Godolphin School

"Boarding at Godolphin offers students a dynamic and safe community where they are able to build friendships for life, live and work together as part of a team, and where kindness, graciousness and compassion enable them to become confident young people in a contemporary world."

Our aims:

• To ensure that boarders and Sarums of all ages feel part of the boarding community, enabling them to overcome any challenges that may arise.
• To build an atmosphere of openness and trust, encouraging students to show tolerance and respect.
• To create opportunities for students to show leadership and to develop initiative, interests and talents within the houses, the school and the wider community through an extensive activity programme.
• To ensure that the ethos in individual houses makes a positive contribution to the students’ educational experience, facilitating high academic standards.
• To maintain a safe, attractive living and working environment within the houses and to ensure that school resources are readily available to boarders.
• To offer a consistently high standard of care and support, by working in partnership with parents and guardians

Walters House, Junior Boarding House
Walters is Godolphin’s Junior boarding house. This friendly environment for students aged eight to thirteen is a modern, airy, open-plan building, it is a base for all First and Second Years, and home to our boarders who sleep in cosy, bunk-bedded dormitories. It is a busy, happy environment with a warm, family atmosphere and the students enjoy living, working, learning and having fun together.

Housemistress Reyes Avila is supported by Resident Tutor Maddie Llewellin, Day Matron Paula Smith and Non-resident House Tutor, Wendy Laptain. The staff are a close knit team to whom the students’ wellbeing is of paramount importance.

This lively, home from home junior environment has many age-appropriate facilities including a games room, a work room, a well-equipped kitchen, a spacious communal sitting room, changing and locker rooms. We are also lucky enough to be able to offer a flexi-boarding opportunity to day students who may wish to try out boarding life by staying overnight.

Cooper House, Senior Boarding House
Copper House is our Senior Boarding house and accommodates our Day Students (Sarums), mid-week, weekly and full boarders from Third to Fifth Year.

The heart of the house is the common room, known as the Sit and this is where students congregate for biscuits at break, house meetings and other evening activities such as dance and sing-alongs with the Wii. There is also a fully equipped Games Room, where students challenge each other to table tennis. All students have the use of the dining hall in the evening, where they chat over tea and toast until bedtime.

There is plenty of space and opportunity for everyone to share and get to know one another: everyone changes dorm each term. The Fifth Year are accommodated in single, double and triple studies, the most popular with their own en-suite bathrooms. Many choose to board weekly in the run up to the GCSE exams as they make the most of every minute of revision time.

Students are cared for by a team of house staff – led by Vicky Wilson (Housemistress) and Resident Tutors Chelsea Nasmyth-Miller & Katherine Ingram. The team maintain a constant presence in the house and, most evenings, the house office can be filled to the brim with students hanging out, handing in their electronics and raiding the ‘Cupboard of Love’, home of biscuits and popcorn.