Hurst Lodge School

History

Miss Dorice Stainer, of Hurst Lodge, founded the school in the aftermath of the Second World War as a course of "Dancing Classes". A sister of the film star Leslie Howard, and also of Irene Howard, the London casting director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in the 1920s Stainer had been a partner in 'The Misses Stainer and Sinclair, Dancing Teachers', of 39, Onslow Square, South Kensington, London S.W.7, and after 1928 had continued the business alone at the same address. Immediately before the War, she had been a travelling dance teacher based in Ascot, teaching classes at Camberley, Godalming, Guildford, Sunningdale, Virginia Water, and a variety of schools around England.

The actress Juliet Stevenson, a pupil of Miss Stainer's at Hurst Lodge in the 1960s, has described her as "a progressively educational woman who had been a prima ballerina and who believed the arts were fundamental to a child's education".

According to an article in The Times published in 1986, when Sarah Ferguson, future Duchess of York, was about to leave the school in 1977, she observed a tradition by diving into the swimming pool naked at midnight on the eve of her last day. The Duchess paid an official visit to her old school on 13 March 1989. In 1992, writing of Sarah Ferguson's time at Hurst Lodge, the journalist Valerie Grove called it "an expensive boarding school that turned out jolly chalet girls with lots of bounce but not too many O-levels". In that year's school performance tables, the proportion of girls sitting GCSEs who gained five passes at grades A to C was given as 50%, by comparison with 98% for Wycombe Abbey and 97% for the Dame Alice Harpur School. In 1998 only four pupils were entered for two or more A-levels, but their examination results were slightly better than the average for schools in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. In 1999, the school entered only one pupil for A-Levels, but as the result of her excellent results it appeared in the list of Top Independent Schools published in The Times on 25 November.

In October 1995 the school announced the holding of a fiftieth anniversary ball on 24 November.

In 2001 The Daily Telegraph reported that Hurst Lodge was the third most expensive prep school in Great Britain, coming just after Colet Court, the junior school of St Paul's, and the Dragon School, Oxford, but before Horris Hill, Papplewick, St John's Beaumont, Cheam and Ludgrove, all eight of which then charged more than £13,000 a year.

Present day

The school continues to occupy Hurst Lodge, a large Victorian house with a number of outbuildings set in twenty-two acres at Bagshot Road, Sunningdale, Ascot. It is currently owned by the Smit family, including Tim Smit, creator of the Eden Project, who was a director of Hurst Lodge School from 1999 to 2005.

Of 250 children at the school in 2017, just over a third are boys and the remainder girls. In the junior school the split is almost equal. A small number of pupils are weekly boarders, returning home at weekends. The Sixth Form is small, with nine girls and 3 boys., with most of them receiving individual tuition from subject specialists. Biology and Chemistry are the most popular A level subjects but as well as taking A-levels, sixth formers can follow Business and Technology Education Council diploma courses in performing arts. In 2016 the school reported a 100% A-Level pass rate.

Continuing the school's long tradition of teaching the performing arts, all pupils have the option to take dance classes. For good work and successes individuals receive stars or credits for their house, while poor work and misconduct results in negative D-Marks, meaning that points are lost. The best house is awarded the cup in July, at the end of the academic year.

In partnership with the Eden Project, the school operates a carbon-reduction programme and also grows its own vegetables.

Headmistresses

Notable former pupils