WHAT? WHERE?

St Swithuns day and boarding senior school Winchester Hampshire

Set in a huge 45-acre site looking out over rolling South Downs countryside, St Swithun’s is a day, weekly and full boarding school for girls aged 11 to 18, located around a mile from the centre of Winchester.

Popular in Hampshire, the surrounding counties and with London-based and international families, the selective senior school has a strong reputation for academics. St Swithuns has around 500 pupils, including 140 sixth formers. Part of the Girls’ School Association, classes max out at a modest 16 – 18 and just 15 at GCSE. The Sixth Form is even more intimate, with just 8 – 10.

Founded in the city in 1884 as Winchester High School for Girls, St Swithun’s was renamed in 1927 after St. Swithun, the Bishop and patron saint of Winchester Cathedral. Adjacent to the seniors, St Swithun’s also has a linked Prep school for girls aged 3 to 11 and a co-ed Preschool.

FACILITIES / SPORTS

Aerial shot of St Swithun's girls senior school campus in Winchester

St Swithun’s has no shortage of space – and some pretty outstanding facilities, too, like the 580-seat auditorium, music school, art and technology block, art gallery space, sports hall and separate gym.

Sporty or otherwise, girls are encouraged to be active and are automatically signed up to a tailored pathway for sports and exercise. And there’s plenty of places to do it. The school has a full-size indoor swimming pool, 12 tennis courts (8 floodlit), seven netball courts, seven multi-use lacrosse pitches, a six-lane grass athletics track, all-weather long jump, high jump and throwing facilities.

Pupil playing tennis St Swithun's school Winchester sports.

The co-curricular sports programme includes netball, lacrosse, tennis, athletics, swimming, gymnastics, trampolining, football and cricket. And if they choose to, girls can take up co-curricular karate, polo, squash, yoga, self-defence, judo, cheerleading, horse-riding, golf and Pilates.

Netball is popular, with the U19 and U14 teams taking silverware in the finals of regional and national competitions. Individually, St Swithun’s also has a few current sporting superstars in the making: one pupil has been selected for the FA Women’s England Talent Pathway and another has been picked by Swim England’s Bristol Talent Centre for water polo.

Recently launched, St Swithun’s also has a new ‘Path to Paris’ initiative. All students get the chance to try each of the Paris Olympic sports before July 2024. They can choose to continue with any they like afterwards.

FACILITIES / MUSIC

Pupil at St Swithuns school Winchester playing the violin

St Swithun’s has its own 580 seat, air-conditioned Scandi-style stripped wood performing arts centre for conferences, concerts, theatre and dance performances. For a senior school, take up of individual lessons is pretty high. More than half 55% of pupils learning to play at least one instrument. Relatively few take Music at GCSE or A Level but of those that do results are impressively high.

Highlights on the annual performance schedule include two rock concerts and a House Music Competition. There’s also, cabaret evenings, termly scholars’ concerts and orchestral and large ensemble performances. Extra-curricular clubs include Symphony Orchestra, Art Club, Flute Quartet, Clarinet Choir, Dance Club, Debating, Embroidery Club, Drama Club, St Swithun’s Radio and there’s even a group of St Swithun’s Model United Nations delegates.

SIXTH FORM

Jill Isaac study centre at St Swithuns school Winchester

Not all St Swithun’s girls stay on for A Level but around 80% do. Sixth formers can take their pick of 25 subjects and an optional Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), with the benefit of small class sizes.

In the interests of keeping active, a couple of sport sessions a week are mandatory. Other than that, girls have the freedom to manage their own time outside of lessons in the library and dedicated lower sixth study area, with a common room and fitness suite with exclusive sessions for sixth formers.

The upper sixth – day girls and boarders – all come together in a dedicated house for study and to chill outside of lessons and also have a shiny, light new building they can use, The Jill Isaac Study Centre (above), opened in 2022.

In 2022, 80% of leavers gained places at Russell Group universities like UCL, Newcastle, Bristol, Bath, Nottingham, Exeter, LSE, Durham and York and 10% went on to Oxbridge. Medicine was the most popular degree pathway, followed by English and Philosophy.

