Woldingham School A GSG School

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What The Good Schools Guide says

Interim head

Since September 2023, Julia Harrington, previously headmistress of Queen Anne’s School, Caversham for 14 years. She has a degree in history and government and politics from the University of Exeter and trained as a history teacher after working in the TV industry. In her spare time she enjoys sea kayaking, cycling and hill walking.

From September 2024, the head will be Sue Baillie, currently head at Queen Margaret’s School for Girls, York. Sue attended school in Essex and studied history at the University of Leicester before doing her teacher training at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Prior to Queen Margaret's, she was pastoral director at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle.

Married to Ian, with a daughter who will be a pupil at Woldingham, and two dogs. She’s a keen musician and spectator of sport and when asked what she considers her greatest achievement, she said it was winning her local village baking competition.

Entrance

Usually around 75 places in year 7; 30 in year 9; 15 in year 12 – ‘some flexibility’ in numbers, school says. The 11+ applicants take ISEB and a creative writing paper, and can, if they’d like to, defer their place until year 9; 13+ applicants take online ATOM test; at 16+, a critical thinking assessment and subject-specific tests in two proposed A levels. Interviews and current school reports at every level. Places come up from time to time in year 8 or year 10. Scholarships at each main entry point.

Pupils arrive from more than 45 different schools. Biggest feeders are all in London’s Nappy Valley (Clapham/Wandsworth etc). Twenty-five per cent from overseas.

Exit

Twenty per cent leave after GCSEs, usually for delights of co-ed. The rest go on to an array of Russell Groups including UCL, Bath, Durham, Exeter. Business studies popular; smattering to art or drama schools. Three medics and one to Oxbridge in 2023, plus five to the US.

Latest results

In 2023, 66 per cent 9-7 at GCSE; 38 per cent A*/A at A level (73 per cent A*-B).

Teaching and learning

A broader range of abilities than at some, and an approach designed to ensure that all pupils will thrive. We saw teaching that was practical (year 13 focusing on exam technique in Spanish) and naturally differentiated (year 7 geographers, highlighters at the ready, revising UK cities: ‘You can use your textbook if you need to, but I would recommend trying without.’) – a supportive, uncomplicated learning environment, stimulating but not intimidating, industrious but calm. Girls set from year 7 upwards with support sets smaller.

Maths and chemistry the biggest A levels by some way. Biology, economics, English also popular. Results mixed, as you’d expect from a school that’s not even pretending to be as selective as some of its peers: lots of A*s but lots of Bs too. New sixth form centre and library opening soon, complete with mini lecture theatre, science study room, study pods, a Harkness room for discussion and ‘all the technology that they want’ – will ‘create a sixth form community in a deeper way’, by giving years 12 and 13 a shared space to hang out in.

Much activity around science and engineering: STEM Live lectures bring inspiring speakers in; STEM photography competition engages those who might have disappeared into the arts; links with Croydon Astronomical Society for star-gazers, with outings to Kenley aerodrome. In fact, school now offering astronomy GCSE off timetable. Inaugural STEM Challenge, a ‘fastest fingers’ quiz for local sixth formers hosted by Woldingham, will become an annual thing (despite Sevenoaks forcing hosts to concede victory – how rude). Double or triple science at GCSE. More than a third go on to do STEM at university, school tells us, though this of course means that almost two-thirds don’t: plenty to keep your budding biochemist busy but your budding historian, linguist or artist won’t feel like a second-class citizen.

Extension and enrichment offering being zhuzhed up and Woldingham no longer the soft option that it once was. ‘There are some very very clever girls there,’ says one mum, ‘whose parents wanted a nice, nurturing environment,’ as opposed to the well-sharpened elbows they’d have encountered elsewhere. Academic scholars follow ‘Kritikos’ programme (named after the ancient Greek concept of intellectual discernment – but you didn’t need us to tell you that), comprising mentoring, lectures, debates. Some take a mini EPQ in year 8. Sixth formers successful in national essay competitions, and one recently won the National British Brain Bee competition for senior school neuroscientists. Thinking Big talks on a Friday get girls considering life beyond the curriculum.

Departments vary in use of technology and school operates ‘bring your own’ policy for devices. Year 7s and 8s tend to bring iPads, year 9s and up a laptop. School working towards Microsoft Showcase status, but we didn’t feel that tech was as prominent as that suggests: the ring-binder seemed alive and well to us. A happy hybrid, for now.

Learning support and SEN

Around a quarter qualify for SEND support – provision is light touch, through small-group or individual lessons depending on needs. A few follow a reduced curriculum. School developing ‘more contemporary understanding’ of neurodiversity, parents told us, with an accompanying ‘explosion of monitoring’. Resources ‘fairly poor’ previously, but ‘it’s now much easier to find the support’. Just under 10 per cent of pupils have small-group EAL support to ensure that they can access the curriculum.

The arts and extracurricular

Loads of va-va-voom across the arts. Practice sessions timetabled and standards high; newly instated annual Orchestra Day saw London Mozart Players playing alongside pupils from Woldingham and local junior schools. Not just for the elite, though: school trying to bring more pupils into music. Recent initiative saw every year 7 having a go at string taster lessons; their year group choir performs in two large concerts; music lessons can be taken in pairs to bring the cost down and make it jolly. Just under 40 per cent learn an instrument.

