Milton Keynes Preparatory School
The ‘second home’ that allows children to fl ourish
If life is shaped by circumstances, there are hundreds of children over the years who have had their lives shaped by the circumstances Hilary Pauley found herself in just over 50 years ago. At home with three children under the age of four, and with no
thoughts of doing anything other than staying at home and being a housewife and mother, a complicated house move saw Hilary start something that became one of Milton Keynes’ leading prep schools. Today, Milton Keynes Preparatory School and Nursery
provides a happy environment in which children can fl ourish both academically and on their journey to becoming fully rounded individuals who have the confi dence and social skills to be ‘the best they can be’. With around 450 pupils and more than 100 staff , the school is one
of the largest independent prep schools in the area, and its size refl ects the ambitions of the school, where teachers are not only specialists in their subjects but also play an important role in the wraparound care that was the driving force in the school’s earliest days. Hilary Pauley explained: “We moved to Leighton Buzzard
because of my husband’s job and although I was a qualifi ed teacher, I fully intended being at home with the children for a few years. But property issues soon made it clear that I was going to have to earn some money.
“After a memorable interview to be a teacher in a local state school,
when I couldn’t get childcare and had to take my children with me, and then watched the headmistress’s face as three small boys wreaked havoc in her offi ce, I realised that it wasn’t going to be easy! “So instead, we moved the whole family upstairs, converted the
ground fl oor of our house and opened a nursery. In those days, very few mothers went out to work and I thought it would be a place for children to simply come and play. But times were changing, and women were starting to go back to work after having children, and I soon began to get requests for longer hours, and to extend the age range to include babies.” Having seen the business grow into a busy nursery in a larger
building in Leighton Buzzard, and seeing that many children were reluctant to leave her nursery at four or fi ve to go to school, Hilary decided to extend provision further, bought land in the fl ourishing new town of Milton Keynes nearby, and Milton Keynes Preparatory School opened and grew the age range to children up to 11 years old. Even for an experienced teacher, it was a steep learning curve for
Hilary as she worked with the Department for Education to navigate the process of setting up a school, from the accounts and regulations to developing a curriculum, and setting down values that have led to many pupils describing the school as a ‘second home’. “I’d never worked in an independent prep school before, so I
just did what I thought was right,” said Hilary. “From the early days I wanted children to have teachers who were passionate about their subjects and to make learning fun. At this stage of a child’s education, teachers aren’t always subject specialists, but we have English, Maths, sports, art, and a range of other specialist teachers, and their passion for their subject shines through. Children pick up on that, and through it fi nd their own particular skills and passions.
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