My DD is at Nlcs. All the way from age 4, now in senior school. Overall it’s exceptionally good. I found the junior school atmosphere and staff incredibly supportive, genuinely caring, and encouraging all the right things. And magical grounds she loved to run free in. DD was very happy there. It was beautiful not needing to worry about changing/exams etc to pass out of junior school too.
I lost a bit of faith in middle school- felt everything lost focus and the personal touch with the huge expansion of the class size with lots of new girls- it was quite splintering for DD, who struggled to find friends for a couple of years, and I didn’t feel teachers were very aware or attentive. She also had a crisis of confidence, surrounded by so many brilliant and highly motivated girls… However, senior school I am now incredibly impressed. The teachers really really know every pupil and support them very holistically. The general culture of the school is very very high achieving and academic. My DD is bright but not the type who will do well regardless. She really struggled in some topics. I think she would probably have got a C or D in most schools. But teachers were attentive and encouraging and worked hard on her mindset not to write herself off, and she is now doing well in these topics, - she should scrape As… and has learned a lot about resilience and persistence and this has built her confidence that she can do anything she puts her mind to and works hard enough at. That’s the ethos of the school - not that you have to be brilliant at everything, but that you have to put your best in everything, be focused about your weak points, and do what it takes to fix them. On the topics she thrives on, by contrast, they will stimulate her extra. She can get one to one coaching sessions with any teacher at the drop of a hat, teachers answer her email queries within minutes even at the weekends, and she is well on her way to getting far far better results in public exams than I would otherwise expect. I can absolutely see how the girls end up with the best academic results in the country. The girls put the work in. Everybody works incredibly hard. But the entire culture of persistence, constant self motivation and self reflection, and high attentiveness from teachers is amazing. They build responsibility from an early age. They barely communicate with parents after middle school, because they are holding the girls responsible for their own progress. My job is simply to sit back and remind my daughter to take breaks and not get stressed.
in terms of atmosphere, I find the girls genuinely decent, straight forward, hard working. Few distractions with boys. And very little bullying or bitchiness that I’m aware of. And of course it has a basic feminism- belief and practice that girls can grow up to be anything etc….
It’s a huge privilege to be at a school like that. No experience of Habs I’m afraid. DD got into both but we were impressed with the feel at NLCS and don’t regret it.