ACADEMICS

Science experiment at St Swithuns school Winchester

St Swithun’s is known for strong academics with a STEM leaning. Sciences, maths, geography and psychology are especially popular. Prospective pupils do need to hit a certain attainment level to get in but don’t need to be top-flight academics. Pupils follow the High Performance Learning programme, geared to uplift learner performance. The stats certainly seem to bear this out.

Baseline assessments and analysis from Cambridge CEM regularly place St Swithun’s in the top 5-10% of schools nationally – independent and maintained – for value added at both GCSE and A levels.

Exam results at St Swithun’s are consistently impressive. In 2024, 58% of GCSEs were graded 9/8/A* and 80% at grade 7/A or higher, with 30% achieving the top grade 9. At A Level, 92% were graded A*- B. Half of U6 students achieved A Levels at grades AAA or higher, with 75% gaining AAB or above.

ACADEMICS / STEM

Pupils at St Swithun's school Winchester designing a boat STEM

STEM subjects are especially popular and well promoted. With an ambition to encourage more young women to lead the way in scientific and technical degree courses, industries and research and redress imbalances in critical fields in which women have long been significantly underrepresented, the school is poised to launch a new, selective sixth-form STEM (Science, Technology Engineering and Maths) pathway.

The scheme will be open to the most committed A-level students who intend to study a STEM-related degree course at university, such as maths, science, computer science, design and technology or engineering and who take at least two STEM subjects. Students on the pathway will have an individual STEM tutor and a programme of events and enrichment opportunities, including the chance to collaborate with university departments and industry.

BOARDING

Boarding common room at St Swithuns school Winchester

St Swithun’s has around 220 boarders spread over six boarding houses. Roughly half are full boarders and half are weekly boarders, some of whom return to their London homes at the weekend using a dedicated bus service. Sociable boarding houses are modern and well-maintained. Each has a friendly housemistresses and/or a housemaster who live on site, a large common room with huge sofa that day friends are welcome to hang out in. Individual rooms from Year 8 upwards are a big bonus.

During the week, there’s plenty of activities to tempt girls from their rooms, from the maths-based ‘pi’ baking contest to sports, drama and house competitions. And at weekends, there are loads more things to do like craft, horse riding, pottery workshops, golf and other sports, trips out to the V&A in London and pizza takeaways for supper. Despite some initial homesickness, one international boarder tells me how well the house mistresses and other girls helped her settle in and how fun she finds life at St Swithun’s.

PASTORAL CARE

Group of pupils at St Swithun's girls senior school Winchester

St Swithun’s Positive Education programme was shortlisted for the TES Pupil Mental Health Initiative of the Year 2022. An evidence-based approach to wellbeing, character development and academic achievement, it’s geared to alleviate and prevent mental health challenges and build resilience.

Pastoral staff co-ordinate support, with a welfare team (deputy head pastoral, head of boarding, chaplain, nurses, school psychologist, safeguarding leads) that meets weekly. The focused pastoral programme here has also won St Swithun’s a School Mental Health Award (gold standard), delivered by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools.

A ‘Families’ system teams girls from across all years who meet each half term, under the guidance of Sixth Form ‘aunties’, to develop relationships and provide peer support and encouragement. Pupils also have access to a student wellbeing website and The Wellbeing Hub, an online portal with separate areas for pupil, parents and staff. The full-time school counsellor is a clinical psychologist who contributes to the Positive Education and Thrive programme, as well as offering drop-in sessions and individual or group appointments. The school’s chaplain lives on site and is available to support all girls, irrespective of faith.

St Swithun’s also pays attention to staff wellbeing, too, through activities like Nordic walking, reading groups and cake making and talks on wellbeing issues.

THE HEAD

Jane Gandee, headmistress at St Swithun's school in Winchester

Jane Gandee has been Headmistress at St Swithun’s since 2010 – only the ninth in the school’s 127-year history. Previously, she had held posts at Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire, Oakham in Rutland, Queenswood in Herts and City of London School for Girls.

