More House School

Saved from closure by a pupils' protest march in 1970, More House has spent half a century turning a quirk of survival into a point of pride. This is one of London's smallest senior schools for girls, a Catholic day school of roughly 120 pupils occupying a townhouse at 22 Pont Street, a few minutes from Harrods and Hyde Park. It takes girls from age 9 through to 18, and its scale is the whole point: classes are tiny, teachers know every name, and the central London location is treated as an extension of the classroom rather than a backdrop. Founded in 1952 by the Canonesses of St Augustine, the school was inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate in March 2024 and met every regulatory standard. Day fees for the senior years sit in the higher tier in the capital. Families drawn to a large, sporty, high-pressure environment will find the opposite here; families wanting a close, personalised education for a daughter will find a school built precisely for that.

The founding story tells you a great deal. More House opened in 1952 with three pupils at a Cromwell Road hostel in South Kensington, set up by the Canonesses of St Augustine alongside a group of Catholic parents who wanted a serious education for their daughters. Mother Veronica Balfour was the founding headmistress, and in 1953 the Canonesses chose St Thomas More, the scholar and statesman, as the school's patron saint, fixing both its name and its character around faith and learning. By 1959 it had grown past 90 pupils and won Ministry of Education recognition as an efficient independent secondary school. When the religious order withdrew and closure loomed in 1970, the girls themselves marched in protest, new premises were bought on Pont Street, and the school moved there in 1971. It has stayed ever since, marking 50 years at the address in 2021. That history of being fought for runs through the culture: this is a school that has always understood itself as a community first.

The atmosphere is deliberately intimate. With around 120 girls across the year groups, More House operates at a human scale that larger and more famous neighbours cannot match. Relationships across the years are close, with older girls mentoring newcomers as a matter of routine, and the latest inspection found relationships between younger and older pupils to be respectful and supportive within a calm, inclusive environment. The Catholic identity is genuine and woven through daily life rather than confined to assemblies, yet the school is openly welcoming of girls of other faiths and none. An Equity, Diversity and Inclusion working group gives pupils a forum to share their own backgrounds, and the school hosts interfaith assemblies and student-led reflections during Ramadan alongside its weekly liturgies. Girls learn about a range of cultures, languages, and religions, and difference is treated here as ordinary rather than remarkable.

What distinguishes the place is the use of London itself. The City Curriculum sends girls out for fieldwork in Hyde Park, gallery and museum visits, and live theatre, on the principle that a school this central should make the capital part of its teaching week. The leadership frames its purpose as preparing young women to be the ethical leaders of tomorrow, and that ambition, paired with the school's scale, gives More House an unusually personal feel. For a daughter who would shrink in a crowd of a thousand, the case is straightforward: she will be seen here.

More House is academically inclusive, taking girls of a wide range of starting points, including a notable proportion with special educational needs and disabilities. Its results should be read in that light, and the school is candid that its strength lies in value added: it reports that girls gain roughly a grade on average across their subjects relative to where they began, outperforming schools with similar intakes.

At GCSE the picture is best understood through standing rather than a single number. The school holds an England rank of 3,539 and a local rank of 13 within Kensington and Chelsea, figures drawn from the proprietary FindMySchool rankings built from official data. That places GCSE performance below the England average, which is consistent with an inclusive intake rather than a highly selective one. The 2025 results released by the school showed 19% of grades at 8 to 9, 35% at grades 7 to 9, and 89% at grades 4 to 9, a solid set of outcomes for a cohort that does not cherry-pick on entry. The GCSE breadth is wide for a school this size, running from the three separate sciences and a full languages offering through to Business and Economics, drama, art and textiles, and an Extended Project Qualification.

The sixth form is the academic high point. In the most recent A-level series, 10.9% of grades were A*, 17.4% were A, and 28.3% were B, giving a combined A* to B figure of 56.5%. The England averages sit at 23.6% for A* to A and 47.2% for A* to B, so the school's A* to B share runs ahead of the England benchmark even as the very top grades remain below it. On the proprietary FindMySchool rankings the sixth form is ranked 1,497 in England and 10th locally in Kensington and Chelsea, a solid showing in line with the middle 35% of schools in England and a clear step up from the GCSE picture. The pattern is telling: girls tend to accelerate as the teaching becomes more individual and the groups smaller still.

