Open all
Our view
Godolphin remains one of the most welcoming, utterly transparent, genuine and delightful schools out there. It’s refreshingly down to earth, parents work hard to send their children here and greatly value the opportunities it offers. Having delivered quality education and exemplary pastoral care to girls only for the past 300 years, from September 2025, Godolphin will be sharing what they do so brilliantly with more young people as they become co-ed throughout. It’s a watershed moment that doesn’t change the school’s past but secures its future, signalling a clear direction and offering a coalition that is designed to strengthen and ensure that pupils will continue to benefit from everything that makes Godolphin special.
Where?
Winding through the streets of Victorian villas around Milford Hill, overlooking Salisbury, we felt like the handsome but modest red-brick main building was a pleasant distance from the bustle. Salisbury-dwellers will have to contend with the occasional bottleneck on their drive to Godolphin but, once at the school, there is ample parking and even enough space for the sixth-formers we saw beginning and ending their driving lessons in the spacious car park.
The train station is 20 minutes away on foot and the school has a handful of bus routes from local towns and villages, but is always happy to consider additional pick-ups where demand arises. London is only 90 minutes away by train, making it easily accessible for boarders.
Head
Jenny Price came to Godolphin in 2018 as deputy head pastoral, before officially taking on the top job in January 2023. She is warm and relaxed, with a kindly aura and a keen understanding of what pupils need to succeed and, indeed, to be happy. And she is clear that everything they do currently for girls, they can extend to share with far more young people as they open their doors to boys. ‘Evolution is exciting’ she says animatedly, ‘opening up what we have to more young people is exciting too, it’s all about embracing change and taking people on the journey with you.’
Pastoral care has always had top billing for Mrs Price, and she leads Godolphin with an informal style that lends itself well to honest dialogue and a loyal team of staff from whom, she notes, ‘the passion at every level is amazing’.
She leads the charge of being authentically ‘who we are’, always encouraging parents not just to come and visit but to ‘watch, see how pupils and staff interact’ and see the ethos in action. And it's this transparent, self-assured identity and the fact that Mrs Price has been here for more than seven years that has provided the consistency and reassurance necessary to steer Godolphin to a new future as a co-ed. ‘We’ve got something brilliant here’ says Mrs Price, ‘and we’ve only allowed half of children to experience it.’
Admissions
The main joining points are at 11+, 13+ and 16+. Traditional open days have been ditched in favour of Snapshot Mornings (involving a tour with Year 8 or 9 pupils and a Q&A with the head) for a more informal and personal experience, followed by a taster day. Army personnel all qualify for a significant reduction, and scholarships for academics, sport, drama, art and music are all on offer.
Pupils will need to take formal tests in maths and English, have an interview with the head and provide a reference from their current school – although it all falls under the banner of ‘softly selective’, which we think is rather nice.
Academic and university destinations
There are three classes in Year 7, rising to four or five forms in Year 9 with roughly 18 pupils per class but often with much smaller teaching groups for GCSE and A-level. The 55-minute lessons are interspersed with regular breaks and lunchtime is a generous 90 minutes, meaning there is plenty of time to take part in a club or activity or catch up on any admin. Years 7 to 11 work on Surface Pro laptops. The science department is a belter and is famous for its annual Science Week and the ever-popular all-school inter-house quiz.
The approach to learning here, as with everything else at Godolphin, is about the individual. Pupils are allocated tutors according to the style of care they will best respond to and guided to choose GCSE and A-level subjects they will enjoy, with younger pupils meeting in small groups and sixth formers having weekly one-to-ones.
Psychology and business studies are currently the most popular choices at A-level, but pupils aren’t restricted by popular demand – in fact, teachers will offer subjects to just a handful of pupils and those wishing to study geology can do so, thanks to a collaboration with local grammar school Bishop Wordsworth’s.
Results are solid, with 77 per cent of last year’s leavers bagging B’s or higher and 37 per cent of GCSE results at grade 8 or 9. But it’s the value-added scores that are seriously noteworthy and something parents should certainly acknowledge – although deputy head academic Dr Hillman is keen to note that Godolphin looks to select pupils who can ‘access the whole curriculum, not just those who will get 9s’. It's not the results so much as the ethos that matters here – ‘you don’t have to be perfect but you have to do your best and that will always remain’.
Preparation for life beyond is outstanding, securing Godolphin the ‘Support for life beyond school’ award from Talk Education 's Awards for Innovation in Education in 2024. This term’s ‘Find your Future’ line up of speakers includes a journalist, police officer, nutritionist, criminal psychologist and linguist (mostly Godolphin alumnae) – all brought in to encourage pupils to think about a very wide variety of careers. There’s also a mentor system linking current pupils with career-relevant alumnae for a more personal viewpoint, and lower-sixth pupils are helped to find relevant and challenging work-experience opportunities for a few off-curriculum days in the summer term. Preparation for the future is superbly comprehensive, and most pupils now take one fewer GCSE in order to study future skills, using a skills-builder framework in association with the Career Development Institute and discussing with employees what it is they are really looking for.
The vast majority of leavers get into their first choice of university, which the school feels is a success of both its academic and pastoral approach. Staff know their pupils so well that they are able to help them select courses that are aspirational yet achievable.
