We have four children at Taunton School – Zach is in Year 13 and is Deputy Head Boy, Ethan is in Year 12, Mia is in Year 11 and Bradley is in Year 9.
It’s a big decision when considering the future for your children and we, like most parents, wanted to try and give our children the best possible start in life. Our family have been part of Taunton School since our eldest paved the way for the other three back in 2011 and we can honestly say it was the best decision we could have made. We have seen our children stretched both academically as well as on the sports field in an array of competitive activities that has pushed their desire to achieve.
Everyone is given the opportunity to represent the school and it is good to see all the pupils engaged in their sport and experiencing the competitive edge that being part of a team brings. We have seen our children grow strong bonds within all the sporting teams they have been part of and make friendships that will last long in to the future.
Although we didn’t originally realise this, one of our sons was dyslexic and always struggled with English no matter how he tried. The staff at Taunton School identified this straight away and immediately set about putting into place the learning skills that allowed him to grasp the subject and go on to get a great result in his GCSE. We have always been so impressed with the effort and lengths to which the school is willing to go to in order to maximise the full potential of each and every student.
Three of the children now know exactly what they want to achieve in life, with one son wanting to go into business finance, another son wanting to go into marine biology and our daughter wanting to become a surgical doctor. I don’t know what the youngest will come up with, but I am confident that he will be guided into something that he will love and excel in.
As for the boarding aspect, all our children have loved their time boarding at Taunton School. Our concerns of them settling in quickly disappeared and it was us hassling them to phone home. Often they would tell us: ‘I’m busy at the moment playing with my friends!’ The boarding team in the Prep School is amazing with the children, keeping them constantly occupied. The senior boarding houses offer the pupils enough free space to mature and stand on their own feet.
In short, Taunton School will unlock your child’s full potential pushing them beyond their comfort zone in an attempt to achieve the best they can, all the while keeping them grounded, polite and caring. We are so glad we opted for Taunton School as we really don’t think we could have found a better start in life for them.
I used to be one of those parents who thought that I would never be able to let go enough to send my children to boarding school, but after five schools by the time my eldest daughter Chloe had reached ten, and the heartfelt tears she shed after saying goodbye to her friends and teachers each time, we decided enough was enough. Because our family and friends were mainly located in Yorkshire, we chose to look around that area so that Chloe and Aimee would always have somebody nearby. We chose Barnard Castle.
As soon as you walk into Barney the first thing you notice is how genuinely happy the staff and pupils are. With the well-equipped classrooms, the safe and spacious school grounds and the beautiful location, what’s not to like! The school worked around our needs – if we needed to drop Chloe off early so that we could catch a ferry back home, or if we couldn’t attend parents’ meetings, the school couldn’t have been more helpful, offering lots of different solutions. In her first two terms at Barney Chloe had already achieved so much and we put this down to her new friends and the very gifted and dedicated teachers who make her learning incredibly enjoyable.
At first, boarding life was understandably difficult for all of us, but because of the amazing care, family values and the wide-ranging opportunities that the boarders receive I was inundated with happy FaceTime calls. We are always very well informed through the comprehensive range of communication, including the weekly newsletter, fixtures and events on the website, telephone calls and letters. Family and friends can go to the many sports events.
My youngest daughter Aimee was left at home with friends moving away constantly. After hearing about all the genuine fun that Chloe was having, she asked if she could go earlier than we had planned. They are now both at Barney, sharing a room, competing together, enjoying the wide range of opportunities available and making some fantastic friends and memories that will stay with them forever.
As my Service career had been reasonably stable – having been based at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset for many years – boarding school was not the path we expected to take regarding our twin girls’ education. With excellent schools on our doorstep everything seemed set for a smooth passage through the education system.
However the demise of the Harrier necessitated a move and no stable base area at the time. Remembering colleagues’ academic and emotional turmoil associated with multiple school movements, we started researching our options regarding boarding schools with some trepidation.
The plethora of available schools can seem overwhelming – how to make, for all, an extremely important decision. Queen’s College, Taunton, was the first school we visited. From the minute we arrived on open day we were made to feel welcome and any questions we had were answered openly and honestly. Everyone expects a school to be at its best on an open day but, looking beyond this, we could see a school run on family values, where pupils were championed to excel in their own fields. Yes, the facilities were impressive but also the welfare of the child seemed paramount to all.
