From Strength to Strength

Woldingham is a girls’ senior school recognising and responding to the needs and demands of 21st-century life.

It’s been three years since Alex Hutchinson became headmistress at Woldingham and the school continues to go from strength to strength. “We’re the biggest we’ve been, with 590 pupils in September and our largest ever Year 7,” Mrs Hutchinson explains with great satisfaction. “We’ve had our best ever league tables – the 25th independent girls’ school in the country and top ten percent for value-added education.”

Woldingham is not a hothouse and it has a deliberately broad intake, yet when it comes to results, it is doing brilliantly. “There’s so much more here than just what happens in the classroom,” continues Mrs Hutchinson. “There are the beautiful rural surroundings and our broad range of extra-curricular activities. I always say, ‘busy in the classroom, busy out of the classroom’; it is only a truly holistic education that builds character.”

There’s little advantage to having amazing exam results but no soft skills, so the school creates opportunities for the girls to develop them. There are networking events for Sixth Formers to learn to engage with people they’ve never met before, to find out what they have in common and to hold a conversation, and ‘Women and the Workplace’ sessions at which parents and alumnae share their experiences of the world of work.

Coursing through a Woldingham day are its values which underpin the school community. “We’re proud of our Sacred Heart ethos, and it is tangible in everything we do”, Mrs Hutchinson explains. Personal growth is a value which extends from the chapel to the classroom and beyond, be it on a sports pitch or a stage. The THRIVE programme – a cornerstone of each pupil’s school experience – continues to evolve, but as the headmistress and her team carry out a curriculum review, there are even more building blocks for these girls: from the life skills employers are looking for, to the more pragmatic considerations of how to use a bank account and what it means to pay taxes, to how to conduct yourself on social media – these are all areas under discussion to ensure the girls are ready for life beyond school. On which note, the school community had a ‘slow tech week’ which encouraged everyone to take a step back from technology and consider alternative ways of spending their time.

There is a wide programme of volunteering across all year groups. The school has a cherished relationship with the Orpheus Centre, a school for young adults with learning difficulties; girls attend musical theatre workshops with the students and Sixth Formers lead sports sessions.

There’s no doubt Woldingham is outward looking (it is now a fully-fledged cricket school), and welcoming London families is part of that. Flexi-boarding is now open to all year groups, which is very popular, with over 70 girls signed up to stay one to two nights a week. There are between 120-130 girls commuting by train to the station which sits in the school’s grounds. “London day girls, local families and boarders from across the world make up our school community”, says Mrs Hutchinson. “Day girls can come early and have breakfast or stay late and join supper if they wish. The food is amazing and the apple crumble is particularly popular!”

Woldingham is recognising and responding to the needs and demands of 21st-century life, developing girls who are world-ready and outward looking, with a sense of purpose and global responsibility. And it’s all done in 700 acres of glorious English countryside just 25 minutes from Clapham Junction.