School Update

After almost four years of preparation and an enormous amount of planning, September 2021 saw Charterhouse welcome girls into the Under School for the first time. This means that after fifty years of a coeducational Sixth Form, the School will have girls in every year in September 2022 – just a few months away.

New Pupils in September 2021 – our largest ever intake This year was almost certainly the year with the single largest intake of new pupils ever. 110 boys entering as Fourths were joined by nearly 60 girls, 24 girls in the Removes and more than 100 boys and girls in the Specialists. In total we had more than 300 new joiners, and, in another first for the School, more girls than boys.

And it all seemed so completely normal. Of course, for the great majority of the new Fourths who now come from mixed Prep Schools, a mixed Year 9 was nothing remarkable, and Charterhouse moved into the fully coed era without missing a beat.

However, in the background, a great deal of work had gone into being ready for the start of the year, and despite the significant impact of Covid on construction projects, a steady flow of minor miracles, ably coordinated by the Estates Department, meant that our two new Houses were looking fantastic for the start of the year. Both are new-build Houses, with Saunderites relocating to the first and our newest girls’ House, Northbrook, opening its doors for the first time in the other. These are first class new facilities, with light and airy social spaces and common rooms alongside a mixture of quads and double rooms

Northbrook and Saunderites, on a misty autumn morning...

for younger pupils, leading up to en-suite rooms for Specialists.

Other parts of the campus have also seen a lot of activity. Sutton moved into the newly refurbished building that has been vacated by Saunderites, and have firmly established themselves as a girls’ House in the centre of the School. Scholars’ Court now boasts ‘Oak’ – our new central dining space for the Old Houses and adding a lovely social space and coffee shop for staff and pupils alike outside those hours. [See the 2021 Edition of The Greyhound for more details].

After a difficult and well-documented couple of years of lockdowns and disruption, it is great to see the School back in person, and bursting with energy once again.

Science

The new Chemistry and Maths Centre opened in 2018, offering fantastic new facilities and a dramatic vista, but work has also continued on Phase 2 (summer 2021) and Phase 3 (summer 2022) of the Science developments. Most OCs will remember the old lab benches and stools, but the original Science Block, first opened in 1882 (although probably not with those benches), is much of the way through a major upgrade. The three floors of the building now house Physics and Biology – Chemistry having moved into the new Centre – and this has allowed significant refurbishment of the teaching spaces and a welcome re-flowing of some of the layout of some of the hashrooms. The work finishes this summer, and completes a very significant programme of investment in Science and Maths.

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