Dauntsey's School - reviewed by The Good Schools Guide"Excellent academic results and steadily improving facilities. Now on the map big-time and worrying the heebie-jeebies out of bigger name schools in the area. Friendly, down to earth, independent education with absolutely not snobbishness or arrogance. Fab. "
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Head
Since 1997, Mr Stewart Roberts MA (fifties). Educated at Birkenhead School and St Peter’s, Oxford, where he read physics. Previously housemaster at Shrewsbury School and the founding head of Chand Bagh School, Lahore, Pakistan. Briefly second master before being offered headship. A very funny, witty man (‘though he can be very serious,’ say parents) and a super, high power head. Despite having been boss for ten years, remarkably open to new ideas. Married to Anna who teaches piano at the school, with a son and daughter, both at Dauntsey’s.
Academic Matters
Without anyone quite knowing what or where the school is, Dauntsey’s has shinnied up the league tables from mid-ranking, co-ed, mystery school to First Division heavy-weight contender. Its handsome exam results bar-charts show an unrelenting curve onward and upward as the school seems to ratchet up what little room for improvement remains. A level results especially outstanding in English and maths, less so in the sciences. Art and theatre studies results a sea of As and deserve special mention. Music technology, a niche subject, also super dooper. GCSEs very good across the board; dual and single sciences offered.
Class size around 16 in GCSE years. Three full-time staff provide thoughtful SEN help. Greatest call is for help with mild dyslexia and as a safety net for the organisationally challenged but, ‘if pupils pass the entrance exam,’ says the head, ‘it is rare for us to say we can’t cope with their special needs.’ Fully wheelchair accessible. 30 foreign pupils receive EFL tuition. Computers and interactive whiteboards everywhere, has virtually reached IT saturation point.
Games, Options, the Arts
Sport three times a week. Boys’ hockey and rugby faring well with some delicious victories against arch-rivals, Marlborough and Bishop Wordsworth.
Girls’ hockey and netball also thriving.
Vigorous cricket, the first XI cricket team recently toured Grenada, although purists may disapprove of the school’s active involvement on the Twenty20 front.
Football played as a mainstream game alongside hockey. Some notable individual successes in fencing, rifle shooting, athletics. Facilities include indoor swimming pool, two handsome Astros, sports hall. Athletics track a hike away, a source of grumbles for a few. Gym a bit macho with scary weights and levers crammed into too small a space.
Music department buzzy, you can tell that attention is paid to it. Healthy numbers of pupils on instrumental teachers’ lists; plenty of ensembles and concerts. Glorious music room, once the main school hall in some bygone day, with what can only be described as a ‘cute’ pipe organ. Practice sessions timetabled for junior boarders. Art housed in spacious building with teaching, pottery and computer rooms, plus display area. Head of art keen on observational drawing. Sixth form course allows lots of room for trial and error. Pupils very proud of drama and upper sixth pupils took a play to the Edinburgh Fringe. Gloomy Memorial Hall serves as theatre (plus assembly hall, plus concert hall, plus chapel) but is made up for by ‘Annabel’s’, a truly fab, newly refurbished, drama studio. School made a big effort to expand number of clubs and activities on offer. It certainly seems to stop the boarders, rather marooned in a quiet Wiltshire backwater with only a Costcutters mini-market to pass for excitement, from becoming bored.
Distinctly outdoorsy flavour to the place. Outward bound charging about, known here as ‘strenuous pursuits’, is a big part of proceedings. The year 9 Moonrakers programme offers camp-craft, map reading, rock-climbing and shooting. D of E, Ten Tors, Brecons Challenge and the Devizes to Westminster canoe race are all popular. A group of sixth formers recently spent a month in Kenya and Tanzania doing volunteer work and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
Curiously, given that Wiltshire is a landlocked county, the school owns and maintains its own tall ship, the Jolie Brise, a gaff cutter that won the Millennium Tall Ships race and three Fastnets - if you understand any of that then this may be the school for you. All pupils have a chance to sail in her and some become seriously involved, taking part in overseas voyages.
Plenty of school trips, modern languages to Spain and France, geography to Iceland, classics to Athens, rugby to New Zealand, skiing in Italy.
Background and Atmosphere
Dauntsey’s was founded in West Lavington in 1542 on the deathbed largesse of William Dauntsey, master of the Worshipful Company of Mercers. Present school opened in 1895. Mercers’ Company still provides six governors, occasional financial help and annual knees-up of its associated schools. (Mercers’ are involved in an unlikely spread of schools, from St Paul’s School in London (both boys’ and girls’ versions) to Peter Symonds College (state sixth form) in Winchester to two new ‘city academies’ to The Royal Ballet School, who’d have thought?)
