Cokethorpe School

Cokethorpe is a school that gets the best out of children across the whole range of ability, not just those at the top. It is an independent co-educational day school in 150 acres of parkland outside Witney in Oxfordshire, about ten miles from Oxford, with a prep school of around a hundred children and a senior school of around five hundred. It uses its own year names, so a child arriving at eleven joins the First Form. Entry is at eleven and again at thirteen.

The house at the centre of the estate was built in 1709 for Sir Simon Harcourt, and Queen Anne visited in 1713, leaving behind the panelling in what is still called the Corinthian Room. The grounds are not ornamental. There is a six-hole golf course threaded between the rugby pitches, a climbing tower, woodland used for outdoor education, and a boathouse on the Thames rebuilt in 2023 with a classroom attached. The Good Schools Guide describes the school sitting in 'vast striped lawns, littered with ancient trees'.

New First Formers are not dropped into a house of eighteen-year-olds. The whole year goes into Lower House, which exists to get them settled before they move into one of the six senior houses, and every pupil has a tutor who handles the academic and the pastoral side together. Houses compete all year, including an inter-house Countdown played to a full room on Friday lunchtimes. The Guide's reviewer reckoned the school would 'challenge the high-flyer but scoop up the goofy younger sibling', and thought it had something for almost everyone other than 'rebels, children who thrive on competition' and tiger parents. It suits a child who wants to be outdoors and known by name.