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Our View
This country prep just outside Oxford is a bit of hidden gem - but expect that to change pretty soon with new head Adam Mallins at the helm. 'We need to sing from the rooftops,' he tells us. And there's certainly a lot to show off about. The school grounds are a childhood dream with a riding school, a nine-hole golf course, a dedicated woodland camp-out space, and an enormous outdoor learning area where subjects are brought vividly to life. Curiosity, fun and adventure form the backbone of learning here ('championing childhood' is the school's joyful ethos) and academic results speak for themselves, with pupils heading off to super-competitive local day schools, many with a scholarship or two to choose from.
Where?
You couldn’t get a more bucolic setting for a school than Chandlings, with its Cotswold yellow-stone buildings, manicured formal gardens and stables located just five miles from the centre of Oxford. Inside its 60-acre grounds, it boasts multiple secure play areas: the nursery has its own large, dedicated playground, and there are separate adventure playgrounds for other year groups. The jewel in the crown, though, has to be the school’s incredible outdoor learning space where all the children have a double lesson every week. There are two classrooms – one chalet-style, one sheltered – a canopied area, a fire pit with a circle of seats for toasting marshmallows by the campfire, a wildlife pond with a floating dock that pupils use for science and geography, and a vegetable patch where plants are grown for food tech and still-life drawings. There’s even a thriving bee colony that produces Chandlings honey every year.
It’s the easiest of the co-ed country preps to access from Oxford and is on the doorstep of the city’s leafy Boars Hill suburb. Two bus routes currently run to and from the north and the south of Oxford, but there are plans to greatly increase them and even roll out a fleet of school minibuses.
Head
Adam Mallins brings a media background as well as teaching experience to his first headship. His father and grandfather were both educators and on their advice he first embarked on a career at the BBC (directing programmes such as The One Show and Crimewatch) and then the Discovery Channel and National Geographic, before following his first calling of teaching. He was offered the perfect job at Shiplake College teaching media and coaching rugby (he’d nearly reached professional level when he was younger), and while he was there, he completed his PGCE and moved up the ranks to housemaster. He then joined Crossfield School in Reading where he helped extend the school to age 16, before taking up the Chandlings headship in September 2025.
Mr Mallins is excited about what Chandlings has to offer – ‘It has some of the best prep facilities I’ve seen,’ he says – and he wants to make sure prospective families get a true sense of its scope (he’s even thinking of having mini-tractor tours). Other plans include rolling out a full minibus network as quickly as possible in response to parents’ requests, setting up a pupil voice programme (nicely named ‘Cookies with the Head’), and putting together a plan to build a proper school theatre. Newly part of the Radley Group, Chandlings, he feels, will be boosted even further by the shared ethos and pedagogy of the group’s grander vision.
At the heart of everything, though, is his desire to ‘remember the joy’. He tells us that if the school were run by Disney or Apple they would have a head of joy – and he’s not ruling out something like that here at Chandlings.
Admissions
Chandling’s admissions policy is ‘gently selective’. For early years, this means phonics and motor-skills assessments; for prep entry, there is a maths test and an English writing assessment, which take place during a taster day. How a child deals with the tests is a good indication of how they will cope with the school’s fast pace.
Admissions are open throughout the year, catering to parents who work at Oxford university, the Oxford Science Park and the BMW plant nearby. In terms of specialised learning support, there is provision for dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia, with one full-time SENCO and two full-time and one part-time learning-support teachers, but it’s not the place if your child has particularly intense needs. As well as English as a foreign language, German is also taught, as a handful of pupils with parents working at BMW go on to the German grammar-school system.
Academics and senior school destinations
Chandlings pupils have access to rather incredible opportunities – though every effort is made to not intimidate them or overwhelm them with choice. Confidence is fostered early on, with nursery pupils joining the rest of the school for assemblies and older children dining with them in the lunch hall from the summer term before they join reception. Nursery children are also taught by specialists in music, French, sport and outdoor learning, with drama, art and Spanish joining the curriculum from reception.
Things are ramped up in prep, with specialist teachers in science (there are two bright purpose-built labs, with Year 6s earning their Bunsen Burner licences), food tech (which sees pupils team up with the gardening club to grow veg in a polytunnel) and D&T (the classroom has woodwork and metalwork benches, 3D printers and other equipment). Streaming also begins in prep, with classes split into three groups for maths (usually from Year 3 or 4) and English classes set from Year 5. The library sits at the heart of the school and is a lovely enticing space with its tree-shaped bookshelf and little nook for reading. It also hosts frequent author visits; last year Claire Balding and Ben Miller were among the speakers.
CATs are taken every year, and pupils are also prepared for the ISEB. Discussions about where a child might want to go to school next take place in Year 5, with the majority heading to independent day schools. Last year, all the pupils who sat for scholarships were successful, and many even had multiple offers.
Co-curricular
Sport is well provisioned, with playing fields and two hard tennis courts, as well as a full-size Astroturf pitch (soon to be getting floodlights). Inside, you’ll find a sports hall, with climbing ropes, benches, wooden climbing frames and netball posts, and there’s also a swimming pool, which all pupils can use. A large variety of sports are on offer, including gymnastics, tennis, hockey, cricket, athletics, football and basketball for girls and boys. The boys also play rugby, and girls heading off to senior schools that play lacrosse are offered short intensive sessions in Year 6. Players are selected to join the various teams, who compete in regular fixtures against local prep schools.
The art department is fantastic: a new space overlooks the pond through a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and there’s ample space for pupils to do everything from textiles and ceramics to graphics. Pupils take part in Oxfordshire Artweeks, a vast pop-up exhibition event – we were amazed by some of the chrysalises on display from last year’s show, as well as the Mad Hatters’ top hats created for a recent production of Alice in Wonderland.
The school’s main performance space, Lantern Hall, hosts annual productions by every year group (head of drama Kate Belcher writes the plays herself and ensures every pupil gets a part). Pupils can also join individual or small group LAMDA classes if they’ve got a particular interest. There’s a lovely music area, with two main rooms and plenty of small practice rooms, and the Christmas carol concert is always performed at Radley. As well as orchestras, string groups, guitar groups and a rock band, there’s also a choir that everyone participates in.
School community
The idyllic setting of the school lends itself to a focus on wellbeing. As Mr Mallins says, ‘Pastoral care is what we are known for.’ The house system brings a sense of belonging across year groups, with regular sports fixtures and charity efforts, as well as fierce competition over house points. There’s also a school council, made up of nine children from Year 3 upwards, plus a Wellbeing Knight programme, designed in conjunction with the pupils to help them understand what contributes to a healthy mind and body.
The school is open from 8am to 5pm, and there's a breakfast club from 7.30am and an after-school club until 6pm. During this time there are more than 60 extracurricular clubs and activities, from judo to gardening, as well as programmes to enable pupils to develop skills in sports such as karate or golf. Year 5s look forward to their three-night team-building residential in Dorset, which takes place before term begins, while Year 6s stay in a French château for a week-long trip. There’s also a hotly anticipated yearly camping expedition.
There’s a real sense of community amongst the grown-ups, too, with the PTA (known as PATCH) running events including a Christmas bazaar, summer ball, coffee mornings and quiz evenings, plus a second-hand uniform shop. And the greatest testament to the success of any school: there’s a high retention rate of staff, with the majority having been there for more than 10 years – it might be something to do with all the social events we saw advertised in the staff room.
And finally....
This Oxfordshire prep’s star is in the ascendent: now part of the Radley Group with an energetic new head shining a spotlight on its down-to-earth brilliance, we’re expecting waiting lists to grow fast as more and more families put it on their radar.