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Our View
It doesn’t get much better than Pembridge Hall when it comes to delivering a wonderfully rounded education in the heart of London. This Notting Hill prep ticks all the boxes for academic excellence, pastoral care, co-curricular and cosy community vibe. And with the imminent opening of a big sibling, co-ed Wetherby Pembridge Senior School in a spanking new building in Olympia, an educational pathway from Reception to Upper Sixth feels like the dream for any west London-based family.
Where?
Spread across two refurbished ornate white Italianate buildings in Notting Hill’s Pembridge Square, No. 18 houses Reception to Year 2 and No. 10 Years 3 to 6. Wetherby School is sandwiched in between, so there are heaps of shared parents, making the two schools the dream duo for families with sons and daughters.
Classrooms are wonderfully big, bright, modern and packed full of tech; there’s a clutch of lovely art, drama and music rooms, and a treehouse cleverly built into a lightwell, providing a playground for the lower school. Pembridge Square Gardens and Princes Square Gardens – with their woodland, wild flowers and rose gardens – are right on the doorstep for girls to stretch their legs and burn off energy.
Bayswater and Notting Hill tube stations are nearby, but most pupils walk or scoot to school.
Head
Sophie Banks arrived at Pembridge Hall in September 2022 with five years’ headship experience at co-ed prep Eton End under her belt. A charismatic personality (as an erstwhile choral music student, in another life she could have been an opera singer), she exudes warmth and enthusiasm, excitedly telling us they’re now a London day school that needs wellies thanks to the extra outside space. She has a new deputy at her side, too – Nicola Mooney – who’s ‘doing a fabulous job’, and has just launched six inspirational new school values: Be Aspirational, Be Kind, Be Resilient, Be Curious, Be Responsible, Be Individual. With three daughters and a husband who is also a head (at Caldicott boys prep in Buckinghamshire), we get the feeling Mrs Banks lives and breathes education.
Admissions
With six applicants for every Reception place, prospective parents need to register almost the minute they’re out of the maternity ward (there’s about a week’s grace); places are allocated by calendar month, helpfully split into thirds – so there’s no unfair advantage for anyone born right at the beginning. Offers roll in within three months of registration, and if you find yourself on the waiting list, stay in contact: it helps.
If you don’t manage to snag a place via the ballot, don’t panic – occasional places do become available from time to time, and if there’s a space they’ll do their best to accommodate you. Pupils looking for a spot higher up the school sit an age-appropriate assessment to check they’ll be able to keep up with the academic pace.
Parents of a girl with a confirmed place are invited to come and meet the head the year before they’re due to start, primarily to check that family values align with the school. And don’t believe the glama-mama image – yes, these girls are a privileged bunch, but this is a surprisingly relaxed and feet-on-the-ground sort of place. Occasional bursaries are available for girls arriving in Year 5 or 6, and the school will always help out where it can if a family’s financial situation changes while their daughter is at the school.
Academics and senior school destinations
Mrs Banks tells us the school is ‘academically ambitious for the girls and this underpins all they do’, and, yes, this is a school that teaches to the top, but there’s scaffolding in place for those who need it. ‘We want the girls to understand how they learn as individuals,’ says Mrs Banks. And for those who need extra help there is a light-filled SEND room tucked away at the top of the school with three dedicated SEND teachers on staff, plus an EAL team to help those who arrive at the school speaking very little English. Additional academic support is an intrinsic part of the main curriculum, but there’s plenty more specialist support where needed, including weekly visits from both a speech and language and occupational therapist.
Specialist teaching begins in Reception, with girls set in English and maths from Year 3. Groups are fluid and the school includes parents in all streaming conversations. STEAM subjects are soaring; we witnessed squeals of delight as pupils created explosions in the science lab and heard tales of a recent challenge to design parachutes for eggs (a spacecraft engineer had just popped in to give an inspirational talk about black holes and gravity too). The school is now a Microsoft Showcase School, not an easy gong to earn, and all the girls from Year 3 upwards use a surface Go, while the younger years have iPad access. The school is also the proud owner of a 3D printer.
In the Upper School, there’s current affairs and philosophy, Spanish and Mandarin club for linguists keen to dip their toe in, and Mrs Banks teaches the Year 5s critical thinking.
