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Our view of Pinewood School
There’s real heart at this rural Wiltshire school, where children thrive academically and beyond without sacrificing the freedoms and unbridled joys of childhood. It’s a place that champions growth, curiosity and individuality, encouraging pupils to discover and pursue their passions. This spirit perfectly sums up this 84-acre nirvana, where, in the words of the passionate, inspiring and hands-on head Neal Bailey, ‘quiet confidence outshines loud insecurities’.
Where is Pinewood School?
Easy to find and easy to park, Pinewood is set on the top of a hill with sweeping views of the acres of grounds and the Wiltshire and Oxfordshire
countryside beyond. The majority of families come from within a 25-mile radius and parental drop-offs are supplemented by a bus service fanning out in four or five directions, including Marlborough, Chilton Foliat and Hungerford, South Cerney, Cirencester, Pewsey and Wantage.
Nursery and pre-prep pupils start school life in the old stable block, before moving into the beautiful main house. Original buildings are complemented by newer updates with ‘The Hoyland’ forming the eco-friendly jewel in the crown. Opened in 2021 by the now King Charles III and Queen Camilla, it boasts snazzy classrooms and the ‘Everest steps’ as well as being the base for both learning support and wellbeing. The Hoyland is perhaps a glimpse of the way things are going at Pinewood with an extensive estate decarbonisation survey already running in order to establish the exact route to net zero.
Pinewood shines outdoors too, with its magnificent grounds, super-duper treetop climbing frame, fairy garden, mountain-bike track, nature walk and a rather special newly planted ring of seven oriental plane trees, one for each decade of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign and encircling a traditional hedgerow, created specifically to provide habitats for insects and birdlife. The incredible grounds team keep everything immaculate whatever the weather throws at them and there’s swimming all year round now the pool is covered; the sides can be concertinaed up in the summer so parents can watch swimming galas from the lawn.
School headmaster
Neal Bailey and his wife Nici, in post since September 2020, are a couple whose influence on Pinewood Prep School is greater than the sum of their parts - their skill sets are complementary and wide-ranging, but their values are utterly united. Genuine, amiable and kind, they set the perfect example for their young charges and with their own children having been here too, they know first-hand the importance of the Pinewood parent and pupil partnership.
Pinewood has long championed kindness as the ultimate legacy. ‘Kindness doesn’t have a price,’ says the head. ‘It’s the be-all and end-all.’ He is well aware that academic results are important but ‘our priority starts somewhere else and leads to academic excellence – we just put it in a different order’. There is very little hierarchy – no head boy or girl or prefects – and every pupil has a voice. They chose the school values – curiosity, perseverance and respect – and ‘support each other’s individual strengths’, says Mr Bailey, in a genuine and non-competitive manner. It’s an ethos that pervades the playing fields too, with the head of sport described by the head as ‘the most morally exemplary person I have ever met’ – participation and equal opportunity are the starting points and sporting success follows on as a direct result of putting wellbeing before winning.
Six years into his headship, Mr Bailey tells us, ‘I’m just getting going,’ but he has already achieved a lot, not least assembling a brilliant team around him –a recent ISI report rated the school’s teaching as a ‘significant strength’. He’s also improved some infrastructure, covering the pool so it can be used all year, improving the pre-prep facilities and equipping the Victorian kitchen garden with polytunnels so pupils can grow veggies even in the winter months.
He genuinely wants the very best for every pupil (whatever that looks like for them), an ethos which fuels his ambition to be ‘a touch more aspirational’ across the board. ‘If you don’t ask the question, the answer is always no,’ he adds wisely and so there is always room to push for a little more. But Neal and Nici Bailey get it - they are professionals and parents, they want pupils to be valued, challenged and kind but they also want them to be children, ‘If a prep school can’t be fun, then what is it? We should all be silly sometimes'.
Pinewood School admissions process
Unsurprisingly, Pinewood is a popular place and despite the testing economic climate, numbers are strong with some year groups oversubscribed, although extra classes are added where possible to avoid turning families away. The London exodus continues year on year, with parents spreading the word, often via social media.
Pinewood is a proudly non-selective school, so there are no formal assessments although pupils coming into Years 3 to 8 will be gently assessed to help inform setting decisions and to ensure the school is fully able to meet the needs of the child. It’s a first-come, first-served operation, although they do try hard to keep a pretty even boy-girl ratio. Pre-prep pupils come in for taster sessions following an offer, whereas children joining higher up the school are invited to two taster days first to give them an opportunity to get stuck into everything from classroom lessons to sport and extracurricular activities. If your child has a curiosity about the world and a have-a-go approach to life, they will fit right in.
Academics and destinations
Pinewood has always been known as a properly holistic school, but it also achieves on the academic front. In fact, senior schools actively look to the school because they know how well the pupils are taught, and the head has strong relationships with many. He recently consulted with several – Radley, Marlborough and Cheltenham College among them – about how they teach science and as a result Pinewood has reduced the curriculum content from 30 to 20 modules to be able to focus more deeply on each, while upping the number of experiments. This kind of agile thinking is typical of the school. Other recent changes have been to stop teaching humanities to Common Entrance to allow teachers to ‘teach what they love, rather than the Battle of Hastings yet again’ and replace the prep slot at the end of the day with a skills programme where pupils can choose from a whole range of activities, including sport, a creative pursuit, adventure activities and volunteering. ‘Why wouldn’t you do something fun at the end of a long school day?’ asks Mr Bailey. A while ago, they also upped lesson times from 35 to 45 minutes to give children more time to engage with each subject. Pupils are taught both by class teachers and specialist teachers in science, ICT, French, Latin, music and art. Setting begins with maths in the lower school, and builds on additional subjects higher up.
