Issue 224 Living Well

Littlegarth – the ideal independent primary school experience

Littlegarth is a non-selective independent preparatory school for children between the ages of 2½ and 11 situated in the beautiful Stour Valley overlooking the village of Nayland.

Littlegarth prides itself on preparing children thoroughly for the rigours of entrance exams to grammar and selective independent schools whilst embracing a broad and exciting curriculum. Specialist teachers offer guidance in key subjects and the children achieve extremely high standards in a wide range of activities.

The school has been judged as ‘Outstanding’ in all four categories in the school’s latest ISI inspection and the excellent reputation the school

has for academic success was highlighted in the Standard Inspection Report which commented, “The overall achievement of the pupils is excellent, because of the exemplary attitude to learning by the pupils, who approach every task with delightful enthusiasm” and “The evidence from the inspection is that the pupils make exceptional progress when compared with those of similar above-average ability”

Littlegarth children also achieve excellent standards in music, art and drama and in recent years sports teams have achieved unbeaten seasons and have won regional and national titles in major sports. Children of all abilities acquire a passion for a wide variety of activities inside and outside the classroom and the school works hard to feed that enthusiasm to ensure that each child leaves Littlegarth a confident member of a successful team.

Littlegarth recently received a visit from The Good Schools guide and the glowing review resulting from this visit and subsequent interviews with parents can be found on the School’s website.

Despite the huge difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the children continued to receive their full curriculum and results in external exams have seen 11 children achieve places at our

local grammar schools while all children gained places at the independent schools of their choice. In the past four years, more than half of the Year 6 leavers have been awarded scholarships to senior independent schools with 80 children gaining over 120 scholarship awards. Head, Kathy Uttley is delighted with these excellent results; ‘The children and staff worked extremely hard in a very difficult year and we are very proud of the achievements of all our children. They really enjoy supporting each other and children of all ability levels feel that they are making a valuable contribution to the success of this very exciting school’.