Repton hailed as the UK’s ‘Happiest Boarding School’

Repton has been crowned the UK’s Happiest Boarding School in the 2022 Muddy Stilettos Best Schools Awards.

Muddy Stilettos’ Schools Guide is a unique, independent, honest online resource for parents seeking insight into the UK’s competitive independent school sector. The site’s founder, Hero Brown, visited Repton in February 2022 saying “I really enjoyed looking around Repton and feeling the passion and care. Everyone is lovely.” The site’s review describes Repton as: ‘One of the UK’s oldest schools, Repton in Derbyshire holds a deserved reputation for sporting brilliance, mind-boggling facilities –and a refreshing lack of pretension.’

Repton’s nomination included quotes from current and past pupils, including full boarder Hattie, who said: “I think my favourite part (of a Repton education) is the sense of community we have, as a school, but also as a house. My house has become my second home and being a border has enabled me to make strong friendships that I know will last way beyond my Repton career.”

Headmaster, Mark Semmence, commented: “Winning awards validates of all the work our dedicated staff put into to bringing our pupils a world-class education. However, this award feels particularly special as any educator’s over-arching aim should be to ensure that pupils are happy. We know that young people who are happy perform better and those who perform better are happy. This is borne out in our exam results as well as by our pupils’ performance on the sports pitches, in the theatre, the music school and in Repton’s superb House spirit. By interweaving traditional care with scientific data driven tracking we have developed highly tuned pastoral care provision that works for every child.”

Muddy Stilettos’ founder, Hero Brown, commented: “With over 400 schools entering the first year of the Awards the standard has been incredibly high. After three rounds of painstaking judging, Repton was unanimously chosen as the winner of the Happiest Boarding School award, an accolade that’s richly deserved for this excellent school.”

Repton’s House system provides a strong sense of belonging. Housemasters and Housemistresses, Tutors, Matrons and their friends and peers provide a nurturing and familiar base, giving Reptonians the confidence to try new endeavours, succeed academically and make the most of every opportunity provided by a Repton education. A rich extra-curricular programme that includes day pupils as well as boarders ensures that weekends are busy and inspiring times. Seventy per cent of Reptonians board, but every pupil belongs to an integrated House meaning that all pupils feel the benefit of the School’s strong community.

The judging panel, Chaired by Muddy Stilettos founder, Hero Brown, rank amongst the most highly-respected senior educators in the UK and included: Patrick Derham OBE, former Headmaster of Westminster School, Professor Dr Ger Graus, the Global Director of Education Kidzania, Emma Goldsmith, Head of Dragon School in Oxford and Tove Okunniwa MBE, former CEO of London Sport.

Repton also received a Highly Commended Award for the Most Inventive Sports Programme. In 2021 Repton was awarded the Education Business Award for Remote Learning, alongside being shortlisted for two Times Education Supplement Awards.

CWA Dagger shortlisted Caroline England (A’79) is known as the ‘Duchess of dark domestic noir’.

Caroline also pens gothic-tinged psychological thrillers as CE Rose.

Both CE and Caroline write multi-layered, dark and edgy ‘domestic suspense’ stories that delve into complicated relationships, secrets and the moral grey area.

Drawing on her days as a divorce and professional indemnity lawyer, she loves to create ordinary, relatable characters who get caught up in extraordinary situations, pressures, dilemmas or crime. She admits to a slight obsession with the human psyche, what goes on behind closed doors and beneath people’s façades. She also enjoys performing a literary sleight of hand in her novels and hopefully surprising her readers!

To the unsuspecting eye Dee Stephens has a perfect life as the vicar’s wife: a devoted marriage to her charismatic husband Reverend Vincent, an adoring congregation and a beautiful daughter.

But beneath the surface, Dee is suffocating. Vincent is in control, and he knows her every sin. Desperate, Dee escapes into a heady affair with Cal, an old schoolmate.

But is Cal the saviour she thinks he is? What dark secrets does he harbour? And to what lengths will Vincent go to when he uncovers the truth?

Darkness lies at the heart of this family…

‘Layers of secrets are gradually peeled back in this brilliantly absorbing tale.’ Marion Todd, author of Old Bones Lie

In 1959 Milly starts her new life as a housemaid at Rutherford House, working for the aristocratic Rutherford-Percy clan. Entranced by her new mistress, Vivienne, she becomes deeply embroiled in the household and the keeper of dark secrets the family conceals beneath the mansion’s grand exterior.

In the present day Christie is working as a psychiatric nurse when she meets troubled patient Lillian Percy, Vivienne’s granddaughter and heiress to Rutherford House. They soon bond over the loss of their mothers – Lillian’s died when she was a child; Christie’s mysteriously disappeared over twenty years ago – and Christie finds herself increasingly fascinated by Lillian’s family and their imposing ancestral home.

As Christie learns more about the Rutherford-Percys, she finds a shocking clue that could help her uncover what happened to her own mother. Desperate for answers, Christie puts her job, her family and even her very life on the line. But how much of the truth does she really want to know?

Guy Jones (L’78) passed away in June 2019. In his later years, and with his insight and his love of words, he turned to writing poetry in his own gifted idiosyncratic style. He often wrote under the pseudonym of “Mex”. Idiots Inc, written 15th May 2017, is profoundly relevant as to how he saw and perceived the troubles besetting the world.

Gillian Hartley (Mother)

Erratum – the Editors apologise for the typing error of the first word on line 11 of Idiots inc. in The Arch –Winter 2021. The first word should have read ‘Greed’ and not ‘Green’.

Matter we are, but matter we don’t Specs of intrusion, we will, but we won’t. The infinite of nature’s relentless path So be it, we will incur her wrath.

Needless aggrandizement for nought but self

We delude our tiny insignificant selves.

What betters the company of a friend?

Exactly, nothing, it’s the reason to the end.

So why do we enemies our neighbors

Seek to kill rather than nurture friends?

Greed and religion all succumb to power

Money is not the root, the love of power

And its mind-altering delusion of life

That is the evil which causes our strife.

Seeking control is the unnatural natural Which untempered will see us revert to natural.

Power begets ownership and greed

The sin of the world is wanting without need.

Our tenure small and full of bold

We give little but take the world.

About time our higher being came down Took us to task and made us the clown.

Our bravado is hollow and devoid of meaning

We should get on with living, not killing.

Raw and heartfelt we strive for the moment

Ultimate heartbreak is surely the prominent.

Planet decay our lasting memory

Oh I hope we die in dismay.

As river leads to ocean, so raindrop leads to heart

Flora or fauna from start to finish is just same art.

From earth to dust, birth to death, ever revolving.

We traverse the planet neither giving nor making.

The night is mine, please keep your days

The peace of solitude, without the maze

Of beings and being within the haze

I wish no harm to any, but always