Pinner --> St. Martins vs. St. John's vs. Reddiford vs. MTS vs. Buckingham Prep

[Seashells24]

Hi All,
FTM of a 2.5 year old boy living in the Pinner area. We have started to look at prep nursery schools for a start date of Sept 2024 (when he will be 3 years old). We definitely want DS to get a private education and have heard that it is better to be in a prep nursery as that will help in securing a place in a private school.

We are just confused as to what the pros and cons of each of these 5 are (St. Martins vs. St. John's vs. Reddiford vs. MTS vs. Buckingham Prep).
I already can think of 1 con for St. John's and that is they don't provide lunch in the nursery year! Any advice for this FTM? :)

I'm an ex MTP parent so can help to some extent. MTP, St Martin's and St John's are all feeders to MTS and academically focused/full of competitive parents.,,,

MTP and St Martin's aren't dissimilar, St John's is slightly different. If sport is your thing, St John's is the best (although the others are decent at cricket and MTP at hockey).

MTS doesn't really prepare kids for 11 and 13 plus entrance exams as it used to before the merger with MTS.

Sorry last sentence meant to read MTP

I have some exp with Reddiford and Buckingham. Reddiford is very academic and result focused and pastoral care is really poor.
If a child can cope there, they do deliver excellent results.
Buck prep used to be really good but sadly all good teachers have left. Even the head is new. But the pastoral care and communication is really good. Class sizes are really small. MTS perhaps is far more academic than these two. No idea about St Martins.

Thanks for this, really helpful. I will do some more research via google too.

Hi, actually St John's started this year providing lunch to nursery children :)
It's a great school from my DS own experience.

Where did you choose please, am in same situation