WHAT? WHERE?

A small co-ed Prep and Nursery across three sites in Notting Hill for 3-11 year olds, Bassett House School is known as a nurturing, non-selective environment but with impressive results. As well as an enviable array of destination schools (of which more later), the scholarship rate is a jaw-dropping 50-70% among its Year 6 leavers. With staff ratios of 1-5 and only 151 pupils, your child will get a lot of attention here. It’s a family environment where you’re likely to have between 12 and 20 other children in your year – the teachers don’t just know your name, but your pet’s name too.

The main building is a former private home which belonged to the family that founded the school in 1947, and in fact science is now taught in what was their kitchen. The smart red brick Victorian terrace has been modernised now though, with folding dividers across rooms, clever space saving storage, interactive white boards and all you’d expect from a modern classroom, but with period charm, like the large sash windows and original fireplaces on every floor.

FACILITIES

/GENERAL

This main building is host to Years 2-6 with one or two form rooms per year. As well as the science room there’s a cosy library in the basement with a mellow vibe, fairy lights and comfy rugs. The basement is also where instrumental 1:1 music lessons take place. The years rotate turns on going to a nearby playground for break, to their own gated garden, or there’s the school’s own outside play area. It’s modest – the size of a double London terrace garden with a modern aerial climbing frame and benches.

It was recently redesigned by the school’s student-led Citizenship & Eco Council and funded by the school’s owners, Duke’s Education, which also financed the new loos following petitions from the students to get them refurbished (it also bankrolled the exceptionally snazzy new Early Years building). Most lessons take place in the main building for Years 2-6, with specialist teachers coming to their classrooms for subjects like maths, history and languages, but the children move around for art, drama, science, computing, music, sport and so on. This is key to the school as the classrooms are light and airy but not huge, and can feel pretty cosy with as many as four adults in them as well as the kids.

The second building is the two-storey hall one road over next to the local church. The hall is used for lunch, indoor PE and gymnastics and drama productions on its stage. Alongside it is the kitchen and art studio and above are the Year 1 classrooms – light bright spaces with play corners and themed areas.

Outdoor space is limited here (welcome to London) but includes a community garden by the hall where there’s logs to climb on, a sand pit, mud kitchen and veg and flower patches with compost heaps and water butts. The kids also explore a wild patch where they learn about rewilding and gather for creative writing in the summer.

/SPORT

Plenty of sport on offer, with Bassett House making use of the Westway Sports & Fitness Centre and Kensington Memorial Park, both walking distance away. This may be an inner city school, but with walking between sites and to play sport, there’s no worries about your child not getting out in the open every day.

Sports played in the autumn and winter include netball, football, hockey, and rugby, while in the summer is cricket, athletics and tennis. All sport is co-ed: Head of Sports, Russell, is passionate that sport not be gendered, and the girls and boys at Bassett learn there are no gender boundaries to sport. Meanwhile indoors, the kids can try gymnastics and dodgeball as well as ballet, yoga and dance in the dedicated Performing Arts studio in the basement of Bassett Bear House. Swimming takes place weekly at the Westway. Bassett House School punches well above its weight in sporting success – a handful of pupils have been signed by Arsenal and Queens Park Rangers over the years and it has four boys in the Queens Park Rangers Development Squad, in addition to unbeaten seasons for some of its netball, tag rugby and cricket squads. Then there’s the horse riding – see Quirks, below!

/CREATIVE ARTS

The art studio at St Helen’s hall is a bright and well equipped space that’s compact, but plenty big enough for a class of 18. It’s used for art, DT, textiles and more, and has artist Rania Hedia El Agami at the helm. She puts the students to ambitious collaborative and individual projects that range from metalwork to 3D printing and has them keep their work in a portfolio as if they’re budding A-Level artists.

Drama is taught from nursery and takes place in the Performing Arts Studio. There are plenty of opportunities to shine – the smaller class sizes mean that nobody hides in the wings! There’s countless assemblies put on throughout the year, orchestrated by the students with only a light touch from the teachers, as well as meatier all singing and dancing stage productions co-directed by the Arts Department and a drama club for the budding actors in the school.

