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Our view
One of the most welcoming, utterly transparent, genuine and delightful schools out there, Godolphin is refreshingly down to earth – parents work hard to send their children here and greatly value the opportunities it has to offer. And from September 2025, after nearly 300 years of educating girls, Godolphin will welcome boys to enjoy these opportunities too. It’s a huge watershed moment that doesn’t change the school’s past but secures its future – and gives more young people the opportunity to share in 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.
Mrs Price’s office door is almost always open, and she is the sort of head who isn’t hard to find. She’s on the touchlines, in the audience at plays and recitals, teaching music to Year 7, playing the trumpet in the junior orchestra or even driving the minibus. 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 over six years that has provided the consistency and reassurance necessary to steer Godolphin to a new future as a co-ed. It’s exciting, says the head: ‘We’ve got something brilliant here 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. Prospective parent numbers are already on the up, with families now able to look to Godolphin to care for all of their brood.
About 75 per cent of Godolphin Prep pupils will make their way up the hill to the senior, and there’s no need to sit any tests if they have been in the Godolphin fold for at least two years. Pupils from other schools 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. Bursaries are available, and there are scholarships for academics, sport, drama, art and music.
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 10 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 recent years seeing the school's best-ever A-level results, 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’.
Career guidance is excellent, with a range of initiatives such as Find Your Future Friday and the Bright Futures programme, which brings in inspirational speakers who are often Godolphin alumnae – from a vet and a fashion stylist to a psychologist and a financier – to encourage pupils to think about a very wide variety of careers. There’s also a buddy 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.
Not counting one deferral, 93 per cent of last year’s leavers got 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 (one recent pupil bagged a place at the Dyson Institute, while another secured a place at Google), 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 recently resurfaced 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 will be given some additional oomph with the appointment of a new director of sport. Richard Hall (who will arrive from a 10-year stint as director of sport at the Kuwait English School) will be pulling on his Godolphin PE kit in September 2024, bringing with him a huge amount of experience and expertise in sporting participation and performance for both boys and girls.
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. Annual performances alternate between a whole-school production and an upper- and a lower-school play, but all are extremely impressive. Music received a boost too with the recent appointment of new director of music Kathy Chalmers.
For extracurricular enrichment, there’s a whole host of clubs and activities that take place either at lunchtime or after school. CCF and DofE are huge – last year saw a school-record-breaking four- team entry into the Ten Tors CCF Challenge, with one pupil even offering to hike the longer route with another school who had lost a teammate just days before. ‘This is where pupils learn resilience,’ says the head. ‘You can’t sit children down and teach them about resilience in the classroom’ – and sure enough, everyone was in school on time the next day, albeit with special permission to wear flip-flops on their blistered feet.
The on-site Leiths Academy is a massive bonus for students wanting practical skills to supplement their academic studies.
Boarding
There are four boarding houses: Walters for the junior boarders (ages eight to 13), Cooper for Years 9 to and 11, and School & Jerred House for the sixth form (known here at the Godolphin Sixth). We hung out in Cooper, home to 60 boarders and a spacious and buzzy environment with pupils happily beetling in and out to sign in for lunchtime registration, attend the Friday talk or change for activities and games. All were unobtrusively supervised by the Cooper 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.
Pupils can full, flexi or day board, and numbers increase as you go higher up the school, with about 60 per cent boarding at some point during their time here. Boarding for the Godolphin Sixth takes on a more university-like vibe, with the two houses situated slightly away from the main school over a small pedestrian bridge and affording a high level of independence and freedom – reliant on equally high levels of respect and trust. 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. Deputy head pastoral Nicola Daubeney 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. Deputy head pastoral Mrs Daubeney is the perfect blend of maternal warmth, solid experience and reassurance. She understands emotions, pressure, education, hormones, challenge, conflict and anxiety, and even with such a comprehensive pastoral net in place, she is always looking to identify possible pressure points and alleviate problems before they arise. ‘I’ve never worked anywhere like it,’ she says of Godolphin. ‘The staff are extraordinary in terms of what they are willing to do and it makes for a very warm and happy place’ – and we’d second that.
And finally...
With a nursery opening on site and the prep school moving to co-ed in September 2024, the senior switch 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.