Neither old posh nor new money, Thomas's in south London was the surprise choice for the country's two most famous primary-school children. Jessie Hewitson meets the head teacher and asks who are more demanding – the parents or the paparazzi?
It is hard to overstate the intensity of the competition to win children a place in Britain's most desirable prep schools. Mums have brought forward their caesareans to get their progeny onto waiting lists sooner; even Madonna, it is rumoured, failed to get her preferred school while living in London.
And so when Kensington Palace announced in 2016 which school the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had chosen for their firstborn, Prince George, it came as a surprise. They had eschewed the elite prep schools of Kensington, Chelsea and Notting Hill in favour of Thomas's in Battersea: a nice, solidly academic institution, but hardly one you'd change your child's birthdate for.
Initially, it had been reported that George would go to Wetherby, in Notting Hill. Wetherby made sense. It was the school his father, Prince William, and uncle, Prince Harry, attended; the type of school many parents would give their left kidney to get their child into, if only it were that easy.
The key to Wetherby is getting your child's name on a list as soon as possible. One mum, after being in labour for 22 hours, left a message on the school's answerphone at 3am to confirm her child had been born. She also followed up with an email, just in case. If your child does get a place, they can expect invitations to birthday parties at the Dorchester. As for school trips, one family flew an entire class by private jet to a game lodge in Africa, so they could all go on safari together.
That the Cambridges didn't opt for Wetherby, or even Hill House in Chelsea, where Prince Charles went, has given the One Percent pause for thought. Dinner-party conversations in the wealthiest parts of the capital were full of speculation. The royals, who were in the unique position of choosing any school they wanted – security considerations aside – opted for one that any self-respecting tiger mother would have viewed as a back-up.
Education consultants confirm that, as a consequence of the Cambridges' decision to send George, and now Princess Charlotte, to Thomas's, the axis of desirability has shifted from the posh, old-school schools. Thomas's Battersea, where the motto is simply "Be kind", is now where everyone wants their kids to go. (The motto for Hill House is "Semper vigilans" – always vigilant – but it was caught napping in 2014 when Ofsted damned the school as "inadequate". It disputed the claims and received a "good" rating in 2018.)
And so I emailed Ben and Tobyn Thomas, the principals of the Thomas's group (there are three other schools, in Clapham, Fulham and Kensington, educating kids between the ages of 4 and 13), which was set up by their mother, Joanna, a former actress, in 1971. The brothers have been running it since she and their father retired. I wanted to learn more about the establishment that educates the country's two most famous schoolchildren.
Ben Thomas replied offering a tour of the school. I was pleasantly surprised he was so open to a visit by a journalist – more so when I realised it was scheduled for the day Charlotte was starting.
I assume it was an awkward oversight but, demonstrating his commitment to the school motto, Thomas kindly didn't drop me like a hot potato. Instead, he suggested a whistle-stop tour mid-morning, followed by a more leisurely visit to the other schools.
By the time I arrive to meet Thomas, a neat, bespectacled man in his sixties, the image of Charlotte shyly hiding behind her mother as her new teacher crouches to shake her hand, Thomas waiting beside an open door, has been published around the world.
"Already?" He responds to the news with a shake of the head. "How much interest can there be in a small child starting school?"
The answer – as he knows only too well – is a great deal. The tabloids had already identified the dress and shoes worn by Helen Haslem, the teacher who shook Charlotte's hand only 90 minutes earlier (LK Bennett and Hobbs), and drawn comparisons between her style and that of the Duchess of Cambridge. The week George started in 2017, they published the school menu; French manufacturers celebrated the "George effect" as sales of puy lentils spiked. (Another sigh from Ben Thomas.)
While Thomas's Battersea looks grand in newspaper pictures, it sits in a mixed socioeconomic area overlooking a housing estate. Behind the school gate is a friendly man who opens the door for me (a royal protection officer, perhaps?), and I am asked to put my mobile phone in a locker, so I don't snap any small royal doing their phonics.
Chance would have been a fine thing. A subtle dance ensues with Ben Thomas: I pretend not to be looking for the royal siblings, while he pretends not to be constantly steering me away from them.
There is a courtyard garden, a large dance wing, where George does his ballet, and a bright white-and-green space-age canteen where the pupils eat their puy lentils. The hallways are full of chattering children. Teachers seem in charge but not strict.
It comes across as a normal school, relative to some private institutions, which must be something to prize for a family whose life is anything but. The facilities are certainly impressive – there is a hall so grand it could easily service a provincial town – but there aren't the smoothie bars and outdoor amphitheatres you see in other, posher schools. The kids are privileged, but not obnoxious.
Thomas is getting twitchy and wraps up my visit. He explains more about the ethos of the school on the drive to its counterpart in Fulham. (He drives a Mini – the founder of Hill House used to drive a green Bentley.)
The school has a reputation for being highly academic, as do all of the top-flight prep schools. "The independent sector is predicated on children taking high-stakes exams," says Thomas. "Parents are very aware how high stakes the exams are – it's not unusual for secondary schools to have one place for every ten children applying."
He says the school's focus is to teach the other things pupils will need to lead a successful life: kindness and "soft skills".
"Employers often tell us they find it difficult to recruit people with the skills they need: people who can look you in the eye, collaborate and communicate, show creativity and critical thinking, and have resilience."