The music side is strong, with a guitar ensemble, three choirs, a girl’s chorale and the boys acapella, the Bassettones, who wear bow ties for their performances and add in moves to the music. Visiting music teachers offer lessons in school which has a whopping 77% uptake.

ACADEMICS

I peeked into nearly every classroom on my tour and the atmosphere was always learned and focused. With a 1-5 ratio there’s an awful lot of adult support here, though the school preaches a ‘self rescue’ approach where children are encouraged to ‘try five before me’, which includes tactics like looking back at their exercise books or asking a friend before going to a teacher.

Other principles that ring strong here include encouraging pupils from Nursery-and-up to act out words and grammar in story mapping before committing it to paper. I saw it in action and watched a class of Year 2 children act out an entire story with hand gestures – commas, capitals and all.

The teaching styles here are cherry picked from the latest ideas in pedagogy and every teacher I spoke to was super engaged with the idea of how to stretch, support and develop kids. For all its buzz words and reinvention of the wheel, what they’re doing here is clearly working with a dynamic vibe among the teaching staff and kids fulfilling their potential.

In recent years, all of Bassett’s Year 6 children have got into their chosen senior schools, which include illustrious London names such as Godolphin & Latymer, Latymer Upper, The Emmanuel, Wetherby, St Pauls, Queens College and City of London. Scholarships range from academic and all-rounder to music and sport. The school doesn’t test the kids at age 3 because it’s non-selective, but believes it has a formidable value-add and it’s CAT score (the nationwide primary school cognitive ability test that looks at verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, spatial ability and quantitative reasoning) for Year 4 is 130 – to give you context, 112+ is deemed above average and the range is 69-141.

There’s no streaming here – but differentiation is done through adjustments to the challenges set and support from teaching staff. All subjects are taught from Nursery including Spanish, French and coding for the littlies. STEAM comes in through art, science and coding lessons but is also brought into every lesson, with VR headsets used to teach about ancient Egypt and offer a walk-through of a pyramid, or a drone used to learn about mapping.

SEND

There are a handful of kids across the school with dyslexia, autism, ADHD, both already diagnosed and with traits, and they’re closely monitored by the SENCO, Veronica Copeman, who works closely with the Head of Pastoral and has a chunky file on each one. There’s opportunities for one-on-one as well as support in class and the school has many tools at its disposal like wobble cushions, ear defenders and colour overlays. There’s also a morning exercise routine for all pupils centred on developing strong gross motor movement for strong learning foundations higher up the school. The kids don’t know exactly why they’re doing it but raved about doing the exercises together.

THE HEAD

Head Kelly Gray has been in post for three years and has held deputy roles at École Française de Londres Jacques Prévert in Brook Green and Rutherford House in Balham, a free school where she was part of the founding team. She’s bright, dynamic and verbose in her use of teaching terminology, though it’s far from tokenism. Watching Gray around the school engaging with her staff and the kids it’s clear she understands the minutiae of what’s going on under the bonnet here and is a driver of new ideas, while also being a stickler for tradition – when we entered any classroom we were greeted with a chorus of “Good morning Mrs Gray and visitor”.

She’s been behind the introduction of Spanish, horse riding and dedicated drama lessons and believes drama is important in fostering the ability in children to think on their feet – a prime skill for interview and presentation skills and vital for an ever changing world. She wants to see her Year 6’s time used productively post 11+ with lessons given over to politics, current affairs, cultural literacy, financial literacy, employment and tax (not even kidding). She also wants to see them make the most of being in a city and gets the kids regularly out on trips. As well as day visits to sights like the National Gallery, there’s a three-night trip in Year 3 and week-long excursions to Isle of Wight and Normandy in the upper years.

LITTLIES

The most recent addition to the school was last year’s unveiling of the Early Years building, Bassett Bear House, for nursery from age 3 (and toilet trained) plus reception. Designed by the supercool House of Kin, it’s all muted tones and textures and the most Scandi chic indoor climbing area I’ve seen. It’s part of a run of terraced shops and cafés, and from the outside, with the window adorned with collages and textiles, it looks like a modern art gallery.

