For parents of pupils at Lambrook, a £30,000 per year prep school in Berkshire, having three royal children in class has been both a pleasure and a pain.
Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis are, by all accounts, popular and delightful children but their presence at the highly-regarded school near Ascot comes with baggage.
“I know that when the Royal Family joined Lambrook, for example, there were a few grumbles about just everything being tightened up and the loss of a very sweet, quite small, family-focused school,” Melanie Sanderson, managing editor of The Good Schools Guide, said.
“Suddenly gates were locked. It was harder to drop a forgotten item off. Sports day becomes a grander occasion. The carol service each year becomes a grander occasion. It just changes the dynamic of the school.”
It is something that the Prince and Princess of Wales are acutely aware of and they are grateful for the understanding of other families, according to those close to them. It is also something that parents contemplating sending their offspring to some of Britain’s top public schools are bearing in mind as George, who will be 12 on Tuesday, enjoys an eight-and-a-half-week summer holiday before starting his final year at Lambrook.
Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis (centre) with Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, at Lambrook School in 2022 (Photo: Jonathan Brady/Pool/Getty)
At summer gatherings all over the country, wealthy parents are trying to work out which school the future King will be attending in September 2026 and whether it will be a good or bad thing if their children are there too.
George’s fate is almost certainly already decided, but Kensington Palace shows no sign of wanting to make an announcement about it imminently. Some parents who know the Waleses are adamant that George is going to Eton, where his father Prince William and uncle Prince Harry were educated. It has always been the favourite, with the added benefit of close proximity to the family home at Adelaide Cottage, and Windsor Castle sits just across the Thames.
But others who move in royal circles are equally convinced he is headed for £59,143-a-year Marlborough College, his mother’s former school and a possible destination for his sister Charlotte, 10, and Louis, seven, when they are older. Some parents even think they know which house he will be in at Marlborough, perhaps repeating gossip in some newspaper reports, and have voiced similar excitement and apprehension about the possibility of the heir to the throne and his siblings being there.
William and Harry both attended Eton in the 1990s (Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA)
William and Kate, who have also been to look at University College School and Highgate School in north London, are so well versed in keeping secrets that nobody in the media can be sufficiently sure to stake their reputation on it yet. But their choice for George may say something interesting about him and also about how our young royals are educated in the 21st century.
His late great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, was educated at home. King Charles was sent to his father’s old spartan boarding school, Gordonstoun, which he once suggested he hated but later said he had enjoyed. What will be the best education to prepare George for a life of service to his country?
As the eldest of three and with much of his future mapped out before him, George appears to be the serious one, but we don’t actually really know that much about him.
His parents have tried to fill in a few of the gaps down the years by dropping little stories about all three of the children into their conversations while out on official engagements. But what do we really know about our future king?
We know he is sporty, enjoying playing and watching football particularly, and that one of his favourite songs last year was Thunderstruck by AC/DC. But his last recorded favourite subject at school was Earth sciences, studying volcanoes, when he was seven in 2020.
His parents, anxious to protect him from the intrusive childhood that both William and Harry endured, may not worry too much about that of course. Part of the argument is that the more normal a childhood their three children can have now, the better adjusted they will be to tackle life in the public spotlight when they are older.
William at Eton College in 2000 (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty)
Joe Little, a veteran royal watcher and managing editor at Majesty magazine since 1999, wonders whether George’s personality and a more informal style of royalty these days means certain types of school may be better suited to an often serious-looking and self-aware boy. “I just have that feeling that it won’t be Eton,” he said. “I wonder whether it will be too elitist or too fuddy-duddy for a future king in the 21st century. My money is on Marlborough.”
Marlborough, a co-ed boarding school occupying 250 acres in the Wiltshire market town, is sporty and is strong in the arts with a list of alumni that includes not only Kate and her Middleton siblings, Pippa and James, but also Princess Eugenie, Samantha Cameron, comedian Jack Whitehall and, going back further, William Morris, John Betjeman, Louis MacNeice, Siegfried Sassoon, and the Oscar-winning screenwriter, actress and director Emerald Fennell.
However, Sanderson is fairly confident that George is going to Eton, a boys-only school for the global elite where the fees for boarders are now £63,297 per year. “One of the things that the Royal Family have got to really take into consideration is the security arrangements, and one of the reasons that I think he will go to Eton – that’s my guess – is they are well versed there in educating senior royals,” she said.
She also cited the opportunity to meet others from a global elite, and how the social background of the pupils and their parents will make them more comfortable around royalty.
There is another factor that has not really been brought up until now, she believes: “We’ve got to really remember that, aside from being directly in line to the throne and being our king, George is also going to be the head of the Church of England. In terms of that real and very genuine religious education and approach to practising the Christian faith, I think Eton has got the edge in compulsory chapel.”
Charles on his first day at Gordonstoun in 1962 (Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty)
Sanderson also insists that in an age when younger royals are expected to be able to mix with people from all backgrounds, schools like Eton or Marlborough are suited to any personality and offer enough opportunity to meet the less privileged. “In most of the schools they’ll be looking at they’ll be sent out into primary schools, old people’s homes, they’ll be sent out to work in charity shops,” Sanderson said.
“The focus on service and understanding one’s privilege and how that fits into the greater context of society is such a big part of a public school education now. It’s not like it was for the Queen, being locked away in an ivory tower.”
There are alternatives, such as UWC Atlantic, a £37,500-a-year boarding school founded by Prince Philip’s mentor Kurt Hahn, who set up Gordonstoun. The school, which is housed in an 800-year-old castle in Llantwit Major, South Wales and has been dubbed a hippy Hogwarts, teaches the International Baccalaureate and is popular with the Dutch, Spanish, Belgian and Jordanian royal families. But it has not been on British royalty’s list.
Or, God forbid, could William and Kate send George to a state school? There are plenty of good ones and might it not be a good idea for the second in line to the throne to mix with people from more ordinary backgrounds? Some have wondered if he could at least do a term at a state school, in the same way that King Charles spent two terms at the Timbertops campus of Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia, in 1966.
But even the most enthusiastic supporters of state schools recognise that the practicalities might make it difficult. State schools, whether selective or comprehensive, are not set up to house the security that can be accommodated in an independent school to provide protection, they say, and most headteachers would simply not have the time to cope with the sort of sideshow a royal pupil would bring.
Prince George, bottom left, at the Wimbledon final with his sister and mother (Photo: Ray Tang/Anadolu
The Campaign for State Education does not have a formal policy on educating royals, but Michael Pyke, its spokesman, recognised the difficulties, particularly over security. “Ideally, it would be nice to see royal children at a state school,” he said, before raising security problems. “As long as we’ve got a Royal Family some crackpot somewhere is going to see them as a target.”
But, he like others, mentioned perhaps the biggest issue for any parents choosing a school for their children: George and his siblings, like any pupils, will want to feel happy and comfortable, surrounded by friends. That probably means by young people from a similar social background. “I suppose they’d have to take some of their friends from prep school with them,” Pyke said.