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03 October 2024
by Ferdinand Steinbeis

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English Boarding Schools In Profile: Repton School, Sports-Powerhouse & Full-Blood Boarding School

Hello from a rainy Richmond!
How time flies. It’s October already. After an intensely busy September at von Bülow Education HQ, we have firmly arrived in the new school year. The summer holidays are but a distant memory. 
But still very vivid in our memory is our last school visit before the summer holidays. We took the train up from Richmond to Derby to visit Repton School. Repton enjoys a nigh legendary status up and down the island as a formidable sporting powerhouse. And yet, there’s so much more to Repton than excellent sports, as we found out again that day. 
Read on and share our enthusiasm for this fabulous boarding school. 
The stunning inner courtyard at Repton's Priory
The Setting
Our journey to Repton School took no more than two hours from Central London. We boarded a direct train at Euston Station to Derby, then took a taxi for the ten-minute car journey to Repton.
Repton School is ‘baked’ into the picturesque 2500-people village of the same name in country Derbyshire. The school takes up around 100 houses, which include school facilities, boarding houses, even staff accommodation. So, not quite a village campus, but close.   
View from Repton's Priory onto the garden
We stepped through The Arch, the school’s main gate, onto Repton School’s “old” campus, the former site of a 12th century Augustinian Priory. This part of school is simply stunning in all its romantic, medieval glory. Cobble stoned pathways lead past immaculately kept lawns adorned with rose bushes, sports fields and the Old Priory, home to Repton’s school library. For anyone looking for a boarding school with real atmosphere, Repton’s the place for you!
Repton's amazing Science Building
But of course it’s not all medieval buildings. Repton School has some of the most attractive modern buildings we’ve seen at any boarding school in Great Britain. In fact, a key feature of this school is its beautiful mix of old and new buildings. We were especially taken by the Science Building, which is a stunning, angular glass building complete with state-of-the-art laboratories, a lecture hall that allows for 3D image projection, an electric car workshop and an observatory. Stunning!
Science Building with Repton's coat of arms
The closest international airport to Repton School is Birmingham Airport, which is 45 minutes away. Derby, 10 minutes by car from school, sports hourly trains to London Euston Station. 
Immaculate lawns: Repton's cricket pitches