While one or two girls peel off at 7, pupils aren’t specifically prepared for the 7+ – instead, most stay on until 11+ for Common Entrance. The 2024 leavers pooled an impressive 250 offers from 43 schools with more than 40 scholarships. Around 20 per cent go on to boarding school and conversations about next steps for those start in Year 4; Year 5 for those heading off to day schools. There are one-to-one meetings with parents and an annual futures school fair. Girls are encouraged to sit for two aspirational schools and two safe options. ‘We get them into the best school for them,’ says Ms Mooney. And best is the word, with Godolphin, the Francis Hollands, St Mary’s Ascot, Wycombe Abbey, Cheltenham Ladies College and Downe House among some of the senior schools the girls head off to.
Co-curricular
Sport is taken seriously with two afternoons off site – girls are bussed to Paddington Recreation Ground where they’re coached by specialist teachers and visiting professionals – as well as a gym and dance lesson each week. There’s also a big emphasis on competitive sports; there are masses of fixtures (with as many teams as possible included, so everyone gets a go at representing the school) and local rivals include Bute House and Glendower and, now the school is part of the Inspired group, they also take part in their inter-school sports tournaments. Swimming is part of the curriculum in Year 2 and there’s an early morning swim squad. Outside of lesson time, there are tons of extra clubs to keep youngsters fit, such as cross-country, lacrosse and fencing.
There's loads of music and drama: budding actresses can sign up for LAMDA tuition, and the highly anticipated Year 6 play is performed at the Tabernacle theatre just around the corner – last year it was Bugsy Malone. The four Reception classes put on two nativities so that everyone has a part, Years 1 and 2 stage a Christmas show, Year 5s a pre-Christmas show, while Years 3s and 4s pull out the stops with a mini musical. The drama studio is a treasure trove of costumes, wigs, puppets, props and scenery – enough to coax even the most reluctant performer up on stage. The most talented singers can join the audition-only chamber choir and staff and parents have their own choirs too with the whole school community coming together for an evening carol service at St Matthew’s Church every Christmas. Pupils can take lessons in anything from the trumpet and cello to song-writing lessons.
There’s a lovely art room where pupils are taught traditional painting alongside textiles and sculpture – the Year 3s recently had a metal-bashing workshop. There’s even a printer that prints onto fabric so pupils can make tote bags and T-shirts.
Clubs take place before school, at lunchtime and after the final bell, and with 70 on offer – everything from street dance and yoga to Kitchen Sink Science and Goblin Car (they’re going to Goodwood to race the two cars they’re building) – they need the time. Pupils can also join the particularly popular Green Girls, who are responsible for recycling, planting bulbs, watering the plants and banging the eco-drum; their efforts have paid off as the school has recently been awarded the Green Flag Award. The school does a sterling job at celebrating girls’ talents and interests, whatever they may be: there’s even a Pembridge Hall sailing team and dressage group.
School community
Each girl is assigned a house (they’re all named after inspirational women: Rosalind Franklin, Florence Nightingale, Jane Austen and Barbara Hepworth) to muster up competitive spirit and mastermind charity initiatives (loads of bake sales and food-bank collections). Friday assemblies take place at nearby St Matthew’s Church, and are used to celebrate pupils’ achievements and to hand out the weekly Head's Awards for academic achievement, and the Golden Apple award, which recognises kindness, enthusiasm and good manners. The girls we met were confident, yet there's certainly nothing precious or precocious about them.
All staff meet up twice a week to check in on their pupils and chat through any concerns, meaning there’s no danger of pastoral niggles slipping through the net. Girls’ class tutors are always their first port of call and anyone’s welcome to pop into ‘Pembridge Pulse’, a drop-in clinic to talk about friendship issues and anything else that might be bothering pupils. The school uses STEER to track wellbeing and there’s a post box for pupils to send any thoughts they may have, whether it’s questions about why something is done as it is or a recommendation for improvement. The Pembridge Pigeon ensures it’s delivered to the appropriate staff member. Staff keep a close eye on what the girls eat, and the freshly cooked lunches are always hearty and healthy.
Parents are ‘a warm, friendly and kind community’ says Mrs Banks and they’re very much welcomed into every aspect of school life with an open-door culture. As you’d expect from this pocket of London, the school community is nicely diverse; more than 60 per cent of pupils are bilingual and, despite this being a very English school, there’s a distinctly international parent body. Plus there’s a hugely social parents’ association, which is actively involved in organising events – the summer fete, annual head’s quiz night and Christmas party – and it's recently raised enough money to help the school with its plans to create a recording studio so pupils can have a radio and podcast platform.
And finally...
We love this London day school for its jolly, down-to-earth attitude where girls are encouraged to work hard, be considerate and fizz with excitement about the world. Dressed in their red-ribboned straw boaters they look an absolute picture, but it’s what happens behind the scenes that has really captured our interest.