King’s College School has today announced that it is changing the structure of its junior and senior schools.
The junior school has, for many years, taught boys aged 7 to 13. These boys would then join the senior school at 13. The decision means that boys in the junior school will, from 2021, move across to the senior school at the start of year 7, not at the start of year 9 as has historically been the case. The new structure is one shared by almost all day schools in the UK.
King’s already has a lower school that takes an entry of about 60 boys from local primary and prep schools at the age of eleven, and these will be joined, from September 2021, by their peers from the junior school, creating an expanded lower school of about 280 boys aged eleven to thirteen in years 7 and 8. King’s will continue to accept about thirty boys every year from prep schools at the age of 13, so the 13+ entry remains a key feature of the school’s admissions.
Head master, Andrew Halls, said: “I think we have one of the very best junior schools I have ever seen. Teaching is bright, imaginative and compassionate. The same is true for the teaching of boys in our parallel lower school. Now is the time to bring the two cohorts together.”
A summary of the main changes
1. From September 2021, all boys in the lower and upper remove of the junior school will join the boys in years 7 and 8 in the lower school to become part of the senior school.
2. Boys in the expanded lower school will be taught by colleagues from both the current junior and the senior schools.
3. In September 2021, junior school boys in the third form during 2020/21 will move into year 7 of the lower school, and junior school boys in the lower remove during 2020/21 will move into year 8 of the lower school.
4. From the academic year beginning September 2021 (ie first affecting May 2022), there will no longer be a transfer exam or any other qualifying exam for boys in the King’s junior school. They and their successors will still have the opportunity to be assessed for scholarships, however, and details of this will be clarified at a later date.
5. The last year group to take the current transfer and/or upper remove scholarship papers will be those in the upper remove in 2020/21. They will sit the papers, as usual, in the summer term of 2021 and progress to the fourth form in the senior school in the same way as their predecessors.
6. Although all external candidates for year 7 in the senior school will continue to take the 11+, no junior school boy will take this exam: they have already been assessed on entry to King’s.
7. King’s will continue to offer about 30 (13+) places into our fourth form for boys from external prep schools based on the pre-test and, where appropriate, scholarship or common entrance.
8. These changes affect years 7 and 8 within the school but do not affect the admissions process or number of places for external pupils at 11+ or 13+ in any way.
Are there any feeder schools for KCS?
yes, generally the local prep schools – Rokeby, King’s House, Willington, but also several larger Central London prep schools, such as Hill House, Eaton House the Manor, Fulham Prep.