Calm and composed with a friendly disposition, she’s a keen sportswoman who represented Cambridge at athletics and cross country and captained the university’s women’s football team when she was a student there. Mindful that not all St Swithun’s girls will be as sporty as she was (or as comfortable wielding a lacrosse stick), she’s upped the level of participation and enthusiasm for sports at the school by extending the choice of activities on offer and making PE more individualised (so no need to fake a migraine).

Having also extended the range of subjects, clubs and wellbeing activities and academic enrichment programme, her next plan is to encourage St Swithun’s studious cohort to take a break by timetabling in some lo-fi fun such as card games or knitting.

QUIRKS

Pupil at St Swithuns senior girls school Winchester.

Highly competitive and taken pretty seriously, ‘The Game’ is an involved version of Tag played in breaks and after school. There’s also a school dance (to the tune of Blame it on the Boogie) that features trademark St Swithun’s moves such as cradling a lacrosse stick and pivoting while holding an imaginary netball and busting a shimmy.

In 1891, The Old Girls’ Association (OGA) was formed to keep a link with former students and is still going strong today with over 5,000 members. Famous Old Swithunites include journalist and broadcaster Fi Glover and the late actress Emma Chambers, star of The Vicar of Dibley and Notting Hill. Quite literally a St Swithun’s high-flyer, the young Belgian-British aviator Zara Rutherford is also a former pupil, inspiring the next generation of girls’ pursuing STEM subjects here.

ISI REPORT

The latest full ISI report was in 2024. St Swithun’s met the required standards in all five key areas of the new reporting framework.

MOBILE PHONE POLICY

In response to growing research and evidence that smartphones are highly addictive and can have direct links to poor mental health and low self-esteem, especially in girls, St Swithuns assigns secure personal Yondr pouches for all day students in year 7-11. While students maintain possession of their phones and pouches, they’re not able to use them until their pouches are opened at the end of the school day at unlocking stations. Boarders’ phones are stored securely in their boarding houses during the school day and students can only use them at a specific time in the evening to contact family and friends.

TRANSPORT

Students coming from London have a dedicated bus service that leaves on Friday and returns on Sunday evening. Day girls from more local are mostly dropped off by parents. Winchester is a short walk away and there’s also a public bus stop just outside the school that sixth formers can use.

FEES + SCHOLARSHIPS

Fees for 2024 are £9,001 per term for day pupils and £15,212 per term for boarders. There are academic, music, drama, art and sport scholarships and a maths scholarship in year 9 and in the sixth form carrying a small fee remission of 5% or 10%. Scholars are allocated a school mentor and offered opportunities for further development.

WORD ON THE GROUND

It’s certainly not an academic hot house but St Swithun’s is known for its strong academic record – and deservedly so. Pupils are very focussed and love the academic enrichment but sports are popular too – girls I speak with enthuse about lacrosse, netball and co-curricular kickboxing and archery. From an academic point of view, there’s a consensus that the girls-only setting is a good thing, especially when they get the opportunity to interact with boys at social events, although one sixth former preparing for Oxbridge tells me she’d have welcomed more opportunities to interact with men in an academic setting too.

THE MUDDY VERDICT

Good for: Bright, motivated girls that’ll embrace the top-quality academics, supportive environment and focus on individual learning. London-based and international parents looking for quality part-time and full-time boarding at a prestigious setting.

Not for: Those on a budget. St Swithun’s is a top independent girl’s school, something that’s reflected in the fees. It’s also wholeheartedly all-girls. After nearly 140 years there are no plans for that to change, so if you’re thinking co-ed might be a better fit for your child, this probably isn’t the right school.

Dare to disagree? Be my guest! Individual tours are available by appointment. St Swithun’s has its next open morning on Saturday 21 June 2024.

St Swithun’s School, Alresford Road, Winchester, Hampshire, SO21 1HA. Tel. 01962 835700.

St Swithun’s, Winchester

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