For a school of around 120 pupils, the A-level range is striking. Beyond the academic core of maths, the sciences, English Literature, history, geography, and religious studies, girls can take Further Maths, Politics, Psychology, Drama and Theatre, and Art and Design or Textiles, with French, German, and Spanish all available to A-level. The school also enters girls for native-language examinations in Arabic, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Polish, and Russian, a reflection of an international intake and a willingness to flex around the individual. Music at A-level ranges across twentieth-century art music, world music, jazz, pop, and musical theatre, so even the smaller subjects carry genuine depth.

Teaching at More House leans on the one advantage a tiny school has in abundance, which is attention. Subject teachers have secure knowledge of their subjects and plan lessons around individual needs so that progress is steady. A supportive, positive classroom culture, built on praise, encouragement, and varied questioning, moves girls forward, and pupils treat mistakes as part of learning rather than something to fear, a culture that matters enormously for confidence in a small group where there is nowhere to hide. Digital skills are a feature across the curriculum, and the creative subjects of music, drama, and art are taught as a source of both discipline and release.

Provision for special educational needs is a genuine strength rather than an afterthought. The school is structured to support girls with a range of learning profiles, and they achieve well from their starting points. That same individualisation shapes the sixth form, where teaching in small groups allows feedback to become a continuous conversation, and where girls with high prior attainment are stretched through more challenging, independent work. Recent initiatives to promote independent thinking have been particularly well received by older students and by the most able lower down the school.

The one consistent caveat from the March 2024 inspection concerned consistency itself. The school was asked to embed its quality-assurance routines so that the strongest practice spreads evenly across departments, and to make written feedback in some subjects for Years 7 to 9 more timely, since feedback that arrives well after a lesson is less useful than the prompt, constructive marking already seen in the sixth form and in smaller groups lower down. It is a refinement rather than a fundamental flaw, and the school had already set the work in train.

More House spans three exit points, and the most significant is the move into Year 12 and on to university. Internal Year 11 students are not automatically promoted: sixth-form entry requires five GCSEs at grade 5 or above, including grade 5 in both English Language and Maths, and at least grade 6 in any subject a girl wishes to continue at A-level. The sixth form also recruits from outside, with its own admissions round each autumn.

For the 2023-24 leaving cohort of 19 students, 47% progressed to university and 11% to further education, with a smaller share moving into employment. The school itself reports that, in its most recent year, every leaver secured a place at her first-choice university, a striking outcome for a school of this size and a reflection of how individually the destinations process is handled. Sixth formers are guided through the Extended Project Qualification, where each girl sets her own research title, and through a careers and super-curricular programme that is extensive and benchmarked against the Gatsby standards. Girls are advised individually, with their parents, at every stage about further study and career options, and Year 10 pupils write CVs and letters as a prelude to work experience, so the apparatus of moving on is in place years before it is needed. The Ivy House Award in leadership and life skills adds a further layer of preparation for the world beyond school.

Within the school, progression from the Pre-Senior years into the senior school flows naturally, and the small scale means transitions are managed personally rather than administratively, with newcomers paired to older mentors as a matter of course.

More House is selective on paper but takes a broad view of what selection means. There are several entry points. Girls join the Pre-Senior section in Years 5 and 6, with applications accepted throughout the year and a Taster Day that combines an informal interview with leadership and assessments in Maths and English; pupils can start at the beginning of the Autumn, Spring, or Summer term. The main senior entry is at 11+, where More House is part of the London 11+ Consortium, a group of independent girls' schools that share a single entrance exam designed to test creative and critical thinking, analysis, and problem-solving rather than coached cognitive ability alone. A school reference and interview sit alongside the test. There is occasional entry into Years 8 to 11, and a dedicated sixth-form round.

For 11+ entry, the published timeline for 2027 entry runs to a registration deadline of Friday 6 November 2026, assessment on Tuesday 1 December 2026, a Selection Day in January 2027, offers on Friday 12 February 2027, and an acceptance deadline at noon on Wednesday 3 March 2027. Sixth-form applicants for 2026 entry registered by mid-November, interviewed in the week of 24 November, and received offers at the start of December. Open mornings typically run in late September and mid-October, so families should check the school directly for current dates.

Although More House is a Catholic foundation, it does not impose a Catholic practice requirement or a priest's reference for entry, and it admits girls of all faiths and none. The faith is part of the school's identity, not a gate on its admissions. Prospective families can use the FindMySchool map search to compare the school's location against their own home before committing to the registration process.

In a school this small, pastoral care is not a department, it is the texture of the day. Inspectors found that arrangements to safeguard pupils are effective, with a well-embedded safeguarding culture, well-trained staff, and leaders working closely with external agencies. Pupils' physical and mental health and emotional wellbeing met all the relevant standards.

