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Our view
Burgeoning numbers at this Bucks prep say it all – from superlative outdoor learning (the sight of pupils clad in boiler suits and wellies squeezing every ounce of fun out of the grounds and woodlands is heartwarming) to the warm and supportive atmosphere that engages children’s natural curiosity, Beachborough delivers the kind of holistic education that parents know will get the best out of their sons and daughters. And with a new educational partnership with Bloxham up and running, pupils are neatly segued into being ready for senior school.
Where?
Beachborough is set in the heart of Formula 1 country, close to the Silverstone race circuit and several of the team garages. The school is easy to find on the edge of Westbury village and the site boasts a roomy 35 acres including woodlands and wetland. The original Manor House with its welcoming reception complete with comfy sofas and roaring log fires is at the heart of the school with additional buildings and some very modern additions springing up around it, but all together forming a very cohesive campus.
It’s half an hour or less by car to Bicester, Banbury, Oxford and Northampton. The nearest train stations are Bicester, Banbury and Milton Keynes, making Beachborough a very attractive option for an extensive geographical catchment.
Head
Simone Mitchell has been head here since September 2023 and three years in, she tells us she’s only ‘just got going and there is plenty left to do’. Warm and approachable, but with a visible core of decisiveness, she has a passion for ‘bringing out the greatness within every child’, which she feels it is the school’s job to do. Her first project – launching a digital curriculum – happened in September 2024 and pupils can now put on VR headsets to experience, among other things, a walk through a desert in geography, and all Year 7 and 8 pupils have their own personal devices. Her focus is now on introducing more outdoor learning and integrating a new skills programme (CREATE) into every lesson. Comic style characters represent skills such as communication, reflection and tenacity, with every child, from reception to Year 8, encouraged to develop these qualities in all areas of their school life.
She's taking an imaginative approach to school values too. The ‘Caught Being Kind’ initiative, for example, sees nominees celebrated and given the chance to win a special afternoon tea. She’s also phasing out Common Entrance, replacing it with a Beachborough Diploma that includes presentations and group tasks as well as exams. And Year 8s are doing a new post-scholarship project this year where they research a topic and condense it to one Big Question, then present their learning journey and findings. The new educational partnership with Bloxham sees Years 4 to 6 visiting the senior school on Saturday mornings for enrichment classes to help stretch their learning, while the Year 7s and 8s go there for cross-curricular ‘natural thinking’ sessions to develop their lateral thinking skills.
Admissions
Nursery, kindergarten, reception and Year 3 are all popular entry points here, mirroring trends seen throughout the sector, but Beachborough’s specific campus geography makes Year 4 an increasingly popular option for parents wanting their children to have a year in Boardman (home to pupils from nursery to Year 4) before moving to the Manor House for Year 5.
‘Broadly non-selective’ is the ethos here, and the school will accept applications at any point provided a place is available, but it does insist on a taster day at which pupils will undergo a very ‘light touch’ assessment to establish the learning environment that would suit them best.
Academics and senior school destinations
Nursery, pre-prep and Years 3 and 4 all learn in the Boardman Building under the care and tutelage of their class teacher for the most part, with two-form entry from reception to Year 2. Interactive and topic-led style lessons are engaging and fun, and outdoor learning sees pupils going outside to read a poem about blackberries then picking some themselves, re-enacting the Battle of Hastings and having a robotics lesson on the terrace.
Moving to the Manor House in Year 5, pupils are taught by subject specialists in dedicated classroom areas and with the additional pastoral and academic support of a tutor with whom they meet three times a week in small groups of up to eight. Lessons continue to be energetic and interactive with geography pupils presenting their own weather forecasts and history students enjoying video clips which bring their lesson to life (the walls in this classroom are painted to replicate ancient stonework and adorned with shields that they regularly pull from the walls for battle re-enactments). The English classrooms also bring a sense of fun to learning, with murals of literary characters beautifully painted by a member of staff. It’s the winning juxtaposition of grown-up facilities and a child-centric and youthfully exuberant environment, with an outdoor learning environment all the way up to Year 8.
