Cranford House (Moulsford) for boys??

[snowdrops10]

Hi. Does anyone know how the integration of boys into the school is going? Would you send your boy their over the neighbouring Moulsford Prep? Attracted by the fact it goes right through to 18 and doesn't appear too pushy.
Any info would be great! Thanks

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I have friends with children at Moulsford who rave about it, and I have only heard dire things about Cranford. But these are only anecdotal as don't have children there myself. Moulsford is a traditional outdoorsy boys prep, very swallows and amazons (as by the river!) and great extra curricular. Academic enough without being pushy. I would definitely go for that over Cranford for an all rounder.

They’re very different schools. Cranford is lovely for early primary and lots of parents love it all the way up too.
It always did have boys to year 2; in my son’s year there were more boys than girls. They nearly all went to Moulsford in y3 before Cranford started taking boys all through.

It’s a much, much gentler environment than Moulsford in every sense, and will suit some boys much better as a result. Others will suit Moulsford better. You can very easily start at one and move to the other up to about y3. After that Moulsford becomes more demanding academically by quite a degree because they have to prep children for pretests in Y6, which Cranford don’t have to do. But it is very hard to get into a selective secondary (eg Abingdon or SHSK) from Cranford primary as a result
Much, much more sport (and higher calibre of) at Moulsford, but much more nurturing at Cranford. And arguably it’s not much fun being in the F team at Moulsford. Moulsford is a lot more expensive by the end.
Very much horses for corses.

Thank you very much for your replies, that concurs with my takeaway from their virtual open days. Hard to know what will be the best fit for my 3 year old!

They are quite different schools- you perhaps need to think about what senior school you want your son to go on to, as Moulsford has a different end game than Cranford- they are trying to get the boys into the ‘best’ senior schools, whereas Cranford had no ‘prep’ focus, there is a real through school environment- year 6 is spent enjoying the curriculum rather than prepping for 11+/entrance exams. The GCSE results are impressive given it is non selective so there doesn’t seem to be a major disadvantage to the more gentle approach in terms of grades. There has been a definite shift at Cranford to having daily sport in the junior school but more hockey/football and cricket rather than rugby.

We just came away from the Moulsford open day today and are thinking about it for our son starting reception, we are attending the Cranford school open day also to compare. There both very different I gather so will be interesting to see what Cranford offers

We are looking forward to going to an open day at Moulsford. We have our little boy registered and have only heard great things about the school! He’s very outdoorsy so I’m sure he’ll enjoy seeing the school in action.