Super auditorium with high-tech stage that can be used flexibly. Carey Mulligan and Emma Corrin both trod these boards (or these boards’ predecessors, anyway), and local primaries come in for drama festivals. Upcoming production of High School Musical involves more than 80 girls – ‘We want to be fully inclusive,’ says head of drama – and, while we’re on it, why would you bring in lads when that would take parts away from the lasses? We were amused and cheered by decisions to stage Jesus Christ Superstar (all-female, naturally) and more recently Sister Act: not shying away from a good biblical musical despite the Catholic context (Joseph next? Life of Brian? Watch this space). Full-size scenery dock made us feel like we were one of those backstage tours of the National. Healthy numbers taking drama GCSE every year and quite a few on to A level, too, which can include costume design or lighting and sound.

Brilliant new adventure and outdoor education centre puts Battersea Park to shame. Facilitates the obvious (team-building, peace-making etc) but also a product design collaboration with DT (the carabiner warmers impressed the judging panel), art department projects and more. GCSE PE students can do climbing – and a tower is arriving soon to enable more to join in. Low and high ropes, zip wire and bushcraft area getting girls out into the fresh air; snowdrops peeping through when we visited. Duke of Edinburgh training all happens on site – and why wouldn’t it, with 700 acres to yomp through?

School about to plant a vineyard, to provide an income stream for future bursaries whilst giving girls some experience with carbon offsetting and the economics of the wine trade – sign us up! New cookery school also in the pipeline, as is reinstating the Victorian kitchen garden, used in the olden days to provide for the estate. Leith’s programme popular, but no ‘nice young lady’ clichés here, thank you very much: we popped into current affairs society to find them mid-discussion (do we still trust the police force?), year 12 taking their chairing responsibilities seriously.

All these opportunities require a bit of get-up-and-go (‘Some of them do naff all,’ says one mum), but schemes like the Arts Award and Duke of Edinburgh encourage wide involvement and there’s an un-poncey feel to the extracurriculars: come along, have a go, no-one minds if you’re a beginner.

Sport

Netball and hockey in winter; cricket, tennis, athletics in summer. Courts and pitches nestled around the main school buildings though cross-country runners make good use of routes which zig-zag around the wider school grounds. Hard-ball cricket newly introduced and nets installed for training, though fixtures are still soft ball for now. Recent sports hall refurb included introduction of a bowling machine as well as spaces for squash, fitness and dance. Major sports hall development in the pipeline. Year-round tennis facilitated by dome over courts – every girl we met seemed to be dashing off to play.

‘Much, much better facilities than my son’s London school,’ says one parent, ‘and they do use the grounds.’ Elite athletes, including sports scholars, get lots of support and attention. One played U18 England touch rugby last year; another off to an Ivy League on a hockey scholarship. The rest are active, but Woldingham’s not especially sporty; sport for fun rather than the do-or-die killer instinct you might find elsewhere.

Boarders

School aims for half of students to board in some capacity; chances are your daughter will try it. ‘She started as a day girl; before we knew it, she was weekly boarding and now she stays most weekends, too.’ Around a quarter of the school are full boarders, there every weekend (no fixed exeats). A further 50 or so weekly board, spending five consecutive nights a week at school, either Sunday to Friday or Monday to Saturday – the latter handy for those involved in fixtures. More unusual is the flexi-boarding offering, a godsend to working parents or those who feel that a couple of nights away from home might be best for everyone, though one parent describes ‘constant unpacking’ (‘be prepared for a lot of confusion about whether she’s got a clean shirt or an iPad charger at school’). Girls choose which nights they want to board, up to a maximum of two per week, and book in for the term.

Biggest overseas cohort is from Hong Kong and mainland China. For full boarders, weekend activities are compulsory in years 7 and 8. Trips to Oxted – ‘or even west Croydon,’ a wide-eyed girl tells us. ‘We’re close to London but we’re safe,’ says school. Staff say they don’t necessarily know who’s a boarder and who’s not – ‘they could be from Hong Kong or Purley’ – though parents felt that friendship groups naturally form within boarders, day girls or flexis. We loved one full boarder’s account of those pesky flexis, coming in for a couple of nights a week and treating it like a sleepover, tut tut.

Boarding houses are simple but homely and tidy (sanction for a messy room is less time with your phone – ouch). Squashy sofas and Twister in the common room. Singles from year 10 up; years 12 and 13 have ensuites. Boarding organised horizontally, with year groups moving from house to house as they get older – trips and activities targeted to that age group (and no decision about which house to apply to, as you’ll get elsewhere). ‘It’s brilliant,’ says one mum, ‘because they get to know each other so well.' ‘It’s easier to stamp out any cattiness,' says another, before adding, ‘though there really isn’t much.’