Interest in apprenticeships has reached an all-time high and parental buy-in is excellent as they value how well the school knows their child and what makes them tick. In short, Godolphin doesn’t have a standard exit – because there's no such thing as a standard pupil.
Co-curricular
A flurry of recent team wins, and some high-performing individuals have put Godolphin back on the sporting map. The suburban campus doesn’t afford a huge amount of pitch space, but the tennis courts provide a useful multi-sports pitch and the indoor pool is a superb bonus. Participation is key, but the balance is struck accurately enough for those pupils with sporting talents to be able to play for their county or club outside of school hours.
Sport is perhaps one of the elements of school life that takes a bit more planning where a switch to co-ed is concerned. While the infrastructure (changing rooms, for example) is all in hand, the future sporting landscape has been given some additional oomph with the appointment of a new director of sport who has a great deal of experience across both boys and girls sport. Boys will play rugby sevens while girls will continue to play lacrosse – everything else, from athletics, basketball, cross country and cricket to hockey and netball will all be co-ed. But boys be warned, the girls have set a high bar; expertly coached by Great Britain lacrosse player Jamie Powell, the first team snaffled the silver medal at the England Lacrosse National School’s Championship 2024 and romped home victorious at the England Lacrosse Challenge Cup.
Art is definitely a flagship department, and the standard really is knock-your-socks-off brilliant. Mr Egg (Nick Eggleton) is the art dynamo behind this success, and his three-stage art rotation gives pupils an opportunity to try their hand at a variety of techniques, as well as being wowed and inspired by the school’s own artist-in-residence.
Drama too is top drawer, and the purpose-built theatre has retractable tiered seating to offer maximum flexibility. Drama is on the curriculum until Year 9, but passionate dramatists can go on to study drama at GCSE or as a BTEC. Annual performances alternate between a whole-school production and an upper- and a lower-school play. The first co-ed production has yet to be announced but our sources let slip that ‘it will be a musical of some kind’ and no doubt it will be a belter under the guidance of a newly appointed head of drama, Caroline Loader.
There’s no second fiddle here musically either, with individual lessons, various orchestras and the tremendously popular Steel pan Ensemble all helping to make corridors more melodious. Pupil talent is showcased in the fabulously varied (and often oversubscribed) Open Mic Gigs and one pupil has even sung at the BBC Proms.
For extracurricular enrichment, there’s a whole host of clubs and activities that take place either at lunchtime or after school with Warhammer, mixed martial arts and sailing springing out as nicely diverse examples. CCF and DofE are huge – the latter undoubtedly a contributing factor to the awarding of two prestigious Amy sixth form scholarships to Godolphin pupils last year. ‘This is where pupils learn resilience,’ says the head. ‘You can’t sit children down and teach them about resilience in the classroom’.
The on-site Leiths Academy is a massive bonus for students wanting practical skills to supplement their academic studies.
Boarding
Godolphin has a brilliantly flexible approach to boarding with one, three, five, seven and weekend boarding all on offer from the smorgasbord of options. Boarding will see a split between the younger boarders and the sixth form with co-ed communal areas and single sex corridors upstairs. Pastoral care gets top billing at Godolphin, and we saw it for ourselves in spades at the house we visited. Pupils coming in and out and lunchtime were all unobtrusively supervised by the house staff (affectionately known as ‘the dream team’), strategically positioned to just keep an eye on everyone or, as we saw, ready to whisk any worried-looking individuals off for a cup of tea and a reassuring chat.
Boarding for the Godolphin Sixth takes on a more university-like vibe and, from September 2025, will be relocated onto the main site, in the heart of the school. Sixth-formers don’t need permission to go into town during study periods, lunchtimes or after school but instead can electronically sign themselves in and out with their keycards. Godolphin believes that it is vital that pupils are given ‘the freedom to plan their time and to see the knock-on effects of their choices. We are there to ask them the questions now that they should be asking themselves when they face these situations on their own in the future.’
Weekends offer a change of pace – there’s no Saturday school, so boarders will take part in activities, go into town or catch up on prep before the afternoon sports matches. Despite the flexibility, there remains a significant cohort of boarders here at the weekend.
School community
Godolphin has 35 to 40 staff with mental-health training, and pastoral care isn’t really a separate entity here, it’s just intrinsically what the school is all about. Godolphin's pastoral team offers the perfect blend of warmth, solid experience and reassurance. They understand emotions, pressure, education, hormones, challenge, conflict and anxiety, and they are always looking to identify possible pressure points and alleviate problems before they arise. The staff are extraordinary in terms of what they are willing to do and it makes for a very warm and happy place.
And finally...
With the evolution to co-ed in 2025 and the school’s 300th anniversary in 2026, it’s going to be a fabulously busy and exciting few years for this Salisbury gem. It’s a warm and kind place where pupils achieve high standards without really realising how it has happened. This is a culture that fully supports young people, and the move to co-ed will see boys benefiting from Godolphin’s honest and consistent care and attention in the same way that girls have for nearly three centuries. In short, Godolphin is a fantastic foundation for life beyond.