remainder to be realised in the coming 24 months. Eric Stevenson, who left the Academy in 1940, had always shown real interest in his former school and had been a regular and very generous donor.
Commenting on Eric Stevenson’s extraordinary gift, Marco Longmore, Rector of the Edinburgh Academy, said:-“Eric Stevenson was a life long friend and supporter of the Edinburgh Academy. His commitment was based on an understanding that the education he received equipped him for the many diverse challenges that he faced throughout his very successful and varied life. It is with the greatest of pride that we received news of his tremendous generosity and commitment to his former school.
Eric’s gift demonstrates that we continue to equip our pupils today with the skills, strength and reliance that will allow them to succeed in the same way he feels the School enabled him so powerfully eighty years ago! Eric’s magnificent gift and vote of confidence in the Edinburgh Academy of today inspires all associated with the School to continue to live out our motto of ‘Aien Aristeuein’ (Strive Always to Excel).”
Eric Stevenson’s legacy represents an enormous vote of confidence in the Edinburgh Academy and reinforces its established reputation for excellence. He was a positive role model to all Edinburgh Academy pupils, past and present, in terms of his international success and lasting loyalty to the School that he recognised gave him so much.
The Edinburgh Academy is in the preparatory phase of a major fundraising campaign, TO24, to raise £24 million by 2024 to allow the School to realise its ambitions and aspirations for the future. This unexpected and very generous gift will enable the TO24 campaign to accelerate its fundraising plans. These are to deliver capital investment in its buildings and grounds as well as continue its planned growth in bursary provision.
The School remains a fully independent charity and separate from the Eric H. Stevenson Charitable Trust. The Trust has been established with the primary aim of supporting the ambitions of the School in a number of areas. This will allow the School to maintain its well-established objective of providing the very best of independent education to a broad spectrum of pupils who meet the entry requirements and who would otherwise be unable to attend the School as a result of their family’s financial circumstance. This support enhances the significant steps that have been taken in recent years in meeting this goal.
Commenting on the future plans for the school in the light of this gift, Michael Gregson, Chairman of Edinburgh Academy’s Court of Directors and of the Eric H. Stevenson Charitable Trust said, “This legacy comes at a very exciting time for the School with ambitious development plans in place leading up to our bicentenary in 2024.
The Eric H. Stevenson Charitable Trust that has been established will fund a continuing widening of access to an Academy education and enhance the richness of the education that the School can offer to its present and future pupils. In conjunction with the development funds to be raised through our bicentenary campaign, TO24, the Academy will build a major endowment fund to benefit future generations of pupils and support widened access across the School.”
The Edinburgh Academy was established in 1824 as a boys’ school. It became co-educational in 2008 and has a full roll of boys and girls throughout the School from age two to eighteen. Its aim is to release the potential of every individual and expects high standards from all its pupils in education and in a wide range of co-curricular activities including sports and expressive arts.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
