SIR ERNEST CASSEL EDUCATIONAL TRUST
Patron: The Countess Mountbatten of Burma, C.B.E.
History of the Trust. |
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The Trust was set up in 1919 by Sir Ernest Cassel, the distinguished financier and philanthropist, with a |
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capital of £500,000. Herbert Asquith, Arthur Balfour and Lord Haldane were among the first Trustees. |
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Sir Ernest Cassel Educational Trust |
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The original aims of the Trust were the support of adult education, the higher education of women and the |
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teaching of 'commerce' at university level. Substantial capital grants were made initially to women's colleges |
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at Oxford and Cambridge and to London University for the endowment of Chairs at the LSE. When |
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Edwina Mountbatten became a Trustee in 1948, the Trust's interests began to turn increasingly towards the |
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Commonwealth, particularly in the field of higher education, with financial help being offered to | |
Commonwealth students in the United Kingdom. On her death in 1960, these grants were named the | |
Edwina Mountbatten Memorial Grants. In the same year, her daughter, Lady Brabourne (now Countess | |
Mountbatten of Burma) became a Trustee and was Chairman of the Trustees from 1969 until 2005. | |
The grants to Commonwealth students encountering unforeseen financial difficulty, in their final year, were | |
renamed the Mountbatten Memorial Grants, following the assassination of Earl Mountbatten by the IRA in | |
1979. They now account for nearly three quarters of the Trust's annual expenditure on grants. The |
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'block grant' scheme was adopted in 1983, whereby currently ten universities receive an annual grant |
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which they disburse on the Trust's behalf. Provision is also made for funds to offer to students at institutions | |
not included in the 'block grant' scheme. | |
Similarly, in the same year, the British Academy took over the responsibility for the awards and | |
administration of the Trust's overseas research grants in the language, literature, and civilisation of other countries. | |
A Mountbatten Memorial Award was instituted in 1984 at Christ's College, Cambridge towards the support of |
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an outstanding Commonwealth postgraduate student, chosen by the Master and Fellows. |
E-mail casseltrust@btinternet.com Registered Charity Number 313820 Last revised 11 January, 2010