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Our view
Pupils get to fully enjoy their childhood at this West Sussex gem where learning is ingeniously weaved into play, stretching children to learn on every level. From navigating the Viking ship climbing frame and sharing their favourite book with the head to mucking about in boats on the school lake and running the lighting and sound for assembly, pupils are inspired every minute of the day whatever they’re doing. By the time they leave, their brains are trained to be very good learners indeed – and they’ve had a wonderful time in the process.
Where?
With 100 acres in deepest West Sussex, Westbourne House must surely bag the award for most handsome prep. Just outside Chichester, close to the South Downs and a stone’s throw from the gorgeous Wittering beaches, it is not surprising that water sports are an important part of school life. Kayaking and canoeing take place on the school’s 35-acre lake, along with fly fishing, nature studies and interesting experiments that involve crafting rafts out of barrels. The superb sports facilities include an indoor pool, squash courts and climbing wall.
The onsite nursery and pre-prep are housed in their own separate building and grounds, close to the main school. Imaginative displays festoon the foyer, with everyone taking part in creating them – this is a fun, creative, immersive experience the minute you walk through the door. We found magic and inspiration in bucket-loads here, from a well-thought-out Gruffalo den in the woods to the classrooms vividly decorated with themes: Under the Sea, How to Catch a Star, Zoom into a Good Book. Even the climbing frames are carefully considered, purposefully designed to stretch children to take manageable risks, which translates into them being able to take intellectual risks too. This place offers a gentle transition from nursery to reception and is one of the loveliest, most uplifting pre-preps we’ve seen.
Most pupils live within 30 minutes’ drive and there’s a good school minibus service that runs from the South Downs to the Witterings.
Head
Martin Barker, who’s been at the helm since 2011, is a calm, steadying hand – inspiring yet firm, friendly yet forceful. Inclusive and holistic are his buzzwords; he is keen to encourage confidence, for children to have a go at anything and everything and for them to acquire skills and develop talents they never thought they had. ‘I want to give kids a broad experience and worldliness in a kindly environment,’ he says. He’s surrounded by an excellent team – he believes that if he can secure dazzling teachers, the rest will take care of itself. Which, of course, it does. Many staff live on site, which helps with the family atmosphere.
Admissions
Westbourne House is fervently non-selective. This is very much a through school from nursery to Year 8 – very few peel off before that. Admissions are possible at any time and into any year group, and the school prides itself on being able to accommodate households relocating with children joining in all years, provided there’s a space. A good sprinkling of overseas pupils arrive in Year 6, eager to experience English boarding school life at its best.
Academics and senior school destinations
Parents often choose the school for its terrific academic record, expecting and demanding great results, with an eye on entry into the top boarding schools. Saying that, achievement in itself is what matters here, for every level of ability, and effort is recognised. A few years ago the school adopted the High Performance Learning philosophy, which encourages children to develop skills such as lateral thinking, empathy, perseverance and resilience, and they’re recipients of the prestigious High Performance Learning World Class School award, which recognises the very best schools around the globe at the forefront of educational thinking. The focus in pre-prep is on enjoyment – there are no spelling tests and pupils read the books that they enjoy. Head of pre-prep Caroline Oglethorpe doesn’t believe reading should be a battle for parents at night, rather they should feel excitement about opening up a book.
The IT suite is exciting, with rows of iMacs and Lego robotics kits amongst other funky gadgetry, and the science department impresses, with chemistry, biology and physics taught as separate subjects in Years 7, with an extra hour of practicals once a week rotated through the disciplines. Science clinics offer support for children at both ends of the scale, and pupils with SEND needs are offered in-class support, with individual breakout sessions and regular feedback from subject teachers where necessary. Languages are strong too, with Spanish, French and Latin all on the curriculum. In Year 7, pupils choose between the first two and all continue with Latin. Those who choose French go to Normandy on a school trip, and those who choose Spanish spend five days in Barcelona.
The newly refurbished library is a fantastic space, with 1,000 new books to keep the reading bug alive. Reading lessons are part of English and pupils write an analysis of books they’ve read, with new ones they might enjoy being recommended. Pupils also recommend their favourite books to teachers. On our visit, the head had just read a reception pupil’s fave read and the two will now discuss it together.
From Year 5 upwards, Learning for Life lessons kick in, with everything from organisation and revision skills to interview practice and touch typing on the agenda. There is no formal Saturday school; instead, pupils play a wide range of sports matches (if you’re selected for a team, you’re expected to turn up) and enjoy a fantastic programme of activities from the educational to creative arts – think chess, fly-fishing and baking – optional but popular for both boarders and day pupils.
Common Entrance is only taken for maths, English and science. Leavers head predominantly to local schools, a mixture of day and boarding. Brighton College, Canford, Bryanston, Hurst College and Seaford bag the biggest number of pupils, with Lancing and Cranleigh also on the slate, and Sherborne Girls gaining in popularity too. Mr Barker begins the ‘next-step’ conversations with parents in Year 5, helping guide them towards the schools that best suit their child. Westbourne gets an impressive number of scholarships, about which he is refreshingly self-effacing.
