Ludgrove, Berkshire
Ludgrove, which was founded in 1892 by the footballer Arthur Dunn, is a boarding prep school in Berkshire and has 130 acres for its pupils to learn, run around and play in. The school is one of the last preps to provide full boarding (which is fortnightly). At weekends, boys can use 11 football pitches, four tennis courts, two squash courts and a nine-hole golf course. It’s not just Prince William’s alma mater: other old boys include Alec Douglas–Home, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Bear Grylls (who opened the new Exploration Centre in June 2021). Most of the boys go on to Eton, Harrow, Radley or Winchester. The headmaster, Simon Barber, says that the school is a ‘magical place to spend five years of childhood’, and that its ‘homely environment provides a wonderful place where boys flourish and realise their potential’.
St Anthony’s School for Boys, London
St Anthony’s is a Catholic prep school in Hampstead that educates boys from the ages of two-and-a-half to 13. Situated on Fitzjohn’s Avenue, a pleasant north London street, the school says that while it is ‘primarily a Roman Catholic school, it also welcomes children from diverse backgrounds and all faiths’. The head is Richard Berlie, who says that ‘promoting a greenhouse as opposed to a hothouse environment means St Anthony’s boys are happy, hard-working and highly successful’. The school was founded in Eastbourne in 1898, but moved to its current location after the second world war. It was rated ‘excellent’ in all areas in 2019 by the Independent Schools Inspectorate. Two years ago, it was acquired by the Inspired Education Group, which owns 111 schools across 24 countries.
The American School, London
The American School, in St John’s Wood, was set up in 1951 by US BBC journalist Stephen Eckard, originally in his home and for 13 students. The school now educates 1,350 pupils – across up to 70 different nationalities – from what Americans call ‘kindergarten’ to ‘high school’. It is the only school in north London that follows the US curriculum, and a strong number of pupils go on to Ivy League universities each year. Former presidents Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have all visited during stays in the UK. The school celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2021, and an Ofsted inspection in January last year rated it ‘outstanding’. The head is Matthew Horvat, who was previously Head of School at the Overlake School in Redmond, Washington.
Queen Elizabeth’s, London
It’s been an excellent year for Queen Elizabeth’s, a boys’ grammar school in Barnet. It achieved the highest performance in London for GCSE grades, with 96.3 per cent of results marked between a 7 and a 9. The school was founded in 1573 by the 1st Earl of Leicester, and was named after Queen Elizabeth I, who issued a charter ‘for the establishment of the Free Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth in Barnet’. According to the school, it ‘remains a non-denominational, non-fee-paying, selective school with a mission of producing confident, able and responsible young men’. For the headmaster Neil Enright, it is a ‘state school experience like no other’. Former pupils include Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, and the influencer Jay Shetty.
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