The four best independent prep schools in or near Purley are;
- Cumnor House School for Boys in South Croydon,
- St David’s School in Purley,
- Laleham Lea School in Purley, and
- Cumnor House School for Girls in Purley
They are all day schools and are within two miles of each other, at most one mile from Purley town centre. And they are also close to other prep schools in Croydon and Sutton. Why choose these? Because these Purley prep schools rank in the top 4% of schools in the country, as determined by the Schoolsmith Score.
If you’re putting together a shortlist of schools, this brief note might help you, because it actually compares the schools, just like you do. And there are links throughout to explainer articles (they open new tabs). There is also a partner review for state primaries in the same Coulsdon and Purley area. And that can be found here.
The schools offer some degree of choice, which I’ll expand on below. But, to cut to the chase, the highest scoring Purley prep is Cumnor House Boys. It ranks among the top 200 prep schools in the UK. Along with the girls’ school, it is the most expensive in the area. The lowest fees are at Laleham Lea School. which is also the best value for money. Do you get what you pay for? It depends on what you want, and what’s important to you. I’ve got some quizzes to help you with that. Otherwise, dear reader, read on.
Age range, gender mix, and faith
Many parents don’t get beyond the obvious differences between schools. These are the structural differences such as age range, gender, faith, all-through or not. You may have a preference one way or another, but these aren’t indicators of a better education.
First of all, there’s gender mix. Purley has two single-sex prep schools, that share some facilities, and both part of the Cognita group of schools. Laleham Lea School and St David’s School are mixed schools with an approximate 50%/50% boy to girl ratio.
As for age range;
- Cumnor House School for Boys; 4 to 13,
- St David’s School; 3 to 11,
- Laleham Lea School; 3 to 11,
- Cumnor House School for Girls; 4 to 11.
The Cumnor House Schools share two mixed nurseries, on, or close to the boys’ and girls’ schools sites for children aged 2 to 4. Which means that all four schools have nursery or pre-school classes. Cumnor House Boys also offers boys the chance to stay beyond age 11 for Common Entrance exams to independent day and boarding schools.
In addition, each of the schools offer wraparound childcare from 7.30/8.10am to 5.30/6.30pm.
As for faith, all four prep schools welcome pupils of all faiths and none. Though St David’s School has a historic affiliation to the Church of England, doctrinal teaching has a comparatively low profile. Which is also true of the two Cumnor House schools.
At Laleham Lea School, however, Catholic spirituality, practice, and morality, are more obvious. There is more Religious Education, as well as daily prayers, and regular religious assemblies and celebrations.
Standalone preps and all-through schools
All four schools are standalone prep schools. They exist to prepare pupils for entry into a range of schools at the end of Year 6 or 8. The benefit being that choice of destination is more informed in later prep years than in Nursery or Reception. Destination schools will mainly be the Wallington grammar schools, and the cluster of Croydon independent schools.
In late 2022, St David’s School became part of the Russell School Trust, the owner of Royal Russell School. If such a merger follows the path of most, we may see the St David’s curriculum adapting to facilitate entry into Royal Russell School.
Academic selection and inspections
Laleham Lea School and St David’s School are not academically selective, operating a waiting-list admissions procedure. The two Cumnor House schools are academically selective, with age-appropriate assessments as part of the admissions process.
The degree of academic selectivity can dictate the pace of lessons. It can also be a prime determinant of academic outcomes; smarter pupils get better results. But not always. Demographics and, dare I mention, teaching, influence academic outcomes too.
ISI, the independent schools’ inspector, makes the following observations about pupils’ ability profiles at these Purley prep schools. Ability profiles at Cumnor House Boys and Cumnor House Girls are ‘above average’. At Laleham Lea they are ‘broadly average’. Make of that what you will. These descriptions come from the three schools’ submissions to nationally standardised tests. The ability profiles of pupils at St David’s School are ‘above average’, but by the school’s own assessment.
The most recent ISI inspections for Cumnor House Boys, Cumnor House Girls, and Laleham Lea were ‘Excellent’ across all areas. St David’s School was ‘Excellent’ for pupils’ personal development, and ‘Good’ for pupil achievement.
Buildings and grounds
There is a consistent look and feel to the buildings and settings of these schools. You could characterise them as converted Edwardian/Victorian buildings with more recent extensions in leafy suburban residential areas.
For example, Cumnor House Boys occupies three converted houses with 10 aces of fields some 5 minutes away. Sharing those fields is Cumnor House Girls, with its school buildings based around a converted Edwardian house within the Webb Estate conservation area. Laleham Lea School occupies an Edwardian purpose-built school. And St David’s School is in a converted Edwardian house, recently extended to the rear.
