WHICH UK STATE BOARDING SCHOOL

[MissyMom]

Please help with whatever info you may have... My son has a year 8 offer in these 4 State Boarding Schools... Holyport College, St George's Harpenden, Duke of Yorks School and Royal Alexendra & Albert in Surrey.

I'm leaning towards Holyport College or St George's as they received Outstanding Ofsted results. However Holyport College has fewer facilities but is twinned with Eton and they seem to share facilities. St George's doesn't seem to have a big boarding community which doesn't seem great for him at weekends when most of the kids would have gone home.

Does anyone have any info or advice on any of these schools please?

You might get more responses if you ask to move this thread to the Boarding section

@XelaM Thank you very much

Mine go to St George’s - girl and boy. Excellent school but boarding is miserable, no pastoral care and no activities in the evening - they all just sit on their phones.

@Toomuchtrouble4me Thank you. That's my only challenge about St George's. Such a great school but boarding focus seems to be a let down. *sigh

Sorry if it doesn't help but our DD is at Wymondham and our experience has been excellent. We had offers from Holyport and Duke of York, and they are both great schools. We wrote off St George's which is a brilliant school but has a very small boarding community. In the end that was also why we also came down against Holyport, and as you say the facilities are limited. To me Duke of York is a good school, but I am not sure why you would choose it above Wymondham or Holyport unless you value the military tradition or the 100% boarding.

We spoke with RAA but couldn't find anybody to say a positive word about it, so did not interview.

I am happy for you to DM me for further thoughts, but they are only my opinions.

And if you did want to look at Wymondham I would not let the fact you don't currently have an offer deter you. We had a dramatic change in circumstances and secured a place within weeks of applying. The benefit of boarding is that schools that are massively over subscribed for day students often have capacity for boarding.

We looked around Royal Alexandra & Albert on their open day on 11th March and I thought it looked beautiful

The campus is undeniably beautiful and I am sure lots of children are very happy there, but Ofsted rate it as Requires Improvement and I found the admissions team to be unresponsive. There were also lots of negative comments on Mumsnet, but I guess that applies to everything. 😉

St George’s is considered a very good school locally, and Harpenden is a nice place to live.

Can’t comment on the boarding side of things.

Can’t comment because I have no experience if it.

@Toomuchtrouble4me mind if I pm re SG's?

We went to look at Holyport and the boarding was new from memory? Nice although all rooms were shared and small.
The only thing I would say is that its a very academic school - they do not even offer Business as an A level as they focus on subjects that are the best regarded for uni. My son goes to a grammar school and it was still a bit too intense for us unless you have a child that is super academically motivated.

My son went to royal Alexandra for years 8 and 9 and really enjoyed it- we only pulled him out as we were struggling to afford it. This was 12 years ago though!!

It has the most beautiful grounds!! I really loved the school when we attended an open day earlier this year.

@XelaM it does and my son had lots of fun too - at the time we lived in east Twickenham and it worked well for us as he came home every second weekend too by himself on the train-

We had no complaints. Lots of male boarding house staff too which I liked as they were firm but fair but fun - my son always remembers the fun they had, pillow fights and all that sort of stuff