However, to ensure we covered all aspects of our children’s educational needs, a comprehensive programme of visits to schools in the region followed. Every school exceeded our expectations, each proclaiming its exam results and excellent qualities. In truth, this made our decision even harder. Such was our length of deliberation that a new round of open days arrived and so a second visit was required to create a small shortlist. Once we had listed all our requirements, as a family we determined that Queen’s was the one.
Next step was a taster session – not a showcasing opportunity, just the occasion to take part in normal school life. Our girls didn’t want to come home afterwards, embracing the new school life from the start. Originally planning to start boarding in Year 6, they insisted they wanted to join earlier, an indication of their wholehearted approval. Cue frantic labelling of uniform and constant reassurance to each other that we had done the right thing. I don’t know who was the most apprehensive or tearful when packing their suitcases for their first term – me or my wife. It certainly wasn’t our girls.
Although it is not a military boarding school, Queen’s has a significant Service boarding community. The school therefore understands the unique situation of Service life with all its rewards and challenges. The pastoral system is fully embedded, with the school ensuring boarders have the opportunity for stimulating and fun clubs and activities and are not left to amuse themselves. Their school parents (our children’s words not ours) are always available to overcome any problems. Something that seems trivial at first can easily escalate when mum and dad are not around to placate or rectify but the staff were always there to help. As our girls have progressed through senior school, more freedom has been granted to them and therefore some degree of autonomy, especially regarding time and work management. Without realising it, they are gaining life skills we could only dream of at that age.
Did we feel guilty sending them to a boarding school? Of course we did. Saying goodbye to them on a Sunday night followed by a long drive home was distressing for us at first. Although we never experienced emotional breakdowns over the phone, the calls would sometimes be tearful and the length of hugs before our departure extensive. In time though, the calls have steadily drifted from tearful to happy to a rarity, all as a result of the extensive care and attention from staff and matrons to ensure a happy boarding school life.
Receiving a hectic and frantic FaceTime call as they can only spare us ten minutes before rushing off to do something else exciting at school or in their dorm is now bizarrely a strange reassurance. While they appreciate their home life, the camaraderie they have with fellow boarders mimics Service life and is to be treasured long into adulthood.
The comprehensive and honest feedback from the school regarding their academic progress, combined with the development of their maturity we have seen over a few short years, has fully vindicated our decision. The final indication of ultimate approval surely must be – would we do this all over again? The answer from all the family is a most positive ‘Yes’.
As a Service family, we decided on Clifton for a variety of reasons. Of course, the school’s high reputation across the academic, sporting and pastoral disciplines was our paramount concern and Clifton holds its own against its West Country competitors. Also, having a son and daughter with an age difference of two years, we clearly wanted a co-ed school that offered both preparatory and upper school on the same site in order to simplify the logistics. Similarly, in the event that we are posted abroad in future, and with our nearest family being in Scotland, we wanted a school that was easy for national and international travel. With Bristol International Airport only 25 minutes away, Bristol railway station ten minutes away and the M4/M5 15 minutes away, the school was certainly the best linked of the dozen or so West Country schools we looked at.
Although we didn’t initially realise it would be a major factor, the healthy ratio of day to boarding students has been a major bonus – our children have as many friends who are day pupils as boarders. This has meant they are regularly invited for ‘sleepovers’ and now consider Bristol their home, something every Service family will recognise as important.
We initially looked at schools in rural or small town settings but we are delighted with our choice of a city school (albeit in a very leafy suburb). Its proximity to Clifton Village is perhaps one of the school’s unique selling points, being a wonderfully safe environment for the children to begin to venture into the city by themselves and with all the cosmopolitan attractions of Bristol to hand.
Finally, Clifton manages to strike that fine balance of being receptive to the needs of Service families, but without having too many pupils from Service families. We wanted our children to grow up with children from a wide range of backgrounds.
All in all, we would have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Clifton to other Service parents looking for a great place to educate their children.
As a Service family, we decided on Clifton for a variety of reasons. Of course, the school’s high reputation across the academic, sporting and pastoral disciplines was our paramount concern and Clifton holds its own against its West Country competitors. Also, having a son and daughter with an age difference of two years, we clearly wanted a co-ed school that offered both preparatory and upper school on the same site in order to simplify the logistics. Similarly, in the event that we are posted abroad in future, and with our nearest family being in Scotland, we wanted a school that was easy for national and international travel. With Bristol International Airport only 25 minutes away, Bristol railway station ten minutes away and the M4/M5 15 minutes away, the school was certainly the best linked of the dozen or so West Country schools we looked at.
