Prior’s Field, Godalming

[MerryFish]

I have seen a lot of negative comments surrounding this school recently and as a current parent I wanted to share my experience to hopefully give other parents some insider knowledge and real insight into the school. This school has been transformative for my daughter. She has gone from having low self esteem and no confidence to being a confident, happy and thriving young lady. This school has been amazing for her and I am so happy we made the decision to send her.

Lots of posts on here I have noticed people worrying about numbers and finances. I haven’t heard or seen anything that concerns me regarding finances. Numbers are not as high as I would imagine the school would ideally like but all the speculation and negativity on platforms like this won’t help drive those numbers! So I urge you to please come and see it for yourself. Be open minded and try not to focus on mumsnet keyboard warriors. It’s a magical school that recognises every girl for their individual strengths!

It’s a great school and I agree with you. I’m so glad your daughter is happy. I don’t think that there is another school similar. The school has just agreed a partnership with UCA too, which is very exciting for sixth formers.

I’m getting a bit tired and bored of the constant gossip about PF on Mumsnet. It’s as if some people just are longing it to close - for what; a housing estate to clog up traffc?

It’s deeply unfair to children, staff and parents.

I’m sure that comments will come along soon, who have no experience of the school, and talk about all the schools’ problems. It’s not helpful for current parents, and nor prospective parents. I had sleepless nights for a few weeks with some of the commentators on here.

Why anyone has such an interest, I’m highly dubious of, as I have no idea of numbers at other schools and I don’t check their accounts. Even if I did know a school was struggling, I wouldn’t post it all online either.

There’s a lot of competition for schools locally, but parents of other schools shouldn’t be criticising others, to make theirs look good! All schools have strengths and weaknesses. I’m happy with the choice I made and I also respect the choices parents at other schools make.

My daughter is very happy and working hard and making friends and the school community is so friendly, it really is lovely.

I half wonder if it’s other school staff writing these posts that seem to be deliberately slandering the school. I know parents who have left this year, due to wanting to move to a co-ed school or a school where more of the cohort board as they wanted their daughter to board full time and that’s fair enough but it’s not a negative on priors field the fact that they left. They just got to a point where moving to a different school was the right time (ie year 9) but people seem to be running away with the idea that anyone who has left has done so because they hate the school. It’s like one disgruntled parent is going around spreading stuff and everyone is jumping on it 🤦‍♀️

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

In fairness most private schools on Mumsnet get their share of people being positive and negative, it’s just par for the course. I appreciate hearing honest and varied perspectives on schools. I want to know where to put my money. The more threads that are made about it, the more attention it gets on it. It’s surely better just to ignore it??

I've worked with schools across the area for many years, and have my fair share of opinions on all different schools, as one can read from my posting history over the decade! I have to agree with the previous poster, that sometimes just ignoring the negative comments is the best way forward. St Cats only about two years ago tried to get involved on mumsnet, and it backfired badly.

But, as someone who's always had a balanced review of priors field, i must however say, a lot of the posts in support of the school, read like advertising or a prospectus. This makes it hard to know what to believe or not, whether good or bad.

Agreed. It’s also not particularly difficult to establish that Prior’s Field is currently struggling with pupil numbers - a quick look at the publicly available government data makes that fairly clear. There are undoubtedly reasons behind this, and I’d suggest that time and energy would be better spent looking at how the school can address those issues and improve its position, rather than protesting about comments made on Mumsnet.