| Motto | In fide fiducia |
|---|---|
| Established | 1884 |
| Type | Independent preparatory school[1] |
| Headmaster | Mr N L Helliwell, BEd, MA (London) |
| Chair of Governors | Professor E. A. V. Ebsworth CBE PhD ScD[2] |
| Location | Trumpington Road Cambridge Cambridgeshire CB2 8AG England |
| Students | c. 510 |
| Gender | co-educational |
| Ages | 4–13 |
| Houses | Bentley, Chaucer, Latham, Newton |
| Staff | 73 full time, 19 part-time[3] |
| Website | St Faith's website |
St Faith's School is an independent preparatory day school on Trumpington Road, Cambridge, England, for boys and girls aged four to thirteen.[1] The present headmaster is Nigel Helliwell,[3] and the school has in excess of five hundred children. It is affiliated with The Leys School and many pupils continue their secondary education there.
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The school was founded by a Mr Goodchild in 1884 and in its early years was known as Goody's, after its founder. It features under that name in Gwen Raverat's autobiographical account of her childhood, Period Piece.[4]
With The Leys, the school now forms the junior division of The Leys and St Faith's Foundation and shares the motto (In fide fiducia) and coat of arms of The Leys.[5]
Until the 1990s, most classrooms were in converted Victorian houses. Since then, the school has built Ashburton, opened in 1999, a large red brick building. This contains the School Hall, where assemblies and plays take place, two purpose-built, fully equipped science laboratories, and other classrooms. The naming of the school's Ashburton Hall commemorates the evacuation of some of the boarders during the Second World War to the Golden Lion Hotel in Ashburton, on Dartmoor in Devon.
In June 2006, the school opened a new building for Music and Technology, named The Keynes Building in honour of old boys Maynard and Geoffrey Keynes.
In May 2011,the new state of the art Sports Centre was opened by Geoffrey Windsor-Lewis, a prominent Old Fidelian.
The Pre Prep school is for children aged 4 to 7 and is mainly based in Southfield House. Children are placed in Foundation, Year 1 or Year 2, according to their age. There are normally eighteen children in each of the classes. The head of the Pre Prep is Mrs L. Smith.[3]
Years 3 and 4 are accommodated in the Newton and School House buildings, both adjacent to Newton Road. Each class has a form room where it remains for the year. There are four classrooms for each year. By this time the children have been formally introduced to a modern language, Spanish, which they continue to learn until they leave. Children are mostly taught by their class teacher, but there is subject specialist teaching in Spanish, Music, PE and Games.
Years 5 - 8 use the Firwood, Edenfield, Keynes, Leyspring and Ashburton buildings. Pupils have a tutor room which is used for registration and tutorials, but for lessons they move around to different classrooms. From Years 5 to 8, subject specialist teaching is increasingly deployed and children are grouped by ability in many subjects. From Year 3 to 8 there are normally four classes in each year group.
The School has a large site, compared to other schools for children of prep school age in and around Cambridge. Ashburton contains the School Hall, the science laboratories, and other classrooms. The school office is on the ground floor of School House. The Keynes Building contains the music department, an ICT suite and the Design and Technology department. The school has a significant area of grass, used mainly for recreation during break times but also for some schools sports. Most formal games are played at Latham Road, a large grass sports field shared with The Leys School and laid out as rugby, hockey or cricket pitches, depending on the term. A new sports hall has been constructed on the site of a recently demolished gymnasium adjacent to Newton Road. It opened on the 27th May 2011 and its opening had the special guest of the Mayor of Cambridge.
On entering the prep school, Year 3 children are placed in one of the four houses and remain in that house group throughout their time at St Faith’s. The houses are named after four roads close to the school; these roads are named after famous British people and therefore indirectly so are the houses. The house groups provide pastoral and academic supervision, gentle competition, charity fund-raising and other activities. Pupils wear ties and polo shirts of their house's colour.
| House | Named After | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| Bentley | Richard Bentley, Master of Trinity College | Dark Blue |
| Chaucer | Geoffrey Chaucer | Green |
| Latham | Rev Henry Latham | Light Blue |
| Newton | Sir Isaac Newton | Yellow |
Latham's house colour was traditionally red, but was changed to a light blue colour so it could be seen when the house colour for each student was added to the tie. The school tie traditionally consisted of red and black diagonal stripes with a thin white line below each black line.
Fees for 2011-12 are between £3,245 and £4,080 a term, depending on age.[6]
An Independent Schools Inspection, http://www.stfaiths.co.uk/userfiles/file/St_Faiths_Final_060711.pdf, in June 2011, reported the following ‘St Faith’s is highly and conspicuously successful in meeting its stated aims, especially those aspiring to achieve high academic standards, and provide an inspiring education and a stimulating curriculum’. Pupils’ achievement is ‘excellent’. Teaching across the school is ‘excellent’, as is pupils’ personal development and cultural and spiritual awareness. Pupils’ social development was also judged ‘outstanding’ with the pastoral support a major strength of the school.
There is an open morning in the Autumn Term. Most admissions are at the ages of 4 and 7, but entry is also possible at other ages, while places are available. For the youngest children, places are offered by the headmaster after a visit by the parents. From Year 3 onwards, admission to the school follows an assessment and interview.[7]
St Faith's hosts an annual mathematics challenge for thirty-five local maintained and independent schools, and the school hall is used regularly by the Cambridge Music Service.[8]
In 2006, St Faith's came joint 178th in the Times Online Top 250 Prep Schools.[9] In 2005, the school had been joint 161st in the same table.
In recent years, half or more of the Year 8 leavers have gone on to The Leys School, which reserves places for St Faith's pupils to compete for in Year 6, guaranteeing entry to The Leys in Year 9. The two schools work closely together.
Other schools to which pupils have moved in recent years include Eton College, Felsted School, Framlingham School, The Friends' School, The King's School, Ely, Oakham School, Oundle School, The Perse School, The Perse School for Girls, Rugby School, Uppingham School, St Mary's School, Cambridge, and local maintained schools and other schools in the US and continental Europe.[10] In 2005 and 2006, 94 per cent of St Faith's Year 8 leavers gained admission to the school of their first choice. In 2006, twenty awards were achieved to The Kings School, Ely, Felsted, Oakham, The Leys and The Perse.[10]
Former pupils are called Old Fidelians, and there is an Old Fidelian Society which helps the school, plays the school at sports, and holds events, including an annual dinner.
Old Fidelians include John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, the economist, his brother Sir Geoffrey Keynes, surgeon, biographer and bibliographer, and Charlie Darwin, the brother of Gwen Raverat, who wrote about the school in her book Period Piece.[4] They lived at Newnham Grange, now part of Darwin College, Cambridge, and their sister Margaret Darwin married Geoffrey Keynes. So the Darwins and the Keyneses, two important Cambridge families, have close links with St Faith's.
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