Although we didn’t initially realise it would be a major factor, the healthy ratio of day to boarding students has been a major bonus – our children have as many friends who are day pupils as boarders. This has meant they are regularly invited for ‘sleepovers’ and now consider Bristol their home, something every Service family will recognise as important.
We initially looked at schools in rural or small town settings but we are delighted with our choice of a city school (albeit in a very leafy suburb). Its proximity to Clifton Village is perhaps one of the school’s unique selling points, being a wonderfully safe environment for the children to begin to venture into the city by themselves and with all the cosmopolitan attractions of Bristol to hand.
Finally, Clifton manages to strike that fine balance of being receptive to the needs of Service families, but without having too many pupils from Service families. We wanted our children to grow up with children from a wide range of backgrounds.
All in all, we would have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Clifton to other Service parents looking for a great place to educate their children.
Like many Service parents, our children moved several times during their primary school years, and the constant change was starting to take its toll on them. Although they were very good at making friends, they had no chance to develop deeper friendships, and they often never overcame the stage of feeling like the outsiders. We came to a family decision that once they reached secondary school age boarding was the only option which would give them continuity in those very important years, allow them to make (and keep) long-term friends, and offer them consistency of both academic and extra-curricular activity which we could not guarantee at each posting.
As parents we had certain criteria for choosing a school. The first was that the school had to be broad enough in its remit to offer a wide enough choice of facilities and subjects to a level for all three children to attend the same school (if I couldn’t be there to parent them, then I wasn’t going to even countenance them being separated!). The second was that it had to offer full boarding. We have been based in Germany since 2015 and we don’t have family in the UK that could help at weekends or exeats, so it was crucial that the full boarding package was lively enough to make them feel part of the school (not the lone military children in the boarding house at the weekends). The last was that the school should have significant experience of dealing with Service families, and the last-minute constraints and hiccups we all go through, and be flexible enough to accommodate them.
The Duke of York’s Royal Military School ticked all those boxes for us. The Principal Alex Foreman previously taught at an MoD school in Germany, and there are many Service children at the school who understand each other’s lives and what it is like to have a family that is moving or a parent deployed (not always the case in some of our primary schools).
The children are thriving academically and throwing themselves into all the out-of-hours activities they want to (realistically if they had stayed at home they would have had to compromise and only have two activities a week each (if we could have found them something locally)). They are reaping the benefits of being with the same children in the same sports teams and growing and developing as a unit. They love the musical opportunities the school offers (we very rarely get phone calls in the week as they are always rushing from one rehearsal to another), the holiday trips and adventure training. They love staying at school over exeat weekends – they see it as a treat in itself.
They are developing into confident and polite young adults with a real sense of identity and belonging with their school. When I ask them if we have made the right choice with boarding and with the choice of school the answer is an emphatic ‘Yes on both counts’.
Highfield and Brookham is outstanding. Academically, our children’s success has surpassed our expectations. Sports and arts facilities at Highfield and Brookham are superb, the dorms are fabulous, there are 175 acres of stunning grounds for pupils to enjoy and the food and match teas are of restaurant standard. But Highfield and Brookham is more than a school, it’s family.
As Service parents with postings hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away from our children, finding a school with the right ethos and culture was really important to us. Highfield and Brookham is a kind, happy and strong community, where our children feel nurtured and challenged in equal measure.
Our children have boarded from the age of eight, through their most important formative years. Highfield and Brookham has focused as much on ‘who’ as on ‘what’ they want to become – what sort of person do they want to be. We particularly appreciate the grounding Highfield and Brookham provides our children in the tools and skills they will need to navigate through life: kindness, resilience, mindfulness and perspective.
Highfield and Brookham has a knack for helping every child discover their skills and talents wherever they lie, developing these talents with a mix of high expectations and support, while allowing them to mature at their own pace.
Children leave Highfield and Brookham with places at the most selective senior schools. But, more importantly, they also leave with an impressive degree of maturity and self-awareness. Highfield and Brookham has taught our children to take a positive, proactive approach to good mental health alongside physical health, which is so important as they face the pressure of exams and life’s increasing turbulence. All the teaching staff are trained youth mental health first aiders and parents are also encouraged to take the course.
It’s really difficult to hand over the care of your children to others, especially when they’re very young. It’s a huge leap of faith, particularly if you’re both new to boarding as we were. We have found that Highfield and Brookham’s holistic approach to education in the round chimes very much with our own philosophy, which has made the process of letting go a little easier. We know that the children are happy, in good hands and supported in every way.
Subscribe / latest articles and news from our schools