Through Crittal doors – well, this is Notting Hill – is the outside space with sandpit, water play, plants and a covered area for role play and story time. They’re big on Montessori here, with the sink, fruit cutting board (but not knives!) and shelves of interactive toys and books all within reach to foster independence. Even the loos are gorgeous with fish-scale design on the floor and tonal flecked walls.

QUIRKS

There are plenty! The latest, and most unusual addition to the co-curricular programme, is horse riding (for which Bassett House won a Highly Commended prize in the Muddy Stilettos Best Schools Awards). Every child has half a term of riding each year, with groups walked a few minutes round the corner to the Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre. Riding, as well as grooming and cleaning out stables is one of the skills that pupils acquire towards attaining their Bassetts Baccalaureate. It’s about broadening your academic horizons and developing strong learning dispositions, but also recognises social responsibility, personal skills and is centred on the school’s values of courage, compassion and commitment, culminating in a certificate at the end of Year 6.

Lots of schools claim to be like a big family but here it’s clearly very much the case, with staff getting to know the children really well. They even perform a panto for them each Christmas, which is a massive hit with the kids. There’s also the Hot Chocolate Thursdays, when Kelly, the head, randomly selects a child from each year group to join her in her office for hot chocolate and biscuits.

PASTORAL CARE

Pastoral care is a massive strength here. The kids I spoke to described it as being like a second family and said they felt safe. They start the day by placing their name marker in an ’emotion cup’ to signal how they’re feeling to the teacher.

The pastoral prefect was an earnest and mature young student who clearly took her role seriously and had the responsibility of handing out an award for kindness or contrition each week. Every Friday morning, a group of kids join the award winning Head of Pastoral Care, Russell Friese, for a play therapy/team building session to help them work through any social or emotional challenges they might be facing. The school has as many as three dogs, the ‘Bassett Hounds’, who drop by on various days to assist the SENCO and join children for reading time.

ISI REPORT

The most recent report is from 2019, where the school was found to be Excellent across the board.

WRAPAROUND CARE

Most Bassett families have both parents working so the care needs to be strong. It runs 7.45am-6pm, and costs £7 for mornings and £18 for evenings, which would really rack up if you needed it every day. The clubs are varied, with 70+ to choose from across the year including beatboxing, Dungeons & Dragons, martial arts, yoga, radio station, and sugar paste (cake decorating to to you and me).

MOBILE PHONE POLICY

Pupils aren’t allowed to bring mobile phones to school. Regarding other tech, the school has tablets, laptops, and VR headsets. All stay at school rather than going home with kids, and the aim is to make sure they’re acquainted with all of the various operating systems from PC to Apple, Surface and Chrome.

FEES

Nursery ranges from £3,606 for five mornings to £7,212 per term for five full days. This rises to £7,511 per term from Year 3. Only one bursary student attends the school at any time so snaffling that isn’t easy.

WORD ON THE GROUND

Parents are down to earth, usually both in full-time work and wouldn’t dream of regarding themselves as the ‘Notting Hill set’, but they do of course expect outcomes for their hard-earned cash. And the school delivers, with a varied cohort in terms of ability, background and nationality all emerging with top school offers and a mature grasp of life skills.

THE MUDDY VERDICT

Good for: The pastoral and SEN care here is exceptional so kids who might be daunted by a larger Prep or benefit from learning somewhere where they are really known and nurtured will thrive here. That said, it’s a busy day and demands enthusiasm and participation so they need to be up to that right from nursery age.

Not for: Kids who need lots of space to let off steam or like to push the boundaries may feel too mothered here, with very little going unseen, from table manners to drifting off at the back. It’s also a busy and long day with support expected from home to engage with the whole school experience from clubs to the baccalaureate.

Bassett House School, 60 Bassett Road, London W10 6JP. Tel: 020 8969 0313 . info@bassetths.org.uk.

Bassett House School, Notting Hill

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