About the Woolf Fisher Trust

Our mission: To recognize and reward excellence in education

The late Sir Woolf Fisher was a passionate supporter of education in New Zealand. In 1960 he founded the Woolf Fisher Trust for the advancement of scientific and general education in New Zealand through its prestigious fellowships and scholarships. When making these awards, the Trust has always sought to uphold the guiding principles and values of its founder.

The major awards have been Woolf Fisher Fellowships, which provide overseas study and travel for outstanding secondary school principals and teachers, polytechnic senior managers and, most recently, primary and intermediate school principals. To date, more than 1,100 Fellowships have been awarded.

Other awards include the Woolf Fisher Scholarships, enabling New Zealand university graduates to study for three or four years for a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. Each Woolf Fisher Scholarship is worth up to $80,000 per year, making them among the most valuable scholarships of their kind awarded in New Zealand.

The trustees hope that recipients of Woolf Fisher Fellowships and Scholarships will demonstrate some of the qualities which Sir Woolf himself embodied over a long and successful career as an industrial pioneer and leader: integrity, leadership, boldness of vision and exceptional zeal, keenness and capacity for work.