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Our View
With its bucolic setting and seamless ties with older sibling The King’s School, Canterbury, Junior King’s is becoming an increasingly hot ticket with Londoners wanting to swerve the intensity of the capital and take the stress out of senior school next steps. Flexi boarding has just been introduced and a new head arrived in September 2024.
Where?
Junior King’s is two miles from the centre of Canterbury and it enjoys 80 luxuriant acres of lawns, orchards (with chickens), fields and sports pitches, with the River Stour meandering right through the middle of all of this gorgeousness. One of the most handsome schools we’ve visited, the Milner Court in the village of Sturry comprises a picturesque Elizabethan manor house, breathtaking tithe barn and accompanying stables. Bertie the tortoise hangs out in Pre-Prep.
In Junior King’s former incarnation as choir school to the King’s School, the boys were housed in the Precincts of the Cathedral and known as Parrots due to their twittering voices. With a nod to this history, Junior King’s day houses are still named the Cockas, the Kakas, the Keas and the Macaws.
Head
Former head Emma Károlyi moved on to St George’s School Windsor Castle in September 2024; new permanent head is Mark Brotherton. Mr Brotherton has been an educationalist for over 30 years during which time he was head of Giggleswick Prep School, executive head of Malsis Prep School, and interim head of Repton Prep School. During the last eight years, he was the director of education services at IAPS, where he regularly advised schools on strategic, financial and educational matters.
Admissions
Most children join at the lower end of the school in nursery or Reception, although there is a growing intake into Year 3 (the school gets bigger as the year groups go up, so there are four forms by Year 8). Entry into Year 4 and above includes an interview, plus testing in English, maths and non-verbal reasoning.
Best get in early, we say – entry into Years 7 and 8 is much more competitive as families move from local preps to Junior King’s for a solid two-year preparation for The King’s School (pupils can sometimes receive a through offer which includes a place at the secondary school), and boarding places are getting snapped up particularly quickly. Scholarships and bursaries are both available.
Academics and senior school destinations
From nursery until Year 2, the onsite forest school is a regular – and very popular – part of the school week. The children learn bushcraft, nature awareness and fire building, and the area is big enough for little people to go on exploring adventures. New head of pre-prep Camilla Webster is keen to expand outdoor learning beyond forest school and Year 2 and has already written her own Junior King’s Adventures curriculum under the headings of wellbeing, community, wildlife, creation and expedition.
Years 3 and 4 are tucked into a separate building – they have their own library and changing rooms, offering a gentle step from pre-prep to upper school. The pre-prep has its own space as well – the Oast – that has themed classrooms, a hall and lovely library (reading every night at home is encouraged). Children go up to the main school for sports and other activities. The Harvest Festival is popular: Pre-Prep children run a festival shop for parents and decide the prices.
This is a broad church academically, welcoming boys and girls of all levels of ability. Classes are no bigger than 18, with three forms in each year from Year 5, and then four classes per year in Years 7 and 8. French is taught from nursery, and everyone studies Spanish from Year 5 and Latin from Year 6. Scholars learn ancient Greek too. Science is split into separate classes for physics, chemistry and biology from Year 7. Computing and DT are taken seriously, there is at least one lesson each week from Year 3 upwards – and its success is clear: the DT scholarship to The King’s School has been bagged by a Junior King’s pupil every year. Much of the SEN provision is provided in class; EAL children are taught in break-out groups (the school finds that children learn fast and it’s not usually an issue for long).
Common Entrance has been dropped in favour of the school’s own assessments and bespoke skills-based curriculum for pupils in Years 7 and 8. The school is conscious that children in the top two years are secondary school age, so they are taught and treated accordingly, given a number of special responsibilities and perks, plus their own tutor to keep an eye on their progress. Leavers (more than 80 per cent) head for The King’s School and the number of scholarships won every year is seriously impressive. There’s also a smattering of pupils who move on to Tonbridge, Eton and Westminster.
Co-curricular
While Saturday mornings are still very much the domain of lessons, the afternoons are filled with matches, activities and clubs. Competitors are local schools such as Wellesley House and Dover College – and Junior King’s does pretty well. Sport includes hockey, netball, rugby, football, tennis and cricket, and the school is victorious at national and regional levels in hockey, swimming, fencing and biathlon. A large galleried sports hall, tennis courts, Astro, outdoor pool, huge fencing hall (fencing is strong here) and the use of facilities at the senior school mean that young sportsmen and women are well catered for.
Pupils can row from Year 8 and squash, sailing, riding and golf are also on offer. Unusually (and very much welcomed by some), competitive matches are not obligatory – if moulding clay in the pottery studio rather than rolling in mud on the rugby pitch is more your thing on a Saturday afternoon, that’s fine as well.
A stunning music school holds more than 350 individual music lessons a week, in addition to loads of ensembles, bands, trios, choirs and a chapel choir for Years 6 to 8. Everybody sings in Canterbury Cathedral three times a year and several children win music scholarships to The King’s School most years (a number are part of the National Youth Choir and Orchestra too). Drama is popular, takes place in the fantastic Tithe Barn and is part of the curriculum from Year 3 with pretty much every child involved in productions and LAMDA lessons on offer. This year, pupils in Year 8 are putting on an outdoors murder mystery around the grounds of the school and Years 5 and 6 are staging a production of Oliver. One of the drama teachers used to work at The Globe, and pupils make use of The King’s School’s amazing recently renovated Malthouse Theatre and dance studios in town.
A new outdoor classroom is the focus of environment education and there are plans to develop an area where pupils can learn about wildlife. The plan is to put this on the curriculum and also to spearhead an outreach programme with local schools.
Afternoon activities provide lots of scope for children to try something new; riding and basketball are especially popular. A new playground for Years 3 and 4 is full of lovely natural wood climbing frames.
Boarding
Boarding starts from Year 5 (there are younger boarders, but they are rare), with most children weekly or full boarding, although flexi boarding has just been introduced for one to four nights a week and it’s proving popular with Wednesdays and Fridays already full. Up to 90 board at any one time – flexi boarders have been warmly welcomed by regulars, with pupils telling us it feels like a sleepover. There are two boarding houses (situated on two floors within the main school building, one for boys, the other for girls) and most stay in for the (very fun) weekends when there is lots on offer to keep everyone busy – from trips to Chessington World of Adventures and Thorpe Park to paintballing or visits to the beach. Many boarders are from overseas (25 per cent of total pupil numbers); boarding houses are newly refurbished, with common rooms, pool tables, computers, comfy sofas, plus a Wii Fit and a PlayStation.
School community
With a Deputy Head Pastoral and a head of each section, form teachers and a SEND head, Junior King’s has pastoral care wrapped. This – together with pastoral oversight from the boarding heads and a Pastoral Welfare committee that feeds into a traffic light system for pupils – means that nothing is overlooked. There is also a school counsellor and nurse on site. All children, right up to Year 8, see their form teacher every morning and afternoon (Year 8 pupils also have a personal tutor). A new Zen room designed by pupils in the FREDIE group (a rather sweet acronym for Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Emotional connections) is proving popular, as are the kindness benches in the new Years 3 and 4 playground.
The school offers an accompanied train service at the beginning and end of term (known as the ‘Train Party’) and assistant tutors take the train with the children on the section of the line that runs between Wye and Sturry.
And finally...
Don’t think of this as just a junior school to King’s, Canterbury – although ties between the two are strong, this is a fantastic, lively prep school in its own right, with its own identity. Junior King’s provides an authentic full-boarding experience alongside masses of weekend activities, a good mix of international boarders and a broadly academic, pastoral and creative atmosphere.