After 700 years, top school lets in girls of all ages

A PRESTIGIOUS private school is preparing to admit girls across all year groups for the first time in its 700-year history, it has been revealed.

Westminster School, whose alma mater includes six former British prime ministers, has allowed female pupils to join its sixth form for 50 years. Now it plans to extend that access to ‘reflect the community’ it serves.

It is hoped the plans to make the school fully co-educational will be implemented by 2030, it was reported.

A spokesman said the school – which dates back to at least the early 14th century and is housed within the walled precincts of Westminster Abbey – looks forward to ‘reaching the point at which we can make this significant change... enabling any child who would flourish here to be able to come, irrespective of gender’. They added: ‘Coeducation is based on demand – the number of parents, pupils, staff, alumni and interested outsiders asking about girls joining the school has grown year-on-year.

‘It is also based on a desire fully to reflect the community we serve, and to shape that community by educating brilliant young men and women with a commitment to making a difference.’

The change will apply to the under school, which takes boys from the age of seven, as well as the senior school, where pupils join from 13, according to The Daily Telegraph. The move follows a review commissioned by the school last year, which recommended that it should allow girls to join from a younger age. But the review, led by Fiona Scolding KC, found that the majority of female pupils surveyed had experienced at least one instance of sexual discrimination, unwanted sharing of images, or physical or verbal harmful sexual behaviour.

Ms Scolding said ‘a considerable number of interviewees... commented that both male and female pupils joining the sixth form from single-sex environments may, in some cases, have had limited experience of interacting with the opposite sex in an academic setting.’ She added: ‘Some staff felt 16 was the most challenging age at which to make a single-sex school co-educational.’

Westminster School is the latest in a spate of independent schools to make the change. Parents can expect to fork out as much as £34,389 a year on day fees, while those who board can pay up to £46,341.