The idea came from Greece where Jocelin Winthrop Young was headmaster of Anavryta school (from 1949-1959). A pupil of Kurt Hahn's in Salem and Gordonstoun, he had been involved in the international students reconstruction project organised by Salem after the great earthquake at Argostoli in the Ionian Islands in 1954. This had been such a success that Jocelin Young considered the scheme of founding a permanent association of schools, started by Kurt Hahn or his colleagues or pupils, to provide aid projects for those in need. In 1962/03 he visited ten of these schools to explain the plan; this included an annual conference for co-ordination and discussion. In 1966, on Hahn's 80th birthday, Young, at that time headmaster of Salem campus, had these schools invited to the celebrations in Salem and sent them the agenda of a meeting for the foundation of a "Hahn Schools Conference". King Constantine of the Hellenes, a former pupil of Anavryta, chaired the meeting and the plan was approved by the seven schools represented. Young was appointed to run the association and retired as director in 1992. The first conference was held at Gordonstoun in 1967.

Subsequently in 1967 when the group met again, they called themselves The Round Square Conference, a tribute to the old building at Gordonstoun in which they gathered. From then on an annual conference has taken place, bringing together delegations of students, teachers, heads and governors of member schools. Since then, the word conference has been refined to become simply Round Square.

In 1930, Dr. Hahn penned a series of precepts (the Seven Laws of Salem) which he felt all schools should embrace. Some of these include:

• giving children the chance to discover themselves
• allowing children to experience both success and defeat
• providing periods of silence
• training the imagination, the ability to anticipate and plan
• taking sports and games seriously, but only as a part of the whole
• freeing the children of rich and influential parents from the paralyzing influence of privilege

Unlike all the other twentieth century educational innovators, Hahn wrote no books. His testimony and legacy rest in his schools and other programmes he initiated, including Outward Bound, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award (its international successor being the International Award) and the United World Colleges.

Perhaps the newspaper, Times of London, epitomized his contribution best in 1974 in his obituary: "No one else in our day has created more original ideas and, at the same time, possessed the gift of getting them into practice. And that gift is still being perpetuated.