Sutton Valence School

Horrible school with a dreadful environment. It’s an exams factory essentially: the school finds technicalities to try and boost kids grades but will not actually teach kids to a proper standard. The dominant culture is a weird and actually quite pathetic ‘too cool for school’ type thing which obviously conflicts with how SVS tries to present itself. You would be far better off sending your children to another private school in the area or a local state school. Unless your kids enjoy an anti-learning, rough, entitled spoiled rich-kid culture like the one that is fostered by the school (intentionally or not). And, despite being ridiculously expensive in the attempt to look “exclusive” or whatever, the school is actually quite rough. A lot of drugs and conduct problems amongst students. Only positive thing I can say about it is that some of the teachers were quite good and there were many decent people overall but the mental toll that I and many others I know were subjected to in this environment is extremely heavy, even after having left for several years now. I had to go to rehab and therapy as a result of this shitty environment, which has left an impact even to this day.

I suspect SVS will, if they see this review, try and get it taken down as they are extremely sensitive about preserving the false image that they try to project. Note that everything I say is either an opinion or anecdotal and any attempts to argue for defamation will fail on this basis. There is a lot more I would like to say about this dreadful school but I could go on for hours and hours.

Of course a lot of the issues with this school are quite common and found to SOME degree in every school across the UK, but SV is particularly bad in this respect given that it costs £26,000 a year, rising to £40,000 for full time boarders. You'd expect this to be a top private school which really supports students but that's certainly not the case. From speaking to other people and getting a general sense of what typical UK schools are like, I can say with a lot of certainty that Sutton Valence is particularly bad due to the culture it has (entitled rich kids with a lot of genuine roughness/drugginess)

In summary: Do not send your kids here. The brochures present a misleading picture. Its a total scam.

My son started at SVPS in reception class. My husband and I thought sending our son to this school would give him the best education and start to his learning journey possible.
However, our son has additional learning needs and we were told he required extra support, so started paying additional costs for 1:1 lessons that we were told were necessary and also were told he required additional assessment to diagnose his problems which cost an additional £600.
Our son appeared to become increasingly unhappy at this school and despite us spending additional funds to have his learning needs officially diagnosed, none of the teachers appeared to have any idea about our sons difficulties with his learning and received no extra support during lessons at all. The pressure applied on a daily basis was unacceptable and our son became increasingly insular and solitary and so unhappy. None of this was communicated to us or even noticed by the staff at this school. When I questioned this I was told he required further additional support which would obviously incur an additional cost.
I grew increasingly concerned about my child’s well being and finally discovered that he was being bullied. The bullying had been occurring over a long period of time, which was not noticed or dealt with by the school! Even more concerning was that he was also being bullied by members of the sports team staff, which included verbal and also physical abuse!
This school promotes the fact that they treat children as individuals and nurture each child through their individual learning journey. This is not the case at all, and it became very evident that children with additional learning needs were not treated as individuals at all, and extra needs not taken into account at all. The pressure applied was excessive, especially for an academically struggling child. The later years of prep school were very much focussed on achievement and results according to what the school expected, rather than what was achievable for each individual child.
I’m writing this review because I’m utterly appalled and so upset that we trusted this independent school with our child’s education and well being, and feel he has been failed in every way!
We immediately removed him from this school due to the serious concerns with his happiness and mental health.
We have since enrolled him into a local state school and thankfully our son is recovering and is now becoming the happy, fun-loving child that he was previously.
Also, I am utterly appalled that despite my requests, and his new school requests, no information has been provided to his new school regarding achievements or learning needs, to assist progression going forward! Which ultimately proves to me that there is no care or concern genuinely for the children being taught at this school or their learning journey going forward!
Shocking at every level!

A great school on paper, supposedly lots of opportunities, I have no frame of reference for this but I’d say it was average. Very sports orientated which isn’t ideal for someone with little interest in it. Overall it wasn’t the nicest environment for me to spend 6 days a week at. Great food, the hours and homework amount were just a little too much for me.

Absolutely amazing. I’m currently at the end of secondary school but I miss this school every single day. It made me who I am. I learnt three musical instruments, joined the orchestra, flute choir and wind band. I used to attend art club every Tuesday and cookery club every Friday. During my time I had also attended, Jewellery making club, cake decorating club, Christmas reef making club, cookery club, judo, croquet club (my absolute favourite) and many many more.

We played sports all year round, starting with hockey fo girls and football for boys, then leading on to netball for girls and hockey/rugby for boys and finally rounders/kwik cricket for girls and cricket for boys. I was in the ‘A’ team for every sport and we had a sports match almost every week with about tournaments every term. In year six a team play an IAPS tournament at the end of each term.

Not to mention to food was delicious. I remember my friends and I looking at the menus every week and being excited over our favourite meals. It was always the pasta or the chicken tikka!

I started in year 3 not knowing anyone but being in all these clubs and sports teams lead me to make some amazing friends. I miss every single moment I had at that school and I wish that everyone could share the same experiences I did.