A Long Proud History

Founded in 1874 by Henry Montagu Draper, Lockers Park is one of the earliest purpose-built prep schools, expressly created as a foundation school preparing boys for Rugby School, where Draper himself was educated.

Lockers Park soon established itself as one of the top prep schools, sending boys on to Eton, Harrow and Winchester as well as Rugby and Haileybury. This is a tradition and honour we are proud to maintain.

Our school is built on 23 acres of parkland surrounding a significant Georgian house called The Lockers, which still exists. Draper purchased the land and built Lockers Park when the owners of The Lockers fell on hard times. In the following years, Lockers Park’s reputation thrived. We have a distinguished list of Old Boys, including Lord Louis Mountbatten and His Highness Prince Maurice Battenberg.

We uphold many traditions that Draper initiated back in the early years at Lockers Park. For instance, boys are in ‘Sets’ rather than houses, with the names of famous army and navy captains of the time: Beatty, Haig, Jellicoe, Kitchener, Mountbatten and Roberts.

A History of Lockers Park School by Ruth Barden

Upon her retirement as a teacher at Lockers Park, Ruth Barden spent many hours cataloguing and preserving the school archives. Her research led to the publication of her book, A History of Lockers Park School.

This book gives an insight into life at Lockers Park over the 125 years from 1874 – 1999. It includes tales of famous and notorious old boys, Headmasters and staff, and the problems of arranging travel home during the Great War.

Anyone who has connections with Lockers Park will find this a fascinating story.

Copies are available to purchase from the school office.

Why Boys Only?

Our heritage and experience is rooted in providing an education for boys. We believe that in our prep school environment boys benefit from and prosper in this environment, and we are equipped to harness this.

Inspiring Boys to Achieve their Very Best

It is important not to lean heavily into gender stereotypes, but rather to respond to the neurological and developmental understanding that we have of boys. In terms of how they learn, boys and girls have different requirements, particularly up to the age of 13.

With that knowledge, we are able to craft the structure of our days and our educational content to suit their learning style and to help the boys develop academically, socially and behaviourally in a positive way.

We focus our resources and design lessons expressly to serve boys and the pace of their development, and our teachers are experienced in delivering this learning. We deliberately design lessons so that they are interactive, practical and varied—you’d just need to experience one of our ‘no hands up’ French lessons to feel the energy of our classes.

We are renowned for providing boys with an environment that absolutely maximises their academic potential, allowing our pupils to go on to the finest schools in the country.

Active and Interactive Days

One example of the way in which we serve our boys is that we create a timetable with frequent breaks and plenty of outdoor activities built into the day, all of which is proven to help the boys to return to classrooms ready to learn in a positive way. We see every day that building dens in our shrubs and expending healthy energy on the sports pitch is beneficial not only in helping the boys to form friendships and to learn team skills, but further to heighten concentration when they attend academic lessons.

Defying Stereotypes

We have long found that being single gender means that the breadth of activities in which the boys participate is notably wide ranging. At Lockers Park, no domain is gender dominated and so art, music and drama are embraced with confidence by boys across all ages across the school; 95% of Lockers Park boys learn a musical instrument, 24 places in our excellent our Chapel Choir are hotly competed for every year, our String Orchestra has averagely 30% of our prep school pupils playing in it, and our boys are confident in acting the leads – both male and female – in our school plays, not to mention the outstanding talent shown at our annual Lockers Got Talent event.

Meanwhile, we know how to create a sporting calendar for every boy, from the elite sportsman to the more tentative participant. Again, in a cohort of only boys, the range of sporting skills is wide and there is kinship for all.

A Culture of Respect

Pastorally, we have a well-established framework that sets clear boundaries of respect and a system of rewards that the boys respond well to. Being in small classes with plenty of time focused on wellbeing and individual care helps boys to develop into confident, rounded young men. The development is at a pace suited to boys and we are able to lead discussions in an effective and sensitive way for pupils at similar levels of emotional development.

We are proud to be a school for boys.