Class sizes and classes per year
The size of a school can influence the ‘feel’ of a school, as well as the extensiveness and variety of facilities. Three are single form per year schools, one is two forms per year;
- 1 class per year; Cumnor House School for Girls, Laleham Lea School, St David’s School,
- 2 classes per year; Cumnor House School for Boys.
Average class sizes at Purley prep schools are 17-18 pupils at each school.
Facilities at Purley prep schools
Each of these Purley prep schools has some specialist facilities. Overall, the two Cumnor House schools have the widest variety of facilities.
Each school some onsite sports facilities. But on the whole, pupils need to go offsite to access their own or somebody else’s sports facilities. For example, Cumnor House Boys has a sports hall, swimming pool, MUGA, outdoor courts onsite. Five minutes walk away there are 10 acres of playing fields and a pavilion. Cumnor House Girls also uses the playing fields and pool. But it also has its own onsite MUGA, field and running track, grass netball/tennis courts and sports hall.
St David’s School has a hall and playgrounds onsite. A few minutes walk away it has a MUGA and an Astroturf football pitch. Though there are two large playgrounds and indoor play facilities at Laleham Lea the school depends on community facilities, and those at John Fisher School, opposite.
The multi-purpose room/hall, and maybe an art room or a music room are the baseline arts facilities for these Purley preps. The Cumnor House schools have more music practice and music tech rooms.
Academic learning facilities are similar. Each school has some combination of a library, DT room, science room, computer suite and/or wi-fi enabled laptops and tablets.
Computing and remote learning
As well as computer suites for teaching computing skills, or classroom/library devices for research and project work, there are also dedicated devices.
During the pandemic, remote teaching, assisted by technology, became a necessity. Blended learning (face to face and online) is now a reality. Not for the youngest pupils, but certainly for those in Year 3 upwards. As such, schools are starting to issue dedicated devices to their pupils. At Cumnor House Boys and Cumnor House Girls, for example, all pupils from Year 3 upwards have their own iPads or laptop. The other two schools provide pooled devices or classroom workstations on an as-needed basis.
Academic curricula
All four of the Purley independent prep schools offer curricula based on, and augmenting, the National Curriculum. At Cumnor House School for Boys the curriculum shifts in Year 6 to prepare boys for Common Entrance exams in Years 7 and 8.
A Purley prep school curriculum is broad, subject based, and quite traditional. The schools acknowledge the importance of skills development, but don’t major on it. They explore these skills through theme days and weeks, as well as humanities topics.
The curriculum at Laleham Lea School emphasises Catholic social morality. Particularly in lessons such as PSHE. RE, naturally, plays a prominent role in the curriculum as a core subject along with English and maths.
Each school introduces verbal and non-verbal reasoning from Year 3 or 5 in preparation for Year 6 11+ exams.
There are some minor variations in curricula. Laleham Lea school has some STEM projects. The Cumnor House School for Boys introduces specialist DT in Year 5. Cumnor House School for Girls has food technology.
Outdoor learning and trips
All four preps offer plenty of educational trips to support and stimulate their curricula. And there are field, cultural, adventure, sporting and musical residential trips from Year 5 at the two Cumnor House schools. Laleham Lea offers an adventure residential after exams in Year 6.
Outdoor learning, however, isn’t as prominent in Purley prep schools, as it is in some other areas.
To a greater or lesser degree, some pupils at each of these prep schools enter national academic competitions. Usually, it’s part of a ‘gifted and talented’ programme.
Foreign language teaching
Three Purley prep schools teach French from Nursery or Reception. The exception is Laleham Lea School, which teaches Spanish. Cumnor House School for Girls sometimes teaches Spanish in addition.
Variety of language teaching is not a strength of Purley prep schools.
Subject specialist teaching
Primary school teachers can, and often do, teach a wide range of subjects to their pupils. Their expertise is in teaching this age group. Prep schools make the case that subject specialists may be better for some subjects. Also, the progression from one to several teachers prepares pupils for teaching in senior schools. How much subject specialist teaching each school offers, and when they offer it, varies.
The model for the Purley prep schools is illustrated by Laleham Lea and St David’s School. They offer a similar menu of class-based teaching but with subject specialist teaching in sport, music, languages, and sometimes art and computing.
Similarly, the two Cumnor House Schools offer subject specialism in music, languages and sport throughout. From Year 3 subject specialists teach computing, art, DT and science, and in the Boys’ School, humanities. From Year 4, specialists teach most subjects at Cumnor House Boys.
Sport at Purley prep schools
It is in the provision of sports and the arts that private schools excel. In particular, time spent on sport, and lessons dedicated to music, art, drama and sometimes dance set them apart from state schools.
