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.

I’m not sure who is spreading the rumours, but at this stage, they are just rumours. My DD is currently in Year 6 at a local private school, and we’ve been told by our current head that PF is a wonderful school, but that it does struggle for numbers.
Given that quite a few schools are closing down, or making significant changes to survive- like St Nicholas’ in Church Crookham going fully co-ed, I do think it’s a valid point for people to question what the future holds for PF. That doesn’t mean anyone is criticising the school or suggesting it isn’t a good school; it’s simply a reasonable concern in the current climate.

Exactly this. Not only is Priors Field struggling to attract new pupils to Year 7, but it has also seen a significant drop in numbers in other year groups - parents have pulled their children out to attend other schools. As a prospective parent I’d want to know why, and how viable the school will be throughout my daughter’s education.

It’s interesting that headteachers of local preps are also recognising this trend. I hope priors field is able to pull itself back, it was so sad what happened to the Royal School and Longacre.

I don’t want to speculate, but I think we may see more private schools close in the Surrey area. Birth rates are already very low, and there are simply too many schools competing for pupils. Even local schools rated Outstanding are struggling to fill places; some have gone from four classes per year group to just two.

I think Priors Field is between a rock and a hard place. If they go co-ed, they lose their USP of being a non-academically selective girls school. I’m not sure that linking up with another school would be advantageous either - someone on another thread mentioned Cranleigh as a potential - but what benefit would it serve Cranleigh to link up in this way? Other schools would rightly be quite wary due to the current position of the school. It’s a tricky one.

I think there are a couple of different things getting mixed together here.

It is completely reasonable to ask questions about pupil numbers and finances at the moment. I would certainly want to understand those things before choosing a school. But I also think there is a danger in taking bits of information and turning them into fairly definite conclusions when we don't necessarily know the full picture. With schools that can become a bit unintentionally self-fulfilling too, because confidence affects applications and pupil numbers.

I'm also not sure that joining a bigger group is necessarily the obvious solution. It may work very well in some cases, but Royal and Longacre are recent examples where being part of a much larger organisation didn't ultimately guarantee the future of the individual school. Bigger may bring advantages, but it doesn't automatically mean safer, or that what made a school distinctive will remain.

More generally, and thinking about themes from some of the other threads, I sometimes think these discussions become far too focused on pupil numbers and GCSE/A-level percentages as though they tell you whether a school is good or not. Pupil numbers in particular aren't necessarily a proxy for the quality of the education, and for some children a smaller school or a more individual environment may actually be part of the attraction.

I've interviewed plenty of extremely high-achieving students over the years, including students predicted three, four or five A*s, who are fantastic at answering an exam question but really struggle when you ask them to think creatively about something they haven't been explicitly taught. Equally, some of the most impressive students aren't necessarily the ones with the most perfect set of grades or from the very "top" schools. Results clearly matter, but they are still quite a crude measure of an education.

One of the things I actually like about this area is that the schools are different. Some are very academic and selective, some are particularly strong creatively, some in sport, some are very good at building confidence or supporting children who might not thrive elsewhere, and most will have strengths across several areas. A school doesn't have to look like the biggest or most selective option to be exactly the right environment for a particular child.

I don't think it would be a good outcome if a difficult market gradually reduced that diversity to a smaller number of schools all trying to offer essentially the same thing.

For anyone actually choosing a school, I would look at the finances and ask questions, but I would definitely go and see the schools, ask those questions in person, and not make decisions for or against based only on what is being inferred online. Meet the pupils and staff, understand what each school is particularly good at and think about where your own child is most likely to thrive and make the most of their abilities.

We are fortunate to have such a varied group of schools in this area, each offering something slightly different, and hopefully that diversity persists well into the future.

@seetheforestthroughthetrees I agree 100%. You have summed up the issues being addressed in a number of these threads perfectly. Thank you.

@Lacura7 I hadn’t heard about St Nicholas going fully co-ed, is that definitely happening? I know they’ve just joined a trust of some sort.

Yes, they’ve joined a new trust on the condition that they become co-ed to increase student numbers…. Watch this space