Autumn 2026 Reception Bursaries

Afford your child an educational head start

As an alternative to an autumn 2026 state school Reception place, consider investing in your child’s future by applying for one of our Reception bursaries, valid for all three years of our Pre-Prep education (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2).

With a 2026 Reception bursary, exceptional Pre-Prep education could become affordable

In order to help some families afford a Pre-Prep education at Herne Hill School, we have made available a small number of autumn 2026 Pre-Prep bursary places.

Places are means tested and reserved for families who are demonstrably considering only state schools for autumn 2026 Reception. The granted fees remission will be valid for the duration of the child attending Herne Hill School’s Pre-Prep, i.e. up to three years (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2).

Scheme highlights

At a glance, the cornerstones of the scheme on offer are as follows:

Available to families demonstrably considering to enroll their autumn 2026 Reception child (born between 1 Sep. 2021 and 31 Aug. 2022) into a state school (or into an independent school on a bursary or scholarship basis).
The extended fee remission will range from 20% to 40%, depending on means testing and the number of applicants; it will, in principle, be valid for all three Pre-Prep years, subject to the family’s financial circumstances not changing materially.
Offers of a place and the level of fee remission extended will be subject to our standard admissions assessment of the child as well as the evaluation of the means testing submissions.
To apply, prospective parents should express their interest by contacting our Bursar Anne Thompson, who will email them an application form. This then needs to be completed and submitted with payment of a £60 (including VAT) application fee for the child to be invited for their assessment visit.

This autumn, your child will be starting the school year which has been proven to have the greatest impact on their education.

That was the conclusion by Durham University, based on extensive research they published in December 2017. Their paper, The Long-Term Impact of Effective Teaching, established that children who benefited from good quality educational provision in Reception went on to achieve better GCSE results in English and maths.

And in just over three years’ time, when your child will finish Key Stage 1 and move on to Year 3, they will have reached the natural end of Early Childhood Education (ECE). By then, all foundations for their future success, wellbeing and happiness will have been firmly laid. Although societal understanding of the transformative impact of ECE is still low, the science underpinning this is well established, driven by the rapid development in this period of the human brain.

Indeed, they will likely learn more in these three years – their first ‘proper’ school years, which add up to three seventh (or nearly half) of lives or nearly half – than in any other educational period that will follow. This is simply due to the human brain developing more rapidly and being more malleable in this period.

Importantly, the vast amounts of skills they will learn cover all domains of human development – not just reading, writing, maths and other traditional academic proficiencies, but crucially also the fundamental social, emotional and self-regulatory skills. The lasting importance of these ‘soft’ skills is becoming ever more evident, as articulated in a thought piece by our Headteacher Ngaire Telford and Director Dominik Magyar on a recent Inc. Magazine article entitled “Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the best predictor for a child’s future success”.

As a direct consequence of the lasting beneficial impact of high quality ECE, investing in ECE offers the greatest return on investment of any educational phase. Please see the related article by Ngaire Telford on the question of which educational cycle it is best to invest.

Of course, we appreciate that at even at 60-80% of our fees, sending a child to Herne Hill School still represents a very substantial expense. Nevertheless, we would advocate that if you are considering offering your child a period of private schooling at some point in their education, now, if affordable, is the best time to do it. This can then be followed by state school education, where the children with an ECE head-start often ‘sail through’, and where graduating above average often provides higher chances of admission at a top university than graduating with average grades from an independent school.

1. Expertise in Early Childhood Education

We have focused only on nothing else but ECE since our foundation in 1976, thereby acquiring extensive experience and expertise.

Our bespoke, experiential learning approach seamlessly evolves to a more structured teaching approach by Year 2 over a series of notoriously difficult transitions such as the conclusion of the Early Years Foundation Stage and progression to Key Stage 1. It is rooted in nurturing the children’s innate curiosity and maintaining their joy of learning whilst also having ambitious expectations for each child to reach their full developmental potential.

In Reception, our loving and caring staff put great emphasis on settling external joiners quickly by integrating them with our transitioning Pre-Reception children. We support them in establishing new friendships, and endeavour to form a strong class spirit rapidly, in which all children feel secure, have fun and thrive collectively.

2. Loving, caring staff in small classes with high adult:child ratios

For 2025-26, we are once again planning for three well-resourced, small Reception classes of 15-20 children, each taught by an expert teacher and dedicated qualified teaching assistant. In addition, our four specialist teachers in French, music, PE/sports and dance ensure optimal learning in these subjects, which we consider to be highly contributive to whole child development.

3. Extensive incorporation of outdoor learning into our curriculum

Outdoor experiences are proven to be highly beneficial for children’s wellbeing and provide them with an extra dimension to their learning. We are fortunate to benefit from a wonderful, vast woodland area which provides many cross-curricular outdoor learning opportunities.

4. Because our provision ends with Key Stage 1

The fact that our provision ends at the end of Key Stage 1 enables our children to become the oldest at the school. This allows them to develop their socio-emotional skills in a unique manner by honing their self-confidence, leadership abilities and social responsibility. In Year 2, the children take on a number of leadership roles such as School Councillors, Eco-warriors, Wellbeing Warriors and Arboristas. They relish their status as wise and experienced young leaders who guide their younger fellow pupils and help them flourish and develop. The act of teaching and being a role model further serves to reinforce their own personal growth.

Of course, finishing at the end of Key Stage 1 also means that we thoroughly prepare the children for moving on to their next schools in Year 3, with a special spark in their eyes and equipped with a comprehensive set of life skills and values as well as a lasting love of learning.

If you would like to apply for your child to be admitted into our autumn 2026 Reception and benefit from a fee remission at a level to be determined, please contact our Bursar Anne Thompson (phone extension 1010 or email [email protected]).

She will then email you our DocuSign application form which will need to be completed and signed by each parent/guardian who has parental responsibility for the child. For our means testing purposes, you will need to provide financial information regarding income, expenditures, assets and debts, together with documentary evidence.

For the application to be processed, a fee of £60 (including VAT) will be payable, by bank transfer, at the time of submission. This fee also covers the registration of the child, i.e. you do not need to also register. If you have registered previously, you do not need to pay the £60 application fee.

Once we have processed your application, we will invite your child to visit for our standard admissions assessment. The visit entails the children joining a play session in which we observe their social interaction, language, numeracy, physical development and concentration skills.

If you would like to find out more about our provision and life at Herne Hill School, we invite you to browse the significant information contained on our website and viewing several of the videos, which can all be found on the ‘Insights and videos’ page. We would also encourage you to visit on one of our regular tours. Please visit the ‘Tours and Open Mornings’ page to book your tour.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We are looking forward to meeting you!

Find out more about Herne Hill School

You can get a taste of our school and approach in the video below, as well as in many others available in our ‘Insights‘ section. Additionally, Open Mornings and In-Action Tours offer unique opportunities to talk to the staff and gain in-depth insights into our provision. We’d love to meet both you and your child!