Co-curricular
Sports hall, pool, cricket nets, squash courts, Astro, dance studio, climbing wall… plus a nine-hole golf course on-site and real tennis at Petworth. Not to mention the lake for canoeing and kayaking from Year 2. Basically, the sports facilities are fab. So it’s no great surprise that the standard of sport itself is first-rate. These teams win a lot (and there are plenty of vocal parents on the sidelines confirming that), with cricket a particular strength. There are lots of county cricket players and girls’ cricket is developing rapidly.
The smart standalone music school makes for a strong culture of music, and has over the years clocked some pretty impressive tours, including singing in Notre Dame, the Vatican and at the Last Post at the Menin Gate Memorial. Three quarters of the children in the prep school play an instrument – all taught on site by visiting peris, who are mostly professional musicians. A string of orchestras, bands, choirs and chamber groups means there’s something for everyone.
Drama is similarly whizzy. Like music, it is a key part of the curriculum in all year groups, and we are pleased to hear that every year from nursery upwards puts on a play, with Years 6 and 8 producing musicals – Peter Pan was the Year 6 Christmas show this year, while the Year 8s will stage School of Rock at the end of the summer term. Year 7s, meanwhile, create happy havoc with their sketch show each year. We love how three pupils in Year 8 run the lighting and sound for all the productions and assemblies throughout the year, giving them a chance to get really stuck into the backstage art.
The art and technology department is particularly impressive, with pupils in Years 3 to 8 enjoying an hour of art plus an hour of tech each week, covering textiles, food technology, ceramics and robotics, a new addition which pupils are loving. Local artists take older pupils for extended workshops and every pupil in the prep has three pieces of work on show in the annual art exhibition. We were impressed by the art classes we saw – Year 6s putting their own spin on The Scream, Year 8s making appliqué creations.
Where every school on the block now offers forest school, Westbourne House was an early adopter of outside learning, and has its own DofE programme in the form of the Westbourne Award. It also has its own garden with a thriving gardening club that supplies the dining room with fruit and veg. Other clubs include squash, dance, baking and chess. After CE, Year 8s have a smorgasbord of fun laid out for them including, sailing, climbing, trips to the beach and getting stuck into rehearsals for the big end-of-year show.
Boarding
One of the most fun and flexible boarding set-ups we’ve seen, boarding is unsurprisingly hugely popular. There are seven different boarding houses: one in the main house (for Years 3 to 6), but the rest (Years 7 to 8) are set up as a cutesy cul-de-sac of village houses in the school grounds – each one has a married couple as houseparents – where children pop over to play in each other’s gardens (one even has its own trampoline). We love that activities, supper and homework are all done up at the school, too, so that when pupils return to their boarding houses they feel like they’re ‘home’ ready to relax in PJs in front of a movie or play a board game. Cosy, yet also a great way for the older children to learn to be independent while having real housemates – a proper dress rehearsal for senior school, university and beyond.
Full boarding has been on offer for a while, attracting a number of Spanish, French and Chinese pupils, among others. A mammoth 100 children board at present (everything from one to seven nights a week, with Wednesdays and Thursdays the most popular nights), relishing their evenings running around the school grounds and getting stuck into a huge number of activities.
School community
Deputy head academic Barbara Langford deserves a special shout-out. Not only has she spearheaded the HPL Programme but, alongside pastoral lead Sam Pollock, she has also put together a total review of the pastoral care system, training all teachers on the processes to follow and creating access to an onsite emotional behavioural coach and a school counsellor, whose door (next to matron’s) is always open. The school runs regular ‘teen tips’ parent seminars, and Year 7s and 8s have their own tutors (and a specified pastoral head), more akin to what you’d expect at a senior school.
Westbourne House was founded at the same time as the Scout movement, and so the house system here borrows some of the lingo – houses are ‘patrols’, head boys and girls are ‘troop leaders’ and pupils work towards a boarders’ adventure badge: learning survival techniques, night navigation and outdoor cooking. Siblings are often in the same patrol, fostering healthy cross-year group collaboration and competition – the inter-patrol singing contest sees each patrol singing the two same songs (this year they’re from Grease) with parents coming to watch. Pupil camaraderie shines through – from the whole school community projects (this year they’re building a learning space out of willow) to the leadership roles older pupils take on as buddies, prefects, school council members, places on the kindness committee and troop leaders, which is Westbourne’s equivalent of head boy and girl.
Parents are warmly welcomed here (there’s even a dedicated ‘grandparents’ day’ in the pre-prep). Every Friday there’s a parents’ coffee morning and they’re fully involved in charity drives, nominating good causes, as well as organising events such as dog shows, year group walks, swims and movie nights, and the much-anticipated bi-annual ball.
Some 40 per cent of families have relocated from London expressly for a broader, more tranquil environment, while still seeking academic excellence. The demographic is fairly local, although the expansion in boarding means that Westbourne is now on the radar for, and becoming popular with, international parents.
And finally...
Westbourne House has managed to bottle that elusive formula of what makes a prep school perfect: not too big (360 pupils), a small family feel and yet an immensely large site, fizzing energy and, oh yes, top-drawer academics.