Brockhurst / Marlstone House and St Andrew's Pangbourne

[Mooose]

Please share your opinions and experiences of these schools. I'm particularly interested in the atmosphere - are they very hot house-y? how much enthusiasm is there for sports? open minded? multi cultural? are many of the dc bilingual? strong religious emphasis?
We're currently thinking about the possibility of home ed-ing and then 7+ entry for dd currently 3.3 and ds 2.1. Is 7+ usually very competitive, and do applicants usually come from other private schools or state schools?
Thank you.

Only second hand experience of Brockhurst, but places are easily avaliable even with 3 weeks notice so don't get hung up on putting names down. For boys Brockhurst is not particularly big on Rugby and friend's DS was a rugby boy so she decided againist it.
Option many others go for in West Berks with boys and girls is St Gabriels for girls and Elstree for boys stagger school start makes it just possible.

When I started looking at the schools at your DCs age I went to the open days advertised on the web sites and then if I was more interested made an appointment with the headmaster.
Generally in West Berks 7+ entry is not particularly competitive as the vast majority go from one class to two at this point. Again generally in West Berks the private schools are actually more multi-cultural than the State schools, my DDs pre-prep of less than 40 children has more reglious and cultural diversity than friend's DC have at 400 child state school.

Thanks Lizcat. Do you happen to know how co-ed Brockhurst and Marlstone House are? Are lessons mixed or seperate? Do you know if this changes through the school?