Queen’s Gate is an independent school for girls aged 4-18 located on Queen’s Gate, in South Kensington, London. Founded in 1891, the school has long held a reputation for its originality, whether that’s our early commitment to charitable endeavours, or our decision to eschew the early twentieth-century trend for girls to adopt a school uniform.
These days we are housed in five of the iconic Victorian terrace mansions that are indelibly associated with our area of London. Two are largely dedicated to our Junior School, while the remaining three are for the most part inhabited by the Senior School. Nevertheless, we are proudly one school, and there is a near-constant flow of pupils up and down the street. Junior School pupils enjoy the use of the larger dining areas in the Senior School and the use of the Hall for special concerts and assemblies. III Form (Year 6) also take some Science lessons in our basement laboratories and Art in our loft studios, surrounded by the work of our older girls. Conversely, Senior School pupils regularly travel to the Junior School buildings to take advantage of a number of smaller, seminar-style teaching rooms and further basement Science facilities.
We are an academically aspirational school, where we seek for each girl not only to achieve her academic potential, but to go beyond this. We have no one-size-fits-all definition of success; rather, all we ask is that each girl gives her best and develops her own self-motivation to reach beyond what she might have thought possible. We are justifiably proud of our academic results. Every year we have the opportunity to celebrate countless girls who have achieved straight 8/9 grades at GCSE and A/A* at A Level. We are able to boast of girls attending top universities across the UK, including Oxbridge, as well as overseas at institutions such as Harvard and MIT. Nevertheless, we are also delighted by our incredible value-added scores, measures of how far beyond their baseline potential each girl has achieved. These outcomes are the result of the expert teaching and dedicated support we offer every single girl, alongside constant attention to their pastoral needs, their self-esteem and their enthusiasm for learning.
Our intake is broad, and our admissions process is based not only on academic potential, but also on a girl’s broader interests and personal character. All candidates sit the 11+ Consortium test, or an in-school assessment if applying for an occasional place. Further to this, all candidates receive an individual interview which is designed to provide the girl with the opportunity to show us more of who she is as a person and what she will bring to our community.
We offer a broad and forward-thinking array of co-curricular activities, spanning the fields of Music, Drama, Sport and beyond. Pupil voice is central, with girls having the opportunity to serve on a number of committees dedicated to giving them a forum in which to put forward their ideas and share their feedback. However, all pupils are also permitted to make appointments directly with the Principal should they wish to discuss their thoughts with her directly, something she always welcomes.
High-quality pastoral care and the safeguarding of pupils is our utmost priority. Our PSHE programme is regularly reviewed to ensure we are meeting the needs of our girls, while our smaller size allows us to get to them well – vital for identifying quickly when something isn’t going as well as we would hope, and for fostering the kind of staff-pupil relationships where girls feel safe to come forward and share their worries. We maintain in-house counselling support for those pupils who need that extra bit of professional help, and are pro-active, open-hearted and honest in tackling issues such as mental health concerns.
Having welcomed a new Principal in 2022, Queen’s Gate is in a new phase of development, with an array of strategic plans for the coming years. Digital learning is high on our agenda, as is modernising our facilities. These projects are underpinned by our close contact with our parent body from whom we welcome support and feedback in equal measure.
Ultimately, it is hard to capture the true spirit of Queen’s Gate in words and images alone, and so we warmly encourage anyone interested in learning more about us to attend an Open Event or come for a private visit. We very much look forward to sharing in person what makes our school so special, and what it really means to be part of our community.
