Boarding schools in Suffolk....

[Uptheanty]

Can anyone recommend a good boarding school for a 12 year old girl?
We are planning on dd attending boarding school at the end of yr 6 beginning yr 7.

Any advice would be gratefully received!

St Felix is quite nice. It's in Southwold, on the coast. Well it's in the village of Reydon but it's next door to Southwold.

Thanks for the reply, do you know someone who goes there?
Is there anything particular that is nice about it?

A friend went there. It seems a nice school. I'm not sure what the average grades are but it does seem to have a good reputation. If you have a look at their website it might tell you when they next have an open day.

Sorry, that's not an awful lot of help!

I've had a look, it was not an option we'd considered before, it looks very nice, thanks again!

No problem. Theres lots of public schools in Suffolk, was it specifically the boarding option that you needed?

I went to st felix. Quite small but really nice grounds, we had loads of fun there. Definitely worth looking at.

Royal hospital school just outside ipswich...check out their website. I know one of the teaching staff, but no pupils!

Wymondham College is an excellent state boarding school but you would need to make a good case for boarding need.

Facepalm - Wymondham is in Norfolk!

Agree that Royal Hospital School and Framlingham are good options.

Thanks everyone, you have given me a couple of new options!

It needs to be boarding and not just only girls we're open to either as long as not boys only !

Do you have any advice on the personal statement?
Also...would you recommend we coach our dd for the entrance exam?
As naive as it sounds .. My DH & I are at loggerheads about he issue, DH says not getting dd a tutor is madness.
I'm of the thought that if we need to hothouse her to get in how will she keep up when attending?

St Felix have got an open day on Saturday May 10th 9am - 12:15pm. I talked it up! Their website is www.stfelix.co.uk

Ipswich School and Woodbridge School have some boarding places.

Framlingham college

Lovely school

My children go to Old Buckenham Hall (www.obh.co.uk), they get a few children who start in year 7 and then move onto their senior school of choice. It has been wonderful for my children, I can honestly recommend it. They have lots of boarding options too.

You won't need a tutor for St Felix , they are desperate numbers wise , in fact I would take a good look at their accounts before committing to a place there.

If you are committed to boarding from year 7 probably RHS or Culford, does it have to be Suffolk, what about New Hall in Essex or Greshams in Norfolk

We went to see St Felix last year and loved it but agree the number on roll is low. Ds would have started year 4 this year and there were just 7 in the class when they had capacity for 2 classes of around 18 in each year group.

Ipswich School. We're considering it for our two girls but they're only 3&1 at the moment

Don’t don’t consider Greshams
Prep good school.
Senior is awful place , bulling and not a happy school

Something I've noticed, is that lots of regions don't seem to have any really high performing independent schools. I was looking in the Times Parent Power tables which list the top 150 independents (as well as top 150 state) and about 40 of the top schools are in London or the South East. You have to go pretty far down the tables (to significantly less good results) before you find any schools in some regions. Sorry to say, this seems largely true of Suffolk.

Just wondered if anyone has any idea why this is so pronounced. It also makes me wonder if paying fees is really worth it in some of these areas...guess it depends whether the state schools are good or not. I know that an Independnet education is about much more than exam results, but you'd hope for those as a given. Would you say all of the schools mentioned are offering results worth paying for? Just something worth thinking about.

And if Boarding is to be the thing, you probably could go further, opening up the option of more and perhaps better schools.

Chocolate, there are 750,000 people in Suffolk, there aren't enough people with an income to pay school boarding fees to let the schools be selective like in London. The boarding schools often have a lot of overseas pupils to keep the numbers up too. The state provision is incomparable to London too, search on "Teach First Coastal areas" on the internet to see more.

Thank you for the population figures.
Do you think that explains the difference for other regions too - some must be quite densely populated.

I can't comment on other areas as I happen to know East Anglia well but live in SW London. It's interesting that Cambridge is near Suffolk and has some of the top performing private day schools in the UK. Cambridge also has fast train links to London and industries paying salaries that enable schools fees to be affordable. A lot of people outside London say the dc all end up at the same universities so we should all stop stressing about 11+, 13+ etc in London. With the new GCSE level 9 coming in this year and the tiny % allocated to this level it will be fascinating to see where the 9's end up, the exam boards can't give a majority of the 9's to grammar/private schools in the SE as what will that say about education in the UK.

My son is a day student at Ipswich School. For the highly academic top set, it is as good a school as anywhere in the top 100; and the generous scholarships and bursaries attract those who would otherwise go to the Colchester super selective grammar schools. but don't want to travel from Suffolk.

However the population of the area means that the other students are of about non-superselective grammar school academic level. Many of these students are highly accomplished in other ways (music, art, community work, CCF and sport are very strong, as they are at schools like Woodbridge).

So the private schools locally are less selective than the well known public schools but are well liked by many local students and parents. They are also usually significantly cheaper .