Ethos and heritage

Founded in 1842 by Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, plucky French nun who founded the Society of the Sacred Heart to educate girls worldwide. Went through incarnations in Acton and Roehampton before moving to Marden Park in 1946. William Wilberforce lived here in the 1820s, though that house was damaged by fire in 1879 and replaced with a Victorian mansion built in the Tudor style (much prettier than that makes it sound). Oak panels, huge fireplaces and a magnificent staircase in the main house, which feels warm and intimate rather than big and fancy; rest of the school is a hotch-potch of attractive purpose-built buildings. Original 18th-century stables survive and have been turned into classrooms.

St Madeleine advocated for the use of ‘kind words’ in education, something we saw in abundance. The school didn’t feel as Catholic as we’d expected; we asked some girls whether Catholicism features in their day-to-day, and they looked slightly baffled by the idea that it might. Chaplain takes weekly night prayers for boarders, though, and they go to mass every Sunday. We felt a strong set of values. ‘With our love and our passion, we do the best we can for them,’ said one teacher we spoke to.

St Madeleine also keen on encouragement; praise and prizes galore for those who are good at stuff, or who are at least trying their hardest, from scholarships to Ribbons (for positions of responsibility or subject-specific prefect roles) to smiley faces to stickers. We’ve rarely seen lapels so laden with badges, and teenagers wearing them with such pride.

Families come for ‘the sense of balance, an enjoyment of the outdoors’, says the school. Recent year 8 experiment found they averaged 8,600 steps a day just walking around the site, though this appeals more to parents than pupils, who told us that school life would be improved by covered conveyor belts to zip them from lesson to lesson. Still, the summer is glorious and at least ‘they’re not bashing their way down corridors – our corridor is the pergola walk and our rush hour is a couple of horses, a cyclist and a gaggle of walkers,’ says school. ‘She’s quite a country bumpkin,’ one mum tells us of her daughter, ‘so it suits her.’

A happy muddle of alumnae. Actors Carey Mulligan, Emma Corrin and Vivian Leigh (when the school was in Roehampton); health minister Helen Whately and former MP Louise Mensch; the late Clarissa Dickson Wright, one half of the Two Fat Ladies; socialites including Lady Isabella Hervey and the late Lucy Ferry, wife of Bryan; a flock of European princesses; and the inventor of the disposable nappy, Valerie Hunter Gordon, who made her first prototypes from military parachutes in the late 1940s.

Pastoral care, inclusivity and discipline

School ‘incredibly on it’ when it comes to pastoral care, parents told us, ‘Not one of those boarding schools where you never hear from them again.’ Superlative praise for ‘fabulous’ heads of year – ‘brilliant, the school’s outstanding strength’ – who know the girls ‘extremely well’.

A tidy bunch, in their kilts and blazers; sixth formers choose their own shirt and V-neck jumper provided they’re sensible (no-one pushing the boundaries: turns out, pastels are making a comeback in this corner of the south-east). No need to rule with an iron fist here – a general sense of order and calm – though parents felt school sometimes unnecessarily strict on things like uniform and games kit.

Food is filling, fresh, tasty; there’s always a baked potato and a well-stocked salad bar if you don’t fancy the main, though our lunch companions tucked in very happily to cottage pie and crumble (as did we). Suppers more ‘treaty’ than lunches, we heard, presumably because numbers are smaller. Cooking central to boarding life, too (‘there’s just so much food!’); girls produce dishes from home with hotpots, Korean BBQs or crepes on offer, depending on whose night it is.

Pupils and parents

Lots of locals, lots of Londoners. The 7.27am from Clappy J is Woldingham’s answer to the Hogwart’s Express (sadly operated by Southern Trains rather than Dumbledore and co); rumour has it, the train people are widening the staircase on platform 13 to allow for the sea of pupils who use it every day. Twenty-five minutes later, girls alight at Woldingham’s eponymous station and jump on minibuses to the main buildings.

Feels inclusive and non-judgemental. Girls are level-headed; confident without being alpha; not too cliquey. ‘My middle daughter is quite shy, and it’s perfect.' Wallflowers will blossom.

Parents see Woldingham as a lovely school for their daughters rather than a lifestyle brand for themselves. Mix of personalities and backgrounds, lots of working mums, relatively down-to-earth: a nice low-key vibe.

Money matters

Means-tested bursaries available, with just under 10 per cent currently in receipt of financial support. ‘It’s extraordinary value for money,’ says one parent. Myriad scholarships, both academic and co-curricular, are worth up to 20 per cent off fees.

The last word

Parents thrilled to have found this small, friendly, commutable haven: ‘Her bedroom overlooks cows, not some grotty town.’ ‘Your heart-rate drops as soon as you arrive.’ A place where your daughter will be nurtured and encouraged without growing up too fast, Woldingham offers the best of an all-girls education right on the city’s doorstep. A huge thumbs up from us.

Special Education Needs

Woldingham is able to cater for students with a variety of mild specific learning needs. The Learning Enhancement department provides support to enable SEND students to reach their full potential; the department’s approach is highly collaborative, involving the student, their parents, and teachers. The needs of most SEND students are met with ‘light touch’ support, provided mainly through the high quality teaching, dedication and commitment of staff and delivered daily in the classroom. Those students needing additional support receive targeted individual or small group intervention by highly specialist staff.

Who came from where