Pre-preps in Bedford - Harpur Trust

[speakyourmindkindagirl]

Hi,

Looking to hear of any experiences with Pilgrims Pre-prep and the Harpur Trust schools in Bedford please? We live in a north beds village but I'm not quite sure about the primary school my son has just started, class sizes, the amount of time given to read, etc, and my daughter is due to potentially start next sept. The scondary schools Sharnbrook and Lincroft are very good but wondering if we ride it out and hope they both do well till then or we go down the Harpur Trust route which we could afford. Any thoughts please?

Answering to bump your thread for you ...

I don't have personal knowledge but my DB and SIL sent their DC to Pilgrims and they are now at Bedford Modern. In their case, they are of the mindset that private =better and they particularly liked Pilgrims for its music and variety of extracurricular activities. Their DC did well and they liked the school.

As an outsider (whose DC are at state school) I noted that they didn't get some of the benefits that I'd expect from paying that amount of money - the class sizes weren't all that small (this may have changed), SIL seemed to spend an enormous amount of time doing work at home with the DC (though I accept this might be her personality, rather than school requirement!). The worst example was where DN (who was very good at maths) was pushed onto the Y2 curriculum in Y1, but in Y2 he was simply asked to repeat it again, which I thought was awful, but SIL and DB hadn't wanted to raise for some reason.

However, I am obviously speaking 2nd hand and from anecdote and my suggestion would be to go and see the school(s) for yourself and ask very pertinent questions. I would say that if your DC has just started school you won't have got a complete flavour of your child's current school yet - but you should definitely go and ask questions about specific concerns.