Thank you everybody! I will definitely visit. And look out for good Special Needs and an emphasis on kindness amongst the children. I had heard Beeston was GOOD for Special Needs - that's why I started investigating it! Gresham's may be better, but I'm looking for a prep school to eventually feed to a wide choice of upper schools. My little one is an absolute free spirit and we want to find the right school for her at 13+. Having, so far, picked the wrong one. Beeston seems to feed to a really diverse range of schools and seems very outward looking and - for a small school - not intimidated by the big name schools. That suggests to me that they are well placed to match a child to the right school. The school my daughter is at now has no Special Needs (to speak of), is large and feeds mainly to the very academic city upper schools that surround it. That suits my older child but is going to be a disaster for my little one. I wanted Beeston to be a complete antidote to a pressurised city prep where you are surrounded by high fences and arterial roads and have to press a code to get in each morning... Beeston sounds like something out of the Famous Five to me - right on the coast, lots of outdoor activities, freedom for the children to be children... The flexiboarding issue is the price we'd be prepared to pay, if it was as nice as it seems. My daughter wouldn't go till next year, Year 4, and we can drive her every day till she asks to board for a night. Hopefully, she'll like it and ask to do more. But if she doesn't, we have committed to driving her every day. Hence the post: we don't WANT to do all that driving and are trying to get more information on how nice it really is and how likely she is to want to board...
This year (coming) is the first year my daughter's current school seriously look at children for specific learning difficulties. I've been raising concerns since Reception but they've always told me she's too young to assess and not to worry, she'll get there, they all develop at different rates etc etc. Sitting down with her this week, after 6 weeks off, she's forgotten how to form her letters and she misspelled her first name and didn't notice. I don't mind that she can't spell house or tree or even dog (it came out 'pod')... But I do mind about her name. And I worry school are going to come down on us like a tonne of bricks this year, having laughed it off for the last three. Hence the post about moving her somewhere nice with a good Special Needs department...
And finally... I had suspected Beeston might be posh (because of where it is) and don't mind that. But I would mind if it was snobbish. We wouldn't go if it was. It didn't seem to be on the website - but we'll get more of a feel for that when we visit. Thank you, again, everyone.