St Faith's School
 | |
| Motto | In fide fiducia |
|---|---|
| Established | 1884 |
| Type | Independent preparatory school[1] |
| Headmaster | Nigel Helliwell |
| Chair of Governors | Sir A R Brenton KCMG |
| Location |
Trumpington Road Cambridge Cambridgeshire CB2 8AG England Coordinates: 52°11′18″N 0°07′23″E / 52.1883°N 0.1230°E |
| Students | c. 530 |
| Gender | co-educational |
| Ages | 4–13 |
| Houses | Bentley, Chaucer, Latham, Newton |
| Staff | 135, Teaching and Support [2] |
| Alumni | Old Fidelians |
| Website |
www |
St Faith's School is an independent preparatory day school on Trumpington Road, Cambridge, England, for boys and girls aged four to thirteen.[1] The present headmaster is Nigel Helliwell,[2] and the school has in excess of five hundred children. St Faith's is part of The Leys School and St Faith's Schools Foundation.
History
The school was founded by Ralph Shilleto Goodchild, a graduate of Christ’s College, around 1884.[3] It features under that name in Gwen Raverat's autobiographical account of her childhood, Period Piece.[4]
The Leys and St Faith's Foundation share the motto (In fide fiducia) and coat of arms.[5]
Until the 1990s, most classrooms were in converted Victorian houses. Since then, the school has built Ashburton, opened in 1999, a large red brick building. This contains the School Hall, where assemblies and plays take place, two purpose-built, fully equipped science laboratories, and other classrooms. The naming of the school's Ashburton Hall commemorates the evacuation of some of the boarders during the Second World War to the Golden Lion Hotel in Ashburton, on Dartmoor in Devon.
In June 2006, the school opened a new building for Music and Technology, named The Keynes Building in honour of old boys Maynard and Geoffrey Keynes.
In May 2011 a state of the art Sports Centre was opened by Geoffrey Windsor-Lewis, a prominent Old Fidelian.
Structure
The Pre Prep School
The Pre Prep school is for children aged 4 to 7 and is mainly based in Southfield House. Children are placed in Foundation, Year 1 or Year 2, according to their age. There is an average class size of fifteen to sixteen children in each of the classes with three classes in each year group from Foundation to Year 2. In 2012, construction of a new Foundation classroom was completed. The design of the classroom was supported by a £100,000 grant made to the school from the Technology Strategy Board as part of an innovative project involving Cambridge University and leading local building design engineers. The classroom, believed to be the first of its kind in Cambridge, is designed to a European building standard called Passivhaus, which means it will have excellent thermal performance, air-tightness and mechanical ventilation.
The Preparatory School
Years 3 and 4 are accommodated in the Newton and School House buildings, both adjacent to Newton Road. Each class has a form room where it remains for the year. There are four classrooms for each year. By this time the children have been formally introduced to a modern language, Spanish, which they continue to learn until they leave. Children are mostly taught by their class teacher, but there is subject specialist teaching in Spanish, Music, Engineering, Art, Drama, PE & Games and Computing.
Years 5 - 8 use the Firwood, Edenfield, Keynes, Leyspring and Ashburton buildings. Pupils have a tutor room which is used for registration and tutorials, but for lessons they move around to different classrooms. From Years 5 to 8, subject specialist teaching is increasingly deployed and children are grouped by ability in many subjects. Spanish is taught from the age of four and is integrated into school life with Spanish messages, displays, poems and prose widely displayed. Latin is introduced in Year 5 and French in Year 7. From Year 3 to 8 there are normally four classes in each year group.
School site
The School has a large site (9 acre site on Trumpington Road with 20 acres of playing fields a minute's walk away on Latham Road), compared to other schools for children of prep school age in and around Cambridge. Ashburton contains the School Hall, the science laboratories, and other classrooms. The school office is on the ground floor of School House. The Keynes Building contains the music department, a Computing suite and the Engineering department. The school has a significant area of grass, used mainly for recreation during break times but also for some schools sports. Most formal games are played at Latham Road, a large grass sports field shared with The Leys School and laid out as rugby, hockey or cricket pitches, depending on the term. A sports hall has been constructed on the site of the demolished old gymnasium, adjacent to Newton Road. It opened on 27 May 2011 and its opening featured a special guest, the Mayor of Cambridge.
House system
On entering the prep school, Year 3 children are placed in one of the four houses and remain in that house group throughout their time at St Faith’s. The houses are named after four roads close to the school; these roads are named after famous British people and therefore indirectly so are the houses. The house groups provide pastoral and academic supervision, gentle competition, charity fund-raising and other activities. Pupils wear ties and polo shirts of their house's colour.
| House | Named After | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| Bentley | Richard Bentley, Master of Trinity College | Dark Blue |
| Chaucer | Geoffrey Chaucer | Green |
| Latham | Rev Henry Latham | Light Blue |
| Newton | Sir Isaac Newton | Yellow |
Latham's house colour was traditionally red, but was changed to a light blue colour so it could be seen when the house colour for each student was added to the tie. The school tie traditionally consisted of red and black diagonal stripes with a thin white line below each black line.
Admission, fees and scholarships
Fees for 2016-17 are between £3,955 and £4,985 a term, depending on age.[6]
An Independent Schools Inspection of St Faith's, in June 2011, reported the following ‘St Faith’s is highly and conspicuously successful in meeting its stated aims, especially those aspiring to achieve high academic standards, and provides an inspiring education and a stimulating curriculum’. Pupils’ achievement is ‘excellent’. Teaching across the school is ‘excellent’, as is pupils’ personal development and cultural and spiritual awareness. Pupils’ social development was also judged ‘outstanding’ with the pastoral support a major strength of the school.
