London academic prep schools with strong music emphasis

[bayesian]

I am looking for an academic prep school in London (anywhere as I can relocate) where my little girl can receive very good and preferably daily tuition on musical instruments (piano and violin). We want her to perform at very high level. I would also prefer daily lessons in French, but that music has a higher priority.

I need the music lessons to be held in the school instead of private tutoring due to my corporate tuition arrangement (private lessons outside are not covered).

I have considered:

• Ecole Jeannine Manuel (obviously strong in French but music side is poor)
• Holy Cross Prep (pretty decent in music but I want more)

Why is music and French so important to you? Does she show an aptitude/interest?

I think you're unlikely to find daily instrumental lessons as part of the curriculum - or even as extra curricular in a prep school. I can only think of specialist music secondary schools where this might be provided - but then you might not get the same emphasis on French?

I think you will struggle to find any school offering daily music and French.
Private music lessons are usually payable separately even when held within the school day and whole class music lessons will not be every day. There may possibly be after school clubs but also not every day.

How old is your child, OP?

St Paul's Cathedral School has a good reputation for music, I don't know about their language teaching.

Agree that it will be hard to find somewhere with daily instrumental tuition - my DD's prep has instrument lessons where the girls are taken out of normal lessons (which is a common arrangement for school music teaching) so I wouldn't want her to do lessons more than once a week.

I expect one of the French bilingual schools would offer daily French tuition, there are quite a few around so there may be one that is better for music.

Honey, if you want your child to perform at a “very high level” you’re going to have to do what everyone else does and pay professional music teachers to teach your child!

More to the point you will need to fund this yourself if you want her to do this, no school offers paid individual tuition as an all-inclusive at this age level.

There is also the question of what your child wants: if she gets the music bug and loves it she will strive to improve, enjoy practicing and playing with others, want to get every musical opportunity going…. then that’s brilliant, and you should support her in this.

Are you musical yourself? Has she got an innate musical ear? What does she do already?
Most “will become high level” children have excellent pitch awareness as toddlers, sing nursery rhymes in key from start to finish,
play by ear anything they are given (even kiddy glockenspiels and shakers), have a good sense of rhythm. A musical toddler may complain that a toy is “broken” because it can’t make the tunes right (ie is missing sharps and flats) ot because it is poorly pitched.

A choir school is a good bet - in London that’s St Paul’s for girls. Options elsewhere in Oxford and Cambridge.

I came on to recommend a choir school but in London the options for girls are more limited. Most kids who have serious instrumental ambitions will join the junior department of a conservatoire - almost all have Saturday schools which start with pre-school music and kindergarten strings and get gradually more selective as the children go.

Also the best prep school language teaching isn’t actually that good - common entrance French is really quite basic, and plenty of kids join the prep system in Y7 and do perfectly well. So you may be better off sending your dd to a French-speaking school if this is important or organising conversation classes out of school.

What does your child want? Your post is full of “I wants” and the demand for daily music lessons (you want them to miss a lesson a day for music?) is somewhat OTT? How old is your child? You can have lessons as others say but you don’t want them to miss out on teaching.
There are French schools you can do on a Saturday to help this….
but….what’s your child interested in??

I have a very musically able child who goes to junior conservatoire and has been there since age 8 (on weekends). Daily lessons will not enable you to get there unless you also do daily practice. For this to be effective at a young age, ideally a parent should attend the lessons, and figure out what needs to be done in the practice session.

My son voluntarily practices between 1.5-2.5 hours a day on his main instrument and another 20 mins on his 2nd/3rd (he alternates). He was Grade 8 on two instruments before reaching double digits, and is currently grade 6 at voice and grade 7 at piano. He has one lesson a week at conservatoire with his teacher and a second private lesson during the week. He receives voice and piano lessons in his school once a week and plays chamber music and orchestral music on weekends with musicianship classes. Finally he plays music in school, and in our state orchestra (we are in the US). He does all of this because he absolutely loves music and wants to study music later (he's now a teenager). If you try and push a reluctant child down this path you will not succeed.

My second child plays two instruments (violin and piano) to a decent level for his age. He practises for 20-30 mins a day on most days (more on the violin, less on the piano) and is Grade 3ish on both instruments at present. He enjoys playing and loves playing with his big brother but it isn't the centre of his life.

