The vast majority of our girls aspire to go on to our senior school here at St Swithun’s.
In February 2021, 100% of the prep school girls in year 6 received an offer from the senior school. All except six accepted their offers and are now looking forward to beginning their academic careers as St Swithun's seniors. Of the other pupils, one is returning to her home in China, one is going to attend Wycombe Abbey, one is going to St Mary's Ascot, one will attend Oxford High School and the final two will go on to King Edward VI School in Southampton. All children have succeeded in achieving their first choice of destination school. 33 pupils will be continuing their schooling at St Swithun's, and one of these gained an academic scholarship award.
In the prep school, we know that all, or nearly all, families have enrolled their daughter with us because they have an aspiration for her to be a St Swithun's girl throughout her life, remaining at school through to the age of eighteen. We do everything that we can in order to make that target achievable, but transfer between prep and senior schools is not automatic. Instead, we monitor every girl's progress and achievements throughout her time with us. If, in the combined opinion of the prep teaching team, a child has been happy in prep and appropriately challenged with us , she will be allocated a senior school place without the requirement for her to sit the Common Entrance examination; in practice, this is the situation for the vast majority of children in every cohort. However, in order to ensure appropriate secondary education for each and every girl, in a very small minority of cases the school may require a pupil to pass CE assessments in line with all external candidates. Needless to say, should this be the case (or should the parents of any pupil express a view that they would like their daughter to sit for an alternative school,) full preparation and practice work for assessments and interviews will be undertaken.
Achieving High Performance
We want all of our pupils to attain high performance both inside and outside the classroom. We are a High Performance Learning World Class School, accredited for the work we do to teach explicitly the attitudes, characteristics and behaviours of successful people. Click here to find out more about how we set our pupils up for a lifetime of high performance.