The school's profile from The Good School Guide is highly complimentary and speaks of 'a child-centred educational philosophy that turns out sparky individuals with high all-round expectations and skills to meet them' and that 'St Faith's does well for all but can really extend those at the top, encouraging them to achieve at a national level'.
There is an open morning in the Autumn Term. Most admissions are at the ages of 4 and 7, but entry is also possible at other ages, while places are available. For the youngest children, places are offered by The Headmaster after a visit by the parents. From Year 3 onwards, admission to the school follows an assessment and interview.<ref name=adm/
Links with other schools
As well as connections with The Leys School, there is a link with Makukhanye Primary School in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa. In 2005, before a First XV rugby tour to South Africa, St Faith's raised the funds to build a new hall for Makukhanye. Other fundraising continues for further projects there. St Faith's hosts an annual mathematics challenge for thirty-five local maintained and independent schools, and the school hall is used regularly by the Cambridge Music Service. St Faith's also hosts the IAPS national DT conference.
Awards
St Faith's is one of only 10 schools in the UK to have been awarded Associate Status by the Spanish Embassy for outstanding teaching. In December 2012 St Faith's was shortlisted for the Environmental Building Award at the 2012 Education Business Awards for their design work on their new 'eco classroom'. The school has already achieved Eco-Schools' Green Flag status. In 2014, St Faith's were awarded the, much coveted, Ashden Award for its pioneering approach to the teaching of sustainability.[7]
After St Faith's
In recent years, half or more of the Year 8 leavers have gone on to The Leys School, which reserves places for St Faith's pupils to compete for in Year 6, guaranteeing entry to The Leys in Year 9. The two schools work closely together.
Other schools to which pupils have moved in recent years include Eton College, Felsted School, Framlingham School, The Friends' School, The King's School, Ely, Oakham School, Oundle School, The Perse School, The Perse School for Girls, Rugby School, Uppingham School, St Mary's School, Cambridge, and local maintained schools and other schools in the US and continental Europe.[8] In 2014, a record twenty-eight scholarships were achieved to Senior Schools.
Old Fidelians
Former pupils are called "Old Fidelians", and there is an Old Fidelian Society which helps the school, plays the school at sports, and holds events, including an annual dinner.
Old Fidelians include John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, the economist, his brother Sir Geoffrey Keynes, surgeon, biographer and bibliographer, and Charlie Darwin, the brother of Gwen Raverat, who wrote about the school in her book Period Piece.[4] They lived at Newnham Grange, now part of Darwin College, Cambridge, and their sister Margaret Darwin married Geoffrey Keynes. So the Darwins and the Keyneses, two important Cambridge families, have close links with St Faith's.
- Dr John Saltmarsh (7 May 1908 – 25 September 1974)
- John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)
- Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887–1982)
- Professor Douglas Hartree FRS (1897–1958), Plummer Professor of Mathematical Physics, University of Cambridge[9]
- David Thouless (Born 1934), Physicist[10]
- Canon John Pearce-Higgins (1905–1985)[11]
- Professor Antony Flew (born 1923), philosopher
- Sir John Tusa (born 1936), Director of the BBC World Service
- Professor Hugh Brogan (born 1936)[12]
- Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon (born 1943), film maker and poet[13]
- Judge John Tanzer (born 1949)[14]
- Geoff Windsor-Lewis, (Wales Rugby, 1960)
- Jamie Murray, Tennis player, won the Wimbledon Doubles in 2007—the first Briton to win at Wimbledon for twenty years; elder brother of tennis player Andy Murray.[15]
- Ran Laurie (1915–98), Gold medal for the coxless pairs in the 1948 Olympics. Father of actor Hugh Laurie.
- Rob Huff (born 1979), British motor racing driver. Winner of the 2010 World Touring Car Championship. Crowned world Touring Car Champion in Macau in November 2012.
- Georgie Stoop (born 1988), British tennis player.
- Alex Goode (born 1988), Rugby player for Saracens F.C. and England.
- Guy W.H. Edwards (born 1983), Rugby player for Nomadas R.C. and Ecuador (winner 2013 CONSUR Group C competition)
References
- 1 2 St Faith's is a member of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS).
- 1 2 >"Staff". St Faith's. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
- ↑ Trumpington Local History Group (2010). "The History of St Faith's School, Trumpington". Retrieved 2014-01-25.
- 1 2 Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood by Gwen Raverat (Faber & Faber, London, 1952) ISBN 1-904555-12-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-571-06742-5 (paperback)
- ↑ Charity Commission. The Leys and St Faith's Foundation, registered charity no. 311436.
- ↑ Admissions page at stfaiths.co.uk (accessed 14 October 2016)
- ↑ at stfaiths.co.uk (accessed 14 October 2016)
- ↑ After St Faith's at stfaiths.co.uk (accessed 28 April 2014)
- ↑ HARTREE, Douglas Rayner in Who Was Who 1897-2006 online (accessed 22 October 2007)
- ↑ online (Accessed 17 October 2016)
- ↑ PEARCE-HIGGINS, Rev. Canon John Denis in Who Was Who 1897-2006 online (accessed 22 October 2007)
- ↑ BROGAN, Prof. (Denis) Hugh (Vercingetorix) in Who's Who 2007 online (accessed 22 October 2007)
- ↑ Contributors for Ascent at ascentaspirations.ca (accessed 22 October 2007)
- ↑ TANZER, John Brian Camille (His Honour Judge Tanzer) in Who's Who 2007 online (accessed 22 October 2007)
- ↑ "Jamie Murray lives in the shadow of his record-breaking kid brother Andy... but he's still his biggest fan and desperate to get a British Davis Cup triumph on their CVs". Mail Online. 10 October 2014.