And with this in mind, he is starting to change the curriculum. "I want to encourage children to find out the answers themselves, to figure out what questions to ask and to cope with failing. As computers are poised to take over many of our jobs, I want to equip pupils with the skills that make us uniquely human, rather than simply to be people who have spent their entire education being made to jump through hoops."
It is easy to see all this chiming with the Duchess of Cambridge, who moved to Marlborough College after being bullied at another school – a further reason she may have been less interested in sending George and Charlotte to the type of place that made her miserable. In 2017, during a visit to another school to launch Children's Mental Health Week, she said that teaching her children the importance of honesty, respect and kindness was just as important as academic or sporting success.
Private schools are not always entirely truthful about their focus. They claim to offer high-quality pastoral care, yet either don't do this in reality or fail to address the pressures that leave so many pupils needing mental health support. Parents, meanwhile, if they are truly honest, are often interested in choosing a school that will get their child into Eton, and don't think too hard about what this entails.
It is a tension Thomas addresses in an article he wrote for the book The State of Independence: Key Challenges Facing Private Schools Today. It's a brave work, because it is critical of the parents who send their children to his school. He views them as well-meaning people who want the best for their offspring, but thinks they have lost sight of what happiness is and what childhood should be.
He writes about the "significant challenge" of parental demands: "With school fees up by nearly 100 per cent since 2003, parents' expectations are, not unreasonably, sky-high. The days of the laid-back, hands-off, middle-class parents (if they ever existed) are long gone … 'I pay therefore I expect' has become a mantra."
These parents often value exam practice to get their kids into a top-flight secondary school, where there is intense competition for places, over art, drama, sport and climbing trees, he says. Exam factories, in short, are creating "overanxious, overprepared young robots".
He suggests schools don't want to put young children under such intense academic pressure, but feel forced to. If the prep schools don't maintain a good record of preparing pupils to pass the right exams, they won't be popular for long.
Thomas sets himself as the defender of childhood, which would be less jarring if it weren't for the fact that his schools test three-year-olds for places. Even Wetherby doesn't do that (hence the rush to get a child on a waiting list the moment the contractions have stopped).
How is it possible to test a three-year-old? My son has just turned four and still eats soil, given half a chance. Thomas looks pained. "It's play-based and age-appropriate," he says. And what are they looking for? "The children that are prepared to have a go. It's the best answer I've found so far to that question."
A journalist once called to ask his views on three-year-olds being tutored to get into schools such as Thomas's. Was he OK with this? No, he was not.
"I said that if we are tutoring three-year-olds then we've completely lost the plot. I felt that parents have lost all sight of what it is to be educated." The media leapt on it. He was interviewed on Today and described tutoring at such a young age as a "hideous concept", for which he was applauded.
Emboldened by this success, he was later asked for his views on girls' friendships, an encounter that ended with what Thomas describes as "best friendgate".
The journalist said a parent of a pupil at one of his schools had been told her daughter was not to have best friends. "I replied, discussing the sometimes complicated nature of female friendships. The headline duly screamed: 'Head Teacher Bans Best Friends'. Within 30 minutes of the phone call, journalists were hanging outside the school gates interviewing parents. Nick Ferrari [the radio interviewer] described me as a rat."
It was a bruising encounter and, for the record, Thomas confirms that best friends are not banned in his school. "I would never seek to legislate on children's friendships," he says.
The parents I spoke to at the school had no complaints. They say Thomas's, where the fees range from £5,145 to £7,262 ($10,100 to $14,200) per term, really does look after its pupils' welfare and helps turn out kind, considerate children.
Their view of the other parents, though, is more complex. It left me with the impression that if you aren't earning the equivalent of a small country's GDP, you may well feel outgunned financially. Thomas's parents drink Veuve Clicquot in each other's houses when they get together. Skiing in February is a given. Teachers are invited to go to the Caribbean with families to tutor the kids.
Some women quit prestigious, lucrative jobs to throw themselves into being full-time mums, and bring the same professionalism that helped them succeed at work to the task of being a parent. They write the perfect class rep email each week, and are quick to call out those who don't.
While it is undoubtedly a privileged landscape, however, other schools experience far greater wealth. Newton Prep, also in Battersea, has security people waiting outside the gates to protect the children of Russian oligarchs on their walk from school premises to bulletproof Lexuses.
At Thomas's Battersea, there is concern the arrival of the royals will mean the reason some of them chose it – like the Duchess of Cambridge, for its relative "normalness" – will change. Parents worry the make-up of the school will be altered with the arrival of the rest of the One Percent.
In recent years, demand for places has been building. The year before George started, Ben Thomas took the decision to stop registrations for three years. From September 1, 2020, parents will be able to register online, but their child has to be one year old. It is likely to become the tiger parents' equivalent of the rush to get Glastonbury tickets.
"We may have 180 people registering for places at Battersea over 3 or 4 minutes, which will crash our systems," says Thomas. He adds that they close the list after three times the number of people have registered for the sixty places they offer in a year.
"I decided we had to change things after a heavily pregnant woman had an argument with our office, pleading to get her unborn child an early place on the list. We decided it was mad to add to the anxiety of new parents."
And all this was before George, let alone Charlotte, started. The one-year-old rule "is either going to be a genius idea or a disaster", Thomas says, climbing back into his Mini. "And I'm hoping it's genius."
Written by: Jessie Hewitson
© The Times of London