Cumnor House School

I would strongly encourage parents to think carefully before investing in Cumnor House Boys’ School. In our experience, the school had a significant negative impact on my child’s confidence and self-esteem. We found the culture to be heavily geared towards sporty children, with some teachers appearing to have clear favourites. It often felt as though pupils were placed into categories and those who didn’t fit a particular mould received far less encouragement and support. Unfortunately, there were a couple of teachers whose approach we found especially disappointing. The biggest contrast came after my child moved to secondary school. Within his first year, he has absolutely flourished not just academically, but, more importantly, in terms of his confidence, resilience and happiness. It made us realise just how much his confidence had been eroded during his time at Cumnor House. While every child has a different experience, ours was overwhelmingly negative. I genuinely wish we had chosen a different school and feel our investment was not worthwhile. I hope other parents carefully consider whether this environment is the right fit for their child before making such a significant financial commitment.

I am an ex parent of Cumnor House, took my sons (KS1 &2) out in the summer. Now that they've happily been in their new school for a term, I needed to alert others about Cumnor House. Firstly terrible behavior problems, even tho there's only 14 in a class. The minus points aren't a deterrent so lessons were disrupted by teachers having to deal (ineffectively) constantly with bad, rude behaviour. Eldest son would come home really fed up and upset about this, especially when the perpetrators seem to get rewarded by playing in the sports A teams. CHS thrive on their sporting reputation, so they do anything to hang on to the boys who excel in sports, even if means academic boys have lessons disrupted. The next point is that a lot of the disruptive boys have needs and there's no support for them. A couple of years ago, there was an excellent SENCo who really tried to support my son with the anxiety he was feeling about going to school, but she moved to another school. Youngest son had an ok time, but was never challenged academically. He sent most of his time colouring in sheets downloaded from websites. Both my sons secured scholarships because of the work their dad and I put in, nothing to do with CHS. The headteacher was almost dismissive when my husband and I would come with our concerns, she'd smile to us but nothing changed. In short, there are many, much better schools in the area, including some of the outstanding state schools. Because of this, CHS is going down the route many small independent schools have gone - they get desperate for fees, admit any child even if they can't cope with their need, then close down. Please consider carefully before sending your son here.