The personal, social, health and economic programme and relationships and sex education are designed to build empathy and self-possession, and staff act as caring and encouraging role models. Mutual respect runs through the school, and girls are reported to gain confidence and self-esteem as their physical and mental wellbeing needs are met. The Catholic ethos gives this pastoral work a clear moral frame: Catholic Social Teaching, with its emphasis on dignity, solidarity, the common good, and care for creation, runs through the Faith in Action group, the weekly liturgies, the school's collaborative prayer, and the reflective prayer corners pupils have created in their form rooms. A steady stream of charitable projects, from Samaritan's Purse shoebox appeals to fair-trade fundraising and disaster-relief campaigns, turns that teaching into practice. The result is a school where wellbeing and character are taught as deliberately as any subject, and where a girl who needs noticing will be noticed.

For a school without a sprawling campus, More House makes its co-curricular life count, and three pillars stand out.

The house system is the engine of school spirit. Each house is led by an Upper Sixth House Captain who joins a formal leadership programme, and competitions run almost weekly through the year: Sports Day, an Engineering Challenge, netball and a Rounders Day, a House Talent Show, a House Entertainment Production, and quiz events. The point is participation over polish, with events pitched so that every girl can contribute to a collective effort, and the system deliberately mixes year groups so that older girls mentor younger ones and lead by planning assemblies, running noticeboards, and motivating their teams.

Creative arts are a real strength. Music, drama, and art are taught seriously, and aesthetic and creative education is one of the school's clear successes, giving girls both relaxation and a means of self-expression. The Creative Suite supports this work, drama runs through to A-level and theatre, and individual instrumental lessons across strings, woodwind, brass, guitar, drums, and singing are available for those who want to specialise. The breadth of the music programme, from classical study to jazz and musical theatre, means a girl can pursue performance seriously while keeping it as a release from academic pressure.

The City Curriculum is the school's signature. Rather than treat its small site as a limitation, More House uses Knightsbridge and the wider capital as teaching space, from gallery and museum visits to fieldwork in nearby parks and trips to live theatre. For sixth formers there is the Ivy House Award in leadership and life skills, alongside school roles from Head Girl to House Captain, student mentor, and School Ambassador, so that responsibility is something girls grow into rather than something handed out. Taken together, the pillars play to the school's strengths: not breadth of teams and ensembles, but depth of involvement, with almost every girl holding a role of some kind.

More House is a day school for girls aged 9 to 18, running on a standard school day with no boarding. Its position at 22 Pont Street, between Knightsbridge and Sloane Square, makes it one of the better-connected schools in central London: Knightsbridge and Sloane Square Underground stations are both within a short walk, and the location supports the daily use of the capital that defines the curriculum. Private music lessons are charged in addition to fees, and optional and curriculum trips can incur extra costs, so families should factor these into the overall picture. Wraparound care is not a published feature in the way it would be at a primary, and families wanting before- or after-school arrangements should confirm specifics with the school. Parents comparing options can use the FindMySchool local hub to view nearby schools side by side.

Scale cuts both ways. With roughly 120 girls, More House offers attention that larger schools cannot, but it cannot match their breadth of sports teams, subject sets, or peer group size. A daughter who wants a big, busy, competitive environment may find it too small.

Fees sit in the higher London tier. Day fees for Years 7 to 13 are £10,950 per term for 2025-26, and Years 5 to 6 are £7,800 per term, with a £150 registration fee. Scholarships and a limited number of bursaries exist, but families should plan for a significant and rising commitment.

The Catholic character is real. Faith is woven through the week through liturgies, prayer, and Catholic Social Teaching. The school welcomes all faiths and none, but families uncomfortable with regular worship and explicit religious teaching should look elsewhere.

GCSE results reflect an inclusive intake. Headline GCSE figures sit below the England average, in keeping with a school that does not select narrowly. The story is in the value added and in the sixth form, so read the outcomes against the starting points rather than against highly selective rivals.

More House is a school that knows exactly what it is: small, Catholic, individual, and unembarrassed by its size. Its strengths are real and specific. Pastoral care and safeguarding are sound, the sixth form lifts results above the England benchmark for A* to B grades, the value-added story is genuine, and the central London location is used with imagination through the City Curriculum. It is best suited to a girl who would thrive on being known by name, who wants personal attention and a strong moral framework, and whose family values character and confidence as much as raw league-table position. The main caveat is breadth: this is a deliberately tiny school at a high price point, and families seeking a large, high-octane, hyper-selective environment should weigh More House for what it offers rather than for what, by design, it does not.