Eaton House The Manor Girls' School

 Eaton House The Manor Girl's School has had an outstanding year academically. Pupils were awarded 11 scholarships to London day and boarding schools, in part as a result of what the Good Schools Guide, 2017, acknowledges as ‘passionate and dynamic teaching.’ Our stimulating classroom environment promotes intellectual curiosity and we prize both academic exploration and risk-taking highly. As a result, ‘Teaching is highly effective in promoting pupils’ excellent progress and attainment,’ according to a recent ISI report.

Our girls typically leave us for a range of top schools, including St Paul's Girls’ School, Godolphin & Latymer, Wycombe Abbey, St Mary’s Calne, St Mary’s Ascot, James Allen’s Girls’ School, Streatham & Clapham High, and many more. Beyond academics, our girls are happy, calm, emotionally intelligent, balanced, kind and mannerly. As we are non-selective at entry, interest is keen and early application is advised, with registration accepted from birth.

The Headmaster, Oliver Snowball, wants the girls to have an adventure at school and to be intellectually challenged to their maximum potential. Beyond that, he would like each girl to feel they are known, nurtured, challenged and to have a genuine love of learning and a deep-rooted respect for people and places by the time that they leave the school. The Good Schools Guide has commented that ‘Mr Snowball seems to have hit the ground running with his vision for the school and is clearly engaged with contemporary educational debate.’

At Eaton House The Manor Girls’ School, each girl is treated as an individual so that she can blossom academically, socially and behaviourally, and we strive to help every pupil to build her own tool-kit of techniques and skills to help ensure future academic success. To help with this, we have introduced a focus around seven character traits that we feel will help girls perform to the best of their ability. They include trust, empathy, grit and optimism. These attributes are discussed in assembly, and girls jot down on sticky notes when they have demonstrated these attributes. Over the course of the last academic year this initiative has had a huge effect on the student body as a whole!

We are currently enhancing our examination preparation with some adventurous educational techniques to make the girls think even harder about their future place in the world. Adventure Books were introduced last year because we wanted to challenge the girls with open-ended questions that did not have a right or wrong answer. Instead, they are designed to develop creative, evaluative and analytical thinking skills. We use books with a mixture of spaces for drawing and writing in order that girls can express their ideas with boldness and confidence. Questions can be fun and challenging such as: ‘What’s more important, time or money?’; ‘What would happen if the world was ruled by elephants?’ and ‘Do you see yourself as more of a square or a circle?’ These books help all our girls to handle open-ended examination questions with certainty and flair.

We also plan to introduce Philosothons into Philosophy Club for autumn, 2018. A Philosothon is a method of debating which encourage students to facilitate philosophical and ethical discussions. They inspire huge competitions in Australia and New Zealand, and some of the ideas will be used in the classroom for spring 2019.

Games, music and the arts are very important to the life of the school. Being regularly active enhances the girls’ physical and emotional health and they have access to excellent facilities both indoors and outdoors. We enjoy fielding teams in a range of sports such as Hockey, Netball, Swimming and Cross Country. In addition, House matches provide a great deal of excitement and healthy competition for the girls as there is strong House spirit throughout the school.

In the arts, we teach our girls how to generate original and meaningful ideas for themselves and actively encourage them to produce fresh, imaginative responses in their work. There are always plays for the girls to shine in every year and they are held in our full sized theatre, complete with professional lighting rig and elaborate costumes.

New specialist teachers have strengthened our offering in Drama, Music and the Arts and they are bringing the girls up to an exceptionally high standard very quickly. In addition, we now also offer speech and drama lessons leading to outside examinations. In part as a result of this emphasis on the arts, this year we have won four Arts Scholarships and a Singing Scholarship to top schools.

The Eaton House The Manor Girls’ School art department is a very exciting place and girls are encouraged to experiment with a wide range of media. In music, instrumental activities have included a Music Ensemble Club which has grown to 25 members and a String Ensemble which is setting a very impressive standard. The Form 2 Junior Choir includes every girl in the year, while the Senior Choir, open to Years 3-6, now has over 60 members. The singing group ‘Bel Canto,’ drawn from Forms 4 to 6 with entry by audition, was invited, one again, to sing at Westminster Abbey’s annual Christingle Service – a big honour. We have also successfully collaborated with the Pre-Prep by establishing a joint choir called ‘The Manor Voices’ for Forms 2 to 4. Musically, there was also great excitement over professional conductor Jakub Hrusa’s visit.

The school day is very busy and at 4pm girls can take advantage of a large number of clubs. Our clubs are a wonderful way to relax and make friends before they go home for Prep. For autumn 2018, clubs include Running Club, Senior Gymnastics Club, Craft Club, Bookworm Club, Touch Typing Club, Brownies (aged 7 and over), Junior Gymnastics Club, Hockey Club, Junior Drama Club, Multi-Sports Club, Football Club, Young Enterprise Club, Creative Science Club, French for Advanced Speakers, Big Questions Breakfast Club, Harry Potter Club, Junior Art Club, Joint Girls and Pre-Prep Choral Club (with boys), Yoga Club (with boys), Glee Club, Creative Writing Club, Netball Skills, Music & Song Club, Senior Art Club, Adventure Club, Junior Computing Club, Junior Football Club, Cheerleading Club, Netball Club, Philosophy Club, Senior Drama Club and Greek Mythology Club. We can truly say there is something for everybody when it comes to clubs!

The girls are busy all day long but it is vitally important to us that they are happy in their work and in their friendship groups. It follows that pastoral care is the cornerstone of everything that we do. We believe that when girls are happy, they are more effective learners and more confident participators.

For us, pastoral care is about understanding and supporting each individual girl and being there for her in every way. Our House system, excellent form teachers and visible senior management team all combine to ensure that each girl feels known and supported throughout her learning journey at Eaton House The Manor Girls’ School.

The Headmaster

We treat each girl as an individual so that she can blossom academically, socially and behaviourally. We want each girl to have the confidence to discover where her gifts lie in a calm and purposeful atmosphere, where her spiritual, moral and intellectual development is nurtured.

We foster a ‘sky is the limit’ approach to learning and all our pupils are encouraged to use their intelligence in a dynamic way to demonstrate quick, reasoned and engaging responses to the world about them.