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Our View
You couldn’t ask for a more nurturing and friendly environment for a child’s first school experience than this super-relaxed prep in Hove. With its heartwarming values – ‘Be Inspired. Be Brilliant. Be You’ – and a head who believes ‘every day is a yes day’, pupils are free to soak up knowledge not stress, laying the ground perfectly for a confident next step to secondary school.
Where?
The school sits on a wide, tree-lined road in a residential area of Hove in a purpose-built all-boys prep called Mowden which moved here in 1913. Now mixed and part of the Lancing College group of schools – which includes Lancing Prep Worthing, 12 miles away, and the College itself a few miles along the coast, which many pupils go on to – it benefits from the three schools’ close connections, as well as the College’s facilities. Newer buildings include a multipurpose hall where pupils eat lunch, have assemblies, stage productions and do sports. Outside there’s a hockey/netball all-weather court and two fields, which are both used for sport and play.
Head
Kirsty Keep is one of the most welcoming heads we’ve met, and her openness and friendliness set the tone for the whole school, which is incredibly informal and relaxed. She has been here for seven years and ‘can’t think of doing anything else’. Her husband is a maths teacher and their daughter is a pupil at the prep. ‘The trick of teaching is to know the kids,’ she tells us. ‘And the trick of being a really good school is for everyone to know everyone.’
You certainly feel the sense of community as soon as you arrive, no doubt nurtured in part by Mrs Keep’s emphasis on helping children remember ‘how lucky we are with the moments, opportunities and experiences we have, and asking what we can do to make the most of it. They can use this luck to be a really good person and to be aware of how to make the world a little bit better.’ It’s an ethos she confidently tells us won’t suit everyone; for the few parents who visit the school who are also looking at Brighton College for secondary, ‘we may not be the most comfortable fit’
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Admissions
Mrs Keep meets every prospective pupil when they come for a tour and, if they and their parents like what they see, a taster day is the next step. Children joining in Year 1 upwards are also asked for a reference from their current setting. Formal offers are then made.
Academics and destinations
The approach to academics here is very pupil-centred. In pre-prep there’s flexible seating, free-flow between the two reception classes – the teachers plan lessons together and work in unison – and on-site forest school, as well as mixed-up classes as pupils move up the years (this continues all the way to Year 8) so that everyone has the chance to be friends with everyone. Little ones learn life skills such as resilience, imagination and curiosity through cuddly toys, which become Roald Dahl characters from Year 3 to teach them resilience, relating, reflecting and resourcefulness.
French starts from pre-school, and in Year 7 pupils add either Spanish or German, which they learn at Lancing College one afternoon a week when they go there for a carousel of activities that also includes dance and sport. The library is an inviting space, with one wall made completely of glass and a reading tunnel where children can curl up inside a bookcase to read. Pupil librarians check books in and out, and a ‘read a book, win a book’ raffle injects a bit of fun. There is a brand-new ‘Innovation Hub’ for IT, and the science garden (located in the car park) includes a pond for dipping.
Many children (on average over 50 per cent) go on to Lancing College, with other popular destinations including Bede’s or Hurst.
Co-curricular
An all-inclusive approach to sport means teams are co-ed and even – no star players here. Hockey, football, rugby, netball and cricket are all played, and the school hosts the Mowden Cup tournament each term for either football, netball or cricket. Every pupil also does athletics and swimming.
The school has a dance-drama studio for timetabled lessons, and pupils can do New Era Academy lessons, which are similar to LAMDA. Every year group puts on a Christmas performance or service, and there are also Easter and summer-term shows; Years 7 and 8 are staging Little Shop of Horrors this year.
Art and D&T share a space – on our visit, a class was engrossed in making bird boxes. We also saw rehearsals for the harvest festival, which takes place at the church at the back of the campus. Many pupils play instruments (peripatetic teachers come in for one-to-one lessons), and there’s a choir, orchestra and band, with everyone given an opportunity to perform in Music Concert Week (which became Music Concert Nine Days last year as there were so many budding musicians to showcase).
Clubs include forest school, bridge, art and dance club, and from Year 5, pupils go on a residential trip to Dorset or Wales, where they camp and spend the days doing outdoor pursuits including canoeing and zip-lining. Year 7 have an MFL trip to France which combines language learning with outdoor activities. Back at school, the younger pupils enjoy ‘Curriculum Collapse Week’, with fun activities and Years 3 and 4 are excited to have an overnight camp at school.
School community
The school’s entire ethos is geared towards pastoral care, and everyone has a voice. There are Year 8 prefects for art, music, sport, library and pre-prep, a school council and food council, senior pupils are trained in peer mentoring, parents are actively included in school life (‘We need to understand the family dynamic to understand the child,’ says Mrs Keep) – and the school dog, Bean, is always ready to go for a walk with anyone who needs to talk, accompanied by the wellbeing member of staff.
A competitive house system sees lots of inter-house face-offs, including the lively House Song competition (a calendar highlight) and the best-dressed Christmas tree. House points are counted at the end of each term, and the winning house gets treated to a movie in autumn term, swimming in the spring term and a water fight in summer term (followed by ice cream). There are also lots of events organised by the PTA over the year.
And finally....
In the pupils’ words, this is a school that has ‘nice teachers, fun lessons and really good sport’, where ‘everyone is kind and the teachers will support you’. We couldn’t put it better ourselves.