When triathlete Erica Hawley and swimmer Emma Harvey took to the water at the Olympics for Bermuda this summer, the students at England’s best school were enthralled.

Millfield School, a co-ed institution based in Somerset, was responsible for helping to coach a quarter of Bermuda’s 2024 Olympic squad in their formative years and headmaster Gavin Horgan visited the island for the first time last week to deepen already strong connections.

There are 12 students from Bermuda studying at Millfield at present and the institution has this year been named Britain’s best independent co-education school and the top sports school for the eleventh time in 12 years after establishing a reputation for sporting excellence that includes a rich legacy at the Olympic Games.

“We have had representation at the Olympics since the 1950s and we have had in excess of 100 Olympians through the school,” Horgan said.

“That has been in a wide array of sports and this year we had 14 alumni, including Emma Harvey and Erica Hawley, at the Games. Seeing those two youngsters at the Olympics was wonderful, and both of them are still connected with the school and come back periodically to train and speak to students.

“A quarter of this island’s Olympians this time around were students from Millfield and their sports of triathlon and swimming are ones where we see the market increasing.

“This island also likes its cricket and we have an amazing cricket programme. And in Christian Brown we are the only school to have a full-time triathlon coach, while the Brownlee brothers [Alistair and Jonathan] also coach part-time.”

With 70 different nationalities represented at the school, it could perhaps be a worry that children from Bermuda could lose some of their cultural identity but Horgan insists that individuality is encouraged and Millfield students are far from homogenised.

“We’ve seen the number of students from Bermuda growing over the last few years and we anticipate it will grow further,” Horgan said.

“Having students from Bermuda is important to us and we celebrate their identity and they celebrate it, too. There are lots of schools where you sometimes feel that international students are grouped together and operate in the background, whereas the point of Millfield is to be a glorious international community, where children celebrate their identity and teach others about what their identity means.

“Children from Bermuda bring with them a lovey assurance, they are happy to be in adult company, there is a strong emphasis on family here, on the outdoors and the importance of community and being at ease in others’ company.

“The sort of outdoors sportspeople enjoy playing in Bermuda land very well at Millfield and we want to foster that. We want to help children come back to the island and be economic drivers in the future.”

Emma Harvey is now competing for Penn State in the US, and Millfield is continuing to funnel children into leading colleges and generating sports scholarships worth millions of dollars to school leavers every year. There are also scholarship opportunities and bursaries available to international students.

“We now drive a lot of students over to the States for university,” Horgan said.

“When I first came six years ago, 10 per cent of our leavers went to the States and that’s now up to 20 per cent. I know that’s popular with parents from this island, so Millfield is a good way of achieving that.

“We accept children into prep school usually from ten and upwards and then many more join aged 13. At that point they can apply for an academic, sports or music scholarship and all of those are available to children wherever they come from. Then, at Sixth Form, so age 16, we offer even more scholarships for people coming for just the two A-level years and they are also available to international students.”

One man responsible for helping connect children to the right school is Neil Speight, former chief executive of the Bermuda Cricket Board. His company, Bridgeway Education, helps families find the right overseas schools and he finds the endeavour rewarding.

“It’s become part of my life and to be able to connect the right person with the right schools is important,” Speight said,

“There is not one perfect school for every child, but I do want to dispel some things about Millfield.

“A lot of people think that if you’re not a world champion, you shouldn’t go there, which is complete rubbish. You can be like me, a fourth division football player, a second division cricket player, and still excel and gain confidence.

“I work with a number of schools, and Millfield is one of the best.”