@bayesian my daughter is a teen at a specialist music school and even she doesn't have daily lessons in each instrument! She does have scheduled practice periods within her day and I guess if she were younger someone might help her if necessary within them.

Most schools will have a visiting music teacher who comes once a week per instrument, not every day - even on popular instruments like piano and violin. I guess talk to the specialist schools like Yehudi Menuhin and Purcell (the two nearest to London) if the music is the priority, but I have no idea what their french is like.

I would recommend La Maison Chaude de Maman Folle.
It's a new one - just opened.

To be honest you aren't going to find a prep school in London that offers this as it simply isn't how the London schools are set up. You can find a school that offers French - there are a number of good suggestions here but then you would need to source the music beyond the curriculum - paying for in school tuition or (if your daughter is the right age and ability) a Saturday music school. As has been said already the chances of having more than one lesson a week are low as this would be unusual. Your best bet might be to look to relocate to south Kensington - which has a sizeable French expat community and enroll your daughter in a French language school. Then ask at the Royal College of Music for students to teach your daughter or supervise her practice. They have a Saturday school but the entrance standard is very very high.

The two London adjacent specialist music schools would not fulfill the French - Menuhin is German for the second language and Purcell and academics don't really belong in the same sentence.

Naughty! My O level French is just sufficient to see what you did there.

I need the music lessons to be held in the school instead of private tutoring due to my corporate tuition arrangement

Seriously, this sounds rather like the time someone I knew got a private hospital to agree to take her tonsils out, not because it was particularly clinically necessary, but because she'd joined a company with private medical insurance as a benefit and she was determined to make use of it.

@bayesian , if the company provides this benefit (paying for daily music tuition, I mean, not lining the pockets of ENT surgeons with dubious professional morals), then presumably someone responsible for making the payments will be able to point you in the direction of a suitable school? Unless it's a totally empty 'benefit', that they know they'll never have to pay out on, designed to reel in a particular type of employee (although even as I type that, I realise that it seems rather unlikely - so if the benefit is offered, presumably the company does know of somewhere that facilitates its take up...).

Hi OP

My children go to St Paul’s Cathedral School. My daughter plays the violin and piano and has singing lessons. She is in the Chamber choir, the orchestra and a string ensemble.

Her music lessons are once a week per instrument (these are at different times throughout the day) but she has other opportunities to play alongside other children.

The children have French and Latin lessons (twice a week for each).

If your daughter can sing, would you be interested in the chorister programme? Girls can now join and the choristers get a lot of music tuition (and do a lot of practice). There is usually a choristers’ string ensemble.

www.stpauls.co.uk/girls-voices

OP has not returned to either this or the other two similar threads she started six days ago. It would have been helpful if she'd clarified whether she's looking for a school for an 11yo who is doing very well academically, excels in French and already on track to being able to perform to a very high level on both piano and violin, or whether this is a 3yo she has decided will be all those things and god help her if she isn't.

A state school in Harrow - St Jerome’s is a bilingual school. English and French. A very high number of students play instruments. Not a prep school.

As others have said, music can be done outside of school in the music centres etc.

this is the only helpful suggestion in the thread, thanks. I have looked at SPCS and is interested, the only thing is the destination school list for girls hasn't been particularly strong (no SPGS, G&L)

Six months later, you check whether you got any replies! Goodness me.

G&L and SPGS are both really far from St Paul’s Cathedral. About half of the children who go there live in Islington and will go to senior schools closer by. If having SPGS as an option for senior schools is important to you, make sure you live close to it - they now have a rule that a girl must have a journey time of no more than 50 minutes door to door.

It’s a myth that parents necessarily need to practice daily with their kids. The Suzuki model depends on this but it’s not the only way to produce excellent performers. A more holistic approach where the teacher ensures the kid knows how to practice themselves is preferable to many and avoids the Suzuki pitfalls.

I do very much like SPCS, especially the music elements as you pointed out. I will probably go for a visit. Its website says applications are encouraged as early as possible due to application volume. Does it really receive many applications?

Agree, but it is hard for parents to know whether the teacher is holistic or just talking the talk. Afterall, teaching is just a job for many.

The next open afternoon is on 23 May. The school is full for all year groups for the next academic year, with spaces available for choristers only.

I sometimes envy how tiger parenting children in the US is more common wheras many in England talk about their kids being "happy at" the schools which send no kids to oxbridge and ivy.