And these four schools are no exception. At least two PE/games sessions per week and 10% of curriculum time are dedicated to sport. They each offer between 10 and 15 different sports through the curriculum and the extra-curriculum. Cumnor House Boys offers the most sports.
Facilities, pupil numbers and specialist teaching are the key ingredients for sporting achievement at independent prep schools. These four all turn out representative teams across, at least, the major sports.
Only Cumnor House School for Boys has a track record for success in national competition. It has reached finals in national competitions for athletics, cricket, cross country, football, and swimming.
The arts at Purley prep schools
The arts in Purley prep schools are taken seriously. Perhaps local competition spurs them on. For a start, they all have curricular art lessons and extra-curricular art activities.
Even the smaller schools have a couple of choirs and an instrument ensemble or two. At St David’s School, half of all pupils learn an instrument outside curricular music and take graded exams. At the Cumnor House School it’s closer to three-quarters. Cumnor House Boys has over 10 different musical choirs and instrument ensembles.
Only Cumnor House Girls offers drama as a discrete curricular subject. The others fold it into the English or co-curriculum. But all Purley prep schools stage musical and dramatic performances and have extra-curricular English Speaking Board and/or LAMDA speech and drama exams.
Dance doesn’t feature on the curricula beyond Year 2 at any of the schools, and only then as part of the PE curriculum. But extra-curricular dance is available at Cumnor House Girls, Laleham Lea and St David’s Schools.
There is also a wide range of extra-curricular clubs at all four prep schools. There’s sport, of course. But in addition, most of the Purley prep schools offer over 10 non-sport clubs per year group, per term. Cumnor House School for Boys offers the most.
Exam results and destination schools
It’s hard to compare these four Purley prep schools on exam results since they don’t all enter the same comparable national exams.
As for destination schools, they all succeed in placing their pupils at local independent day and selective maintained schools. At Laleham Lea School there is more of an emphasis on local Catholic comprehensives such as Thomas More Catholic School and John Fisher School.
At 11+ leavers from St David’s School and the Cumnor House Schools head to a similar group of schools. Of the independents, Whitgift, Trinity, Royal Russell, Caterham, Croydon High, Sutton High and Old Palace take the majority of leavers. Up to 20% from St David’s, in particular, might head to one of the local grammar schools; especially Sutton Grammar, Wilson’s, Wallington County, and Wallington High.
Year 8 leavers from Cumnor House Boys head to a wider selection of Home Counties independent day and boarding schools.
Fees and value for money
For the 2022/23 academic year, Year 6 tuition fees at these prep schools range from £3,000 to £5,000 per term. Fees at Cumnor House Boys and Cumnor House Girls are at the top of the range. Fees at Laleham Lea School are the bottom. St David’s School charges around £4,300 per term in Year 6. The difference between the highest and lowest fees comes to £6,050 per year, excluding lunch and extras such as residential trips.
| Schoolsmith Score | Tuition Fees v National Average (Years 1-6) | Value for money (rank) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cumnor House Boys | 84 | +23% | 2 |
| Cumnor House Girls | 82 | +23% | 3 |
| Laleham Lea School | 77 | -21% | 1 |
| St David’s School | 77 | +10% | 4 |
To put these fees into perspective, total tuition fees from Year 1 through to Year 6 at the Cumnor House Schools are 23% higher than the national average. Fees at St David’s School are 10% higher, but those at Laleham Lea School are 21% lower. Fees are not as high as in some neighbouring areas.
Cumnor House School for Boys is the highest scoring Purley prep school. And there is some correlation between fees and Schoolsmith Score. The two highest scoring schools have the highest fees. And the two schools with the lowest fees have the lowest scores. That said, Laleham Lea School offers the best value for money as measured by £/Schoolsmith Score.
What accounts for this difference in fees? In general, it’s location, grounds, facilities, class sizes, staffing, and local demographics. Some of which applies here. Of course, the adage of ‘getting what you pay for’ can also be true, which I hope this note has highlighted. These are all good prep schools, providing a worthy educational experience. But when it comes down to it, what are you prepared to pay for?
See also the best independent prep schools in Epsom and Leatherhead, Caterham, Croydon, Sutton, Wimbledon
Why are these the best independent prep schools in Purley?
Schools that feature in these notes are those with the highest Schoolsmith Scores, not just in Purley, but nationwide. This is an objective score that accounts for 50 different aspects of schooling, grouped into 5 broad categories. You can read more about them from the links below, and the Schoolsmith Score here.
- their achievements; academic, sporting and artistic,
- the breadth of the education they offer,
- the quality of teaching,
- their facilities,
- their look and feel.
A quick pause for breath
By now you might be wondering what you should be thinking about when choosing a school? It happens to everyone. Why not try my 7 one minute quizzes for those starting their school search? Wood, trees, and all that…