Visit us

Open mornings & book a visit

If you are considering Orchard House for your child, please do come and visit us.

We hold termly open mornings to allow visitors to see our school. The next one is on Thursday 10 October 2019 from 9:30am till 11:30am. Please book your place online using this form or contact our registrar, Diana, to reserve your place (email registrar@orchardhs.org.uk or call 020 8742 8544).

Alternatively, Mrs Edwards, the headmistress, invites you to join a parent tour during the school week so that you can see us in action and ask all the questions you have.

Visits may be arranged through the school office by telephoning 020 8742 8544 or by emailing registrar@orchardhs.org.uk.

For location details and a map see the Contact Us page.

Contact Us

Open morning booking form

Prospectus

Our school

The choice of a school is one of the most important decisions parents will take for their child and it has to be right. Our prospectus (available in soft copy here, or in hard copy by emailing the school office at info@orchardhs.org.uk) can give you only a flavour of Orchard House. We encourage you to come and see for yourself.

Download our prospectus

Entry points to Orchard House

Starting at Orchard House School

Children enter the school in the autumn term (starting early in September) unless a place becomes available at other times. They start either in the Den aged 3 or into Lower 1 (our reception year) aged 4.

Places occasionally become available for older children. Children below the age of 6 are not assessed for entry. For older children going into later year groups, the school will assess your child’s level of attainment (focusing on mathematics, verbal reasoning and English) to determine whether your child will be a good fit for the class. This is to judge whether your child will be able to fully access the curriculum that the intended class is following. (If not, your child might struggle, which would not be a good outcome.)

The final decision whether or not to offer a place always rests with the headmistress.

Breakdown of classes

How to apply

Entrance procedure

To give your child the chance of attending Orchard House, you first need to register them. Parents are asked to make an appointment to visit the school as soon as is convenient after the birth of their child and the headmistress usually shows them around the school in small groups or they attend one of the termly open events.

At the end of the visit parents are invited to take away and complete a registration form. Once the completed registration form has been returned to the school, along with the registration fee of £100, the school will acknowledge receipt of the registration and the child’s name will be placed on a waiting list for the preferred year of entry.

Places are offered in registration order with first priority given to younger brothers and sisters of children already at the school, and second priority given to brothers and sisters of children who have accepted a place at the school but not yet started. In addition, to qualify for this sibling priority, the younger brother/sister must be registered either at the same time as their big brother/sister is registered or within 3 months of birth, whichever is later. Offers for the Den (Nursery) and Lower 1 (Reception) are sent out by post 12-18 months before the child is due to start at Orchard House.

To accept a place offered for your child, you must:

Return the acceptance form, agreeing to the terms of the contract with the school.
Make a payment of the amount indicated on the offer letter, which will be equivalent to a term’s fees at the time the offer is sent.
Allow the school to collect by direct debit on the first day of your child’s first term at Orchard House, the balance of fees for the first term at the rate that then applies, along with a deposit of £2,500. (The school will return the deposit to you when your child leaves Orchard House, so long as the school has received payment of all monies due.)

If you have any questions about any aspect of admission, please contact the school’s registrar, Mrs Goodeve-Docker, by emailing registrar@orchardhs.org.uk or by calling +44 20 8742 8544.

To download our full admissions policy, please click here.

Fees

Fees per term from September 2019

	FEES PAYABLE PER TERM*
THE DEN (NURSERY)
Mornings only (5 mornings each week)	£3,070
Mornings plus optional afternoon attendance:
5 mornings plus 1 afternoon each week	£3,684
5 mornings plus 2 afternoons each week	£4,298
5 mornings plus 3 afternoons each week	£4,912
5 mornings plus 4 afternoons each week	£5,526
5 mornings plus 5 afternoons each week	£6,140
Occasional afternoon attendance	£63
LOWER 1 (RECEPTION), FORMS 1 AND 2	£6,140
FORMS 3, 4, 5 AND 6	£6,400
Hot lunch or salad, prepared on the premises	Included in the above fees for full-day attendance

*Providing the fees for the term are paid in a single sum on the first day of term, the school allows a discount (reflected in the figures above) against the monthly payment scheme. Otherwise, the fees are payable monthly and the discount is not applied. To find out about paying on a monthly basis, please click here (opens as a PDF).

A deposit of £2,500 is payable upon entry to the school. This is returned when the child leaves the school, subject to the school having received payment of all sums due to it.

Charges for optional subjects, clubs etc

MUSIC (INDIVIDUAL LESSONS)
Piano, singing, guitar, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, trumpet, cornet, saxophone, trombone, oboe, other brass instruments and music theory
(ten lessons each of 30 minutes)		£258
PRE-SCHOOL AND AFTER-SCHOOL CLUBS		from £124
SPECIAL NEEDS TUITION Each half-hour		from £35

NOTE: Fees are inclusive of lunch (except for those children in the Den who attend for mornings only) and also mid-morning milk; many other schools charge extra amounts for these items.

Government schemes to help reduce fees

LOCAL AUTHORITY GRANT FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN

If your child is under 5 on 1 September, 1 January or 1 April, for the term beginning in that month you may choose to take advantage of a Local Authority Grant (otherwise known as the Minimum Funding Entitlement, Nursery Education Grant or Early Education Childcare Place funding) paid by the local authority to the school. This is attributed to a statutory maximum of 15 hours’ early years education per week. To cover contracted hours in excess of this statutory maximum, parents in receipt of the grant pay the difference between the amount of the grant and the school fees stated above. The grant is £831.30 for the Autumn Term 2019. As a service for parents we intend to continue to participate in this scheme for as long as possible, but this is not guaranteed: the regulatory complexity and administrative burden for the school increases periodically and may become too onerous.

CHILDCARE VOUCHERS AND TAX-FREE CHILDCARE

The school accepts most companies’ childcare vouchers. It also accepts payments under the government’s tax-free childcare scheme introduced from September 2017.

To download this information as a PDF, please click here.

Bursaries

House Schools Trust

House Schools Trust is an independent charity that raises funds and awards means-tested scholarships to bright and promising children whose parents would not otherwise be able to consider sending them to an independent fee-paying school. Means-tested scholarships are available, as funds permit, for children aged 7+. Candidates must currently be attending a state school and must have the right to reside in the UK. The scholarships are for places at one of the three schools in the House Schools Group, Bassett House in North Kensington, Orchard House in Chiswick and Prospect House in Putney. For more information, please visit houseschoolstrust.org.