In praise of preps
FROGSPAWN and guinea pigs, dens and muddy puddles, riddles and Latin verbs, sailing and cricket—we still expect prep schools to offer this nostalgic, homespun idyll, but with a 21st-century twist: the jolly japes and scrapes enjoyed at Linbury Court by Anthony Buckeridge’s accident-prone creation Jennings, but minus the privations and incompetence of the anarchic Nigel Molesworth’s dreadful alma mater, St Custard’s.
The joy of today’s prep schools is that they can be both mildly eccentric and academically excellent, proudly traditional and cutting edge. They can be small or large; single or mixed sex; day, flexi- or full-boarding; in London or on Dartmoor; beside the sea or in a cathedral cloisters. Many have enviable settings that cannot help but propagate happiness. Algebra and grammar will still be taught, but alongside robotics, Mandarin and mindfulness.
The “soft skills”– that’s the rest of the world catching up with what prep schools have done forever
This first-class education doesn’t come cheap, however, and there’s a media narrative that suggests some establishments struggle to compete with rising standards in State primaries and an understandable reluctance to pay fees until senior school. However, Christopher King, chief executive of the Independent Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS), argues that such comparisons are often
