Advice please - Bury St Edmunds/Suffolk Prep Schools

[Pookyal1981]

Does anyone have any experience of the following prep schools:

Fairstead House
Moreton Hall Prep
Barnidiston
South Lee
Riddlesworth Hall
Stoke College

We are looking to move to central/West Suffolk for my husbands work and am considering options for my 5 year old (already in reception). I will also look at local state schools in due course when we know exactly where we'll be, but as I'd have to drive to any of these, I thought I'd get a head start on looking at them! 😊 Appreciate there are also independent through schools in the area but am more interested in stand alone prep/primaries at this stage. TIA!

Hi Pookyal

My daughter has been at Fairstead House for 5 years and absolutely loves it. It has a real family feel to it.

I don't know much about the others but happy to answer any questions about Fairstead :-)

@stinkywinky Thank you! Can I ask how many are typically in a class (is it one or two classes a year?) and where they tend to go on to afterwards? Looking for somewhere that isn't too pushy (we've had issues on this before so priority is her being happy), or too 'posh'. We want to fit in 😂 Facilities are important but not end of world to us and she is def not a sporty type.

Hi Pookyal

I know the maximum per class is 20 and there seems to be about 14-15 children per class. There are 15 in DD's year. It is only one form per year.

I'm just starting to look at senior schools for DD and there is a lot of choice!! The school had a Future Schools Evening a couple of weeks back which was helpful. Children go on to both state and private schools. Apparently the popular state ones are Soham and Bottisham Village Colleges and private schools are Culford, the Cambridge schools and King's Ely. I'm going to start looking soon but trying to put it off for now!!

BTW - I am not posh at all and we seem to fit in ok

You are covering quite a big distance their Fairstead in the West, Riddlesworth to the North, Barnidiston to the South and the Bury Schools to the East.
Where do you want to live or where is your husbands work and how long a commute is he prepared to make. Different parts of your area are very different and I think that should be part of your considerations.
I was at Fairstead House first and then boarded at Riddlesworth Hall as did a large number of Newmarket girls in my day - Riddlesworth was single sex then.

He's on the outskirts of Cambridge. He currently drives over an hour so he would consider a 30/40 min drive an improvement especially if on back roads. I'm happy to drive 20 mins or so to a school, hence we were thinking north of Haverhill or around Bury St Edmunds.

Oh, backroads are not an improvement, especially not if backing backwards to let through a horse box. I personally love Newmarket. If you settle there and choose Fairstead for now you can keep open the many Campridge prep and secondary options as well as Bury schools. But why would you not move directly to Cambridge if dh works there, spoiled for choice state and private there? Fairstead is lovely but tiny, that's why many used to leave for larger schools with larger orchestras/sport teams etc at 7 or 9.