Peterborough and St Margaret's

[qarrot]

Any opinions on Peterborough and St Margaret's School?

[firsttimeposter]

It's fabulous. My daughter is there and the quality of pastoral care is second to none. And the academics are pretty good too.

Very much a small, family school where all the teachers know who you are and all the teachers know all the kids.

I love it. And in terms of fees, it's one of the cheapest in the area, and worth every penny.

[qarrot]

Thanks... do you think it's significantly better than the really good state schools like Stanburn, Whitchurch etc?

[firsttimeposter]

To be honest, I think any independent school is better than even the best state schools purely because you're buying smaller class sizes.

PSM has an average of about 12 to a class - with a teacher and a TA in each class and then specialist teachers for French, music and pe.

They have countless school trips and the class sizes enable the girls to all be working at different levels (and most of them, in the infants at least seem able to cope with work from the year above.)

Academically it might not be hugely better than stanburn in the infants (although I don't know much about the state schools in the area to be honest) but for me the choice was more about the size of the school. They get so much one to one, they read every day (which from reading some of the posts on this site seems unusual in some state schools). My DD is very able but very shy and I didn't want her to disappear into a class of 30 and be largely ignored for years and years. PSM takes that issue away completely and she has blossomed in the last couple of years and I credit the school with most of the growth in confidence.

They had a school inspection a couple of months ago, if you're undecided and you haven't seen it, it might be worth a look...