As a non-selective school, it is fully understood that some children will struggle with certain subjects and there’s a brilliant learning-skills department for those youngsters who need a bit of extra help. There’s a refreshingly inclusive attitude to setting too, which now operates as a more fluid banding system to move away from the idea of a ‘bottom set’ which can feel very demotivating, whilst also giving those stronger in some subjects the opportunity to be stretched and challenged further. In addition, those showing exceptional ability will be prepared for an academic scholarship. The curriculum for all pupils has also evolved to reflect the changing life of a prep school child (who now has to ‘peak at least twice’, according to the head – both in the Year 6 pre-test and then again as they exit at Year 8). It’s a case of discreetly preparing pupils to give the best account of themselves at 11+ and then continuing to motivate these young minds by making learning as relevant and interesting as possible.
As pupils reach the top years of the school, the emphasis is firmly on finding the right senior school for the child rather than meeting parental aspirations. Pupils go on to a wide range of schools, with most choosing co-eds: roughly a quarter head for Marlborough and the rest go to a wide range of other top seniors, often with a scholarship in hand.
Co-curricular at Pinewood School
Expect plenty of sport. Top of the agenda is hockey, netball, cricket, rugby and football, all of which come with a ‘have a go’ headline with Pinewood regularly fielding A to D teams. There’s a brand-new Astro and the old one has been resurfaced to match, adding a whopping 12 tennis courts to the summer offering. There are grass pitches galore, an athletics track for the summer, a nine-hole golf course and the recently-refurbished and enclosed swimming pool. Fixtures against other schools take place on Wednesday afternoons and every other Saturday, and fiercely contested house matches are held once a term. Everyone gets stuck in – often literally – to tough mudder challenges, including Mr Bailey who is happy to get knee-deep in mud and pull pupils out if they fall.
Drama, music and art are all thriving and are part of the curriculum almost throughout. Annual musical highlights include the bumper summer concert and the hugely successful rock show (this lot sure know how to raise the roof), and there are a number of more informal opportunities for soloists to perform throughout each term. Drama productions here are some of the most professional looking on the prep-school circuit and are always played to an absolutely packed house.
Outdoor activity and extracurricular high jinks have always been an important part of life at Pinewood with Thursday afternoons set aside for the activities programme, and with the Pinewood SKILLS programme now scheduled daily, there’s even more time dedicated to its pillars of service and society, knowledge and curiosity, imagination and creativity, leisure and activity, life skills and acquisition and surroundings and adventure.
Boarding at Pinewood School
Although home isn’t far away, Pinewood pupils love their boarding. It’s on offer for Years 4 to 8 with enough room for 80 pupils, and it’s very flexible; Year 4 pupils can do one night a week and the older ones can sign up for regular nights with the option to add extra nights on an ad hoc basis. There are no full boarders; everyone goes home on Saturday nights, so this isn’t a school for the international crowd.
Dedicated house parents run this very ‘extended family’ style boarding house in the eaves of the main building and generally make it into something that most kids want in on. Dorms are smartly decorated and bathrooms and common rooms have recently been refurbished. The latter are now both co-ed spaces which, says Mr Bailey, is a reflection of how integrated boys and girls are and how well they get on.
Pinewood School community
Wellbeing is not just part of life at Pinewood, it is the central core. Head of wellbeing Hayley Davies created the role some five or six years ago after appreciating both her affinity for it and the increasing need for a dedicated lead in this field. She knows children and she knows Pinewood (having come here as an NQT more than 20 years ago) and already, the role has grown to encompass timetabled sessions, drop-ins, training of staff (including four ELSAs which are unusual outside the state sector) guiding wellbeing pupil ambassadors and the addition of several members of full-time staff, including two registered nurses, as well as visiting specialists. Mrs Davies runs a ‘five ways to wellbeing’ strategy and all children in the prep school are surveyed twice a year, including specific questions about sport or food to really hone in on areas that are promoting high levels of contentment and those which may need further investigation. Pre-preppers are surveyed annually as the process, usually done one-to-one and picture-based, takes longer. The school’s inclusivity means it actively adapts for more complex needs, whether it’s neurodivergence or mobility challenges.
Parents and teachers are equally welcome in the wellbeing area, and this really is a school, as the head notes, that ‘looks after families and not just children’. They are a tight bunch here, a feeling of unity and loyalty that can’t help but rub off on you.
And finally...
We’re not surprised that Pinewood’s reputation is going viral – we hear that one family who relocated from Notting Hill to send their kids here set off a social media storm with a flurry of new enquiries in their wake. And while London parents might initially be wowed by the space and setting, the real magic is the inclusive warmth which yields the very best from every pupil by making them feel valued.