Dauntsey’s was once described to us as a sort of public school ‘lite’, and this was meant in the best possible way. If you take a very grand public school and peel away its National-Trust-property-style buildings, over-the-top acreage (much of which pupils never use), hugely expensive facilities and atmosphere of self-importance, what you are left with is Dauntsey’s, nice kids, good teachers, beautiful (enough) surroundings, fresh air, good facilities, good results. As one parent said, ‘a five star hotel it is not’. Perhaps a bit countrified for some hardened Londoners, until 1930 the school was known as Dauntsey’s Agricultural School. Buildings mainly piled up in a heap in one corner of the grounds, helps to give the campus a stimulating feel and you never have to worry about being late for the next lesson.
Super, bright and airy new library; the exposed desks/computers down the centre of the building may not be everyone’s cup of tea (where do they hide the sweet packet?) but more sheltered study space is available upstairs and fooling around can be done in the cybercafé or in the tuck shop. Lessons finish at 4pm and it is technically possible for day pupils to creep off then but most stay on for prep or take part in clubs or sports until the mass bus exodus at 5:20. Boarders have two hours of prep in the evenings, one just before and one after supper.
Pastoral Care and Discipline
‘17 Club’ is the hub of sixth form social life. We never cease to be amazed by the ingenuity boarding schools have shown in the face of the new licensing laws. Dauntsey’s solution - to give sixth formers two free drinks each week so the whole question of purchase is neatly sidestepped. These need not be alcoholic, of course. Surprisingly uncompromising on drug use - immediately out. Listening service (trained sixth formers) plus a school counsellor, and parents have commented that pupils always seem to have a staff member they can go to if they have a problem. Girls’ uniform an attractive check skirt with blue blouse and pullover. Boys in blue shirt and grey-blue jacket. No uniform in sixth form but smart dress required (suits or chinos, tie and jacket for boys and at least a nod towards suitishness for girls, though there is room for quibbling here). Boarding houses all better than good, with new girls’ house, Evans, particularly elegant (all rooms en suite). Sixth form girls all have own rooms. Upper sixth boys also have own spaces, though share in lower sixth. World-class san. Lovely lower school boarding house, The Manor, for 11-14 year olds in separate 100 acre site.
Pupils and Parents
Key to the school. Not obsessed about social status or they would not have chosen this school. ‘Pupils come into the school unsnobby and uncliquey and that is they way they are when they leave,’ says the head. Boys and girls mostly wholesome-looking but not smart. Very little make-up. From Wiltshire and seven surrounding counties.
Has particularly stepped in to fill the gap for boys’ independent education in Salisbury. Big clumps also from Swindon (especially), and Marlborough, Calne, Westbury. A wide range of activities on offer for boarders on Sundays - over half now stay for weekends. Some 20 pupils from British ex-pat families, mainly Services, and 50 overseas, mostly from Hong Kong, also Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Spain and US. Old Dauntseians include “Thomas the Tank Engine” creator Reverend Awdry, anthropologist Desmond Morris, TV theme writer Simon May (“Eastenders”!) and Sydney Olympic rowing silver medallists Miriam and Guin Batten.
Entrance
Main feeders Chafyn Grove, Norman Court, The Mill, St Francis’s (Pewsey) and St Margaret’s (Calne), plus many local state primaries. Largest entry is at 11+ (mainly, but not entirely, from state schools) via school’s own exam(maths, English, VR and optional music and art interviews). Places offered ten days later. Choosier than you would expect - head says school’s selectivity is similar to the Salisbury grammars, which is not a walk in the park. Everyone who sits the exam is automatically considered for a scholarship and around 15 pupils out of 80 admitted will receive an award.
At 13+ school is looking to take around 30 boarders (mainly) via CE or scholarship exams; day places at 13+ are limited and do not qualify for scholarships. Dauntsey’s does not take pupils into year 10. Some 30 pupils join the school for sixth form, many from abroad - a minimum of three As and three Bs at GCSE is required from UK pupils, plus interview.
Exit
Almost everyone to university, with Nottingham, Cardiff, Durham, Exeter popular. Few to London. A few to Oxbridge each year - sometimes more than a few. About 10 pupils leave after GCSEs.
Money Matters
Much more aware than many schools that parents’ resources are not infinite. The vibe from parents is that day fees here particularly good value for money. A few nice touches: music lessons cost the full whack for first instrument but less for second and subsequent ones; a 10 per cent reduction for siblings who are boarding at the same time (this is a very sibling-friendly school). Mercers’ connection a help when it comes to funding building projects but not bottomless pit. Currently fundraising for new mega-project - a performing arts centre.