George’s Day
Why I’m relieved my son isn’t going to the Prince’s prep
Iwonder what the Amner Montessori nursery coffee mornings were like for the Duchess of Cambridge. Did she get stuck in to the local mummy scene, endlessly debating the merits of country prep schools? Or lie awake at night anxiously weighing up the pros and cons of rural family life, versus the convenience (and of course connections) that being based in central London would provide?
Kensington Palace announced last week that Prince George will be attending private prep school Thomas’s Battersea in September, a move that seems strategically in line with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s insistence that their children experience a “normal” upbringing, eschewing the classic Eton feeders (William’s alma mater, Wetherby, was struck off the royal shortlist) and plumping for a decidedly middle class hothouse – one of the four Thomas’s sites in the area, the others being Clapham, Kensington and Fulham.
I can almost hear the collective glee of the glitzy Battersea crowd of Sweaty-Betty-clad Thomas’s mothers calculating the uplift that this announcement will have on Wandsworth Common property prices. Something to be discussed over lunchtime glasses of Daylesford rosé.
Nonetheless, George’s parents can expect great things from Thomas’s. The 40 year-old elite school brand attracts a fairly ambitious, often international, parental group of bankers, media types and entrepreneurs who have, in recent years, migrated from the more obvious enclaves of Notting Hill and Westbourne Grove to the cheaper nappy valleys south of the river.
Battersea is an area I know all too well. There, over the course of a decade, my husband and I bought our first family home, got married, acquired a dog and then two baby boys in rapid succession. And it was with arrival of my first born, Alexander, now six, that the London prep school lunacy started. Before we’d even registered the birth, I sent my husband, Andrew from the hospital delivery suite with three private school application forms in hand. And this was considered entirely normal – even living 483 metres from the doors of an Ofsted “excellent” primary school was no guarantee of a state school place.
Like many others, we were attracted to the progressive ethos that characterises Thomas’s. The John Lewis uniform is functional and fuss-free (no preppy caps to doff or oversized blazers here). Boys aren’t thrown onto the rugby pitch, but into ballet classes instead. The mixed forms mean girls and boys are placed on a level playing field and, controversially, best friends are discouraged in place of kindness to all. All that and the fact it was a four-minute walk from the front door.
Haste paid off and reassuringly a month or so later, we received a letter to say that my son had been awarded a place on the waiting list at Thomas’s Clapham – slightly further away but, still, buying him a half-hour assessed opportunity – aged three – to convince the school of his brilliance. Since he was only a few months old at this point I didn’t give it a second thought. Of course he’d get in.
We were invited into the school for an open day the autumn prior to the assessment – the facilities and standard of teaching were clearly excellent.
I considered us fortunate to grab a highly prized morning slot at a feeder nursery to Thomas’s. The nursery, while thorough in preparing children for what would be expected of them at school, most certainly viewed Thomas’s as the place to go, further fuelling parental expectation.
Thomas’s admissions policy claims to evaluate a child’s apparent confidence, language skills and ability to follow instructions. In my view, assessing three-year-olds for a highly restricted number of places only serves to magnify the anxious chatter, placing Thomas’s at the top of the food chain in selecting the “best” children. Was this really a necessary admissions policy? Regardless, it worked. Thomas’s has become incredibly desirable for ambitious parents, with Tatler Schools Guide labelling the school “high achieving” and “competitive”.
Shameless in my pursuit of a place, I asked my neighbour to take my little boy with her when she picked up her children from Thomas’s, to familiarise him with the setting. I sent him to Kumon study classes, aged three – anything to give him a little leg up and confidence in his growing ability. Looking back, it seems an utterly ridiculous amount of energy to put into something that, ultimately, was completely out of my control.
As I’m sure you could predict, on the day itself, things couldn’t have been more chaotic. Our nanny had left us in the lurch the week before; my solicitor husband was away; I was juggling work deadlines as editor of parenting magazine Smallish with a demanding pre-schooler and his one-year-old brother.
Worse, my son hadn’t napped and it was plain for all to see. I dimly recall stuffing biscuits into his mouth and carrying him into the room crying (him, not me), before handing him over to the brisk admissions lady. The next 30 minutes passed slowly in the waiting room, gritting my teeth and exchanging glib pleasantries with the other parents. Fortunately, he came out smiling. When a thin envelope arrived some weeks later to say he hadn’t made the cut, I opened it and wept.
In hindsight, I don’t blame myself; there is no decision more fundamental for your child at that age. So much of the blueprint of who we are is set by the age of five. It’s little wonder that parents instinctively feel the need to ensure that they secure the very best start for their child on the all-important educational journey.
In an ironic twist, however, what I had thought would be good for my two boys is no longer what we feel to be right for them. So, in a reverse move to the Cambridges, we left SW11 last July, making a complete lifestyle change and packing our bags for a hill-top farmhouse in Somerset. The boys are now installed in a rural pre-prep where they can gambol around the green acres at lunchtime, take part in forest school, feed their own school chickens and pigs and breathe clean air.
I miss London, I won’t lie. The buzz, the culture, the shops, the convenience. But both children are thriving. I can’t take a book off my eldest, who has recently declared maths his favourite subject. I don’t do homework with them every night – I let them decide if they want to read after supper. For now, the pressure is off us all. But for the Cambridges, leaving their Norfolk idyll and headed for nappy valley, I wonder if it is just beginning.
‘On the day of his assessment, things couldn’t have been more chaotic’