Evening Standard: Prince George and Princess Charlotte's £19k-a-year prep school to take pupils up to 18 after surge in applications
I’ve actually known about this for well over a year. I have friends and students at Thomas’s Kensington. I had also suggested that they could possibly buy the current Royal Academy of Dance building. My daughter started her ballet lessons at RAD, so I know the layout well.
EXCLUSIVE: New building planned as popularity soars following Cambridges choosing school
The £19,000-a-year prep school where Prince George and Princess Charlotte are pupils is to start offering places up to age 18 after a huge surge in applications, the Evening Standard can reveal.
Thomas’s Battersea has bought the home of the Royal Academy of Dance next door and will turn the building into a new independent senior school accepting students from September 2021.
The new 40,000 sq ft facility, to be known as Thomas’s Battersea Square, will have 28 classrooms including science laboratories, break-out spaces, a study centre, assembly and performance hall, cafeteria and school dining hall.
Thomas’s, founded by actress Joanna Thomas in 1971, became one of the most famous schools in the world overnight in September 2017 when Prince William dropped son George off for his first day. He was followed two years later by sister Charlotte.
Applications are said to have multiplied several-fold after the pictures of the third and fourth in line to the throne arriving at the school with their parents went round the world. The school is known for its motto “Be Kind”.
Although Prince George is expected to complete his schooling at Eton it is thought that Charlotte may stay on at the expanded Thomas’s, which currently only provides education up to 13.
Other high-profile former Thomas’s pupils include model Cara Delevingne, singer Florence Welch and actress Tara Fitzgerald.
On its website Thomas’s said: “Opening in September 2021, Thomas’s Battersea Square is a new, co-educational school for students aged 13 to 18 which offers a world-class, progressive education that is forward-thinking and outward-looking”.
It added: “We seek to nurture in them a strong set of values, with kindness at the core, which will encourage them to take up positions of responsibility and leadership, to give back to their communities and to make a positive contribution to the world.”
The deal to buy the Royal Academy of Dance building was secured with property company Avanton late last week. Avanton is also building a new headquarters for the academy at a £260 million development nearby. The firm was not available to comment.
The school is also developing a second campus for older pupils at Putney Vale, where they will have lessons while the building work on the new school is completed. Its first head will be Ben Thomas, a son of the founder, previously George and Charlotte’s head at the prep school.
Thomas’s Battersea is owned by Thomas’s London Day Schools, which also runs prep schools in Clapham, Fulham and Kensington.
The full online article can be found here.