Given that Beachborough is an independent prep, pupils can and do go anywhere and everywhere - the departure list names more than 40 schools. Bloxham and Stowe remain favourites for locals, but plenty of children also head to St Edward’s, Tudor Hall, Radley, Uppingham and Warwick with a significant haul of scholarships among them.
Co-curricular
Beachborough’s awesome TED suite (Technology, Engineering and Design) knocks your traditional prep school D&T shed out of the water. Opened by the engineering director of Mercedes-AMG Formula 1, the suite is a purpose-built, light-flooded gallery space with areas for CAD design, demonstrations and individual or group project work. The TED suite plays host to the co-curricular racing club too, which builds and wires up electric Goblin cars which pupils have gone on to race at Goodwood. Art is also phenomenal, with the two spacious art rooms joyously bursting with recent pupil projects and the Manor House itself always showcasing at least one piece of work from every child.
Beachborough is well equipped for budding thespians, with LAMDA lessons on offer as well as timetabled drama and annual productions for almost every year group ranging from pre-prep Christmas shows to the Year 6 production of Aladdin, with a set built by art scholars and art club. The theatre is decidedly grown-up for a prep school, with a lighting rig and retractable seating – the perfect backdrop for the Year 7 annual Shakespeare production and Year 8 showcase. Music is very inclusive too, with a high percentage of children playing an instrument or being part of a choir or group. There are various different musical instruments to try, and the art, drama, music and dance scholarship programmes give talented youngsters additional support.
Sport is both impressive and inclusive and Beachborough is unusually good at celebrating pupils' sporting activities outside of school as well. There’s a lot of mixed-gender sport here and the full-size Astro, cavernous sports hall, netball and tennis courts and multitudinous pitches make sure that there’s plenty of space for children to play sport most days (in the mornings as well as in the afternoons). There are also visits from senior school coaches and if pupils request a new activity the school does its best to introduce it.
In case parents miss any of the action, all sports results, including the pupil-chosen ‘players of the match’ are detailed in the extremely informative and beautifully edited weekly newsletter summarising activities across the school from the previous week and highlighting upcoming events.
There are more than 30 activities to keep boys and girls busy, including a new flying club where pupils learn in flight simulators and then try the real thing at a local airfield once a term.
Boarding
Pupils can board at Beachborough from Year 3 and ordinarily numbers increase as you go higher up the school, but the current Year 3 girls have almost all caught the highly infectious boarding bug and stay over once a week. Beachborough offers weekly (Monday to Thursday), or flexi-boarding options and can even accommodate last-minute sleepovers in most cases if needed.
Kites boarding house, under the experienced watch of head of boarding Susan Caddick, operates like a big family with a maximum capacity of 55. There’s an abundance of home-from-home touches - single-sex dorms are nicely decorated, and children are taught the basics of making their beds and neatly folding their clothes. There are seven Friday nights on offer every year (which are always fully booked) with pupils having a go at Zorbing or circus skills and feasting on breakfast before pick up on Saturday morning.
Once homework is done, boarders largely have the run of the place, playing ‘Manhunt’ (glorified hide and seek), honing their skills on the dartboard, racing around the playgrounds on scooters or exploring the woods - summer is ‘particularly amazing’ we are told.
School community
Pastoral care is top drawer here, with multiple layers of support for every child from class teachers and tutors, on-site nurses, Year 8 wellbeing ambassadors and, finally, the school’s own wellbeing team, to whom children can be referred by parents or staff or simply pop along themselves. Tutors are the first port of call; ‘I can really trust my tutor,’ one pupil told us, and another said the school handles conflict really well by, for example, taking children outside to talk things through.
The wellbeing room is home to the anonymous worry box and children can also pick up lovely little positive messages from an envelope on the noticeboard to keep in their pockets or give to a friend. Then there’s Bertie, the head's dog who is currently training to be a fully qualified wellbeing dog - no doubt he will lend his own style of four-legged support to this very caring community where talking about your feelings is emphatically encouraged.
And finally....
This is a school where, in the head’s words, ‘every child goes through school feeling known, feeling confident and feeling that the learning experience has been personalised for them’. As another member of staff says, ‘We make great little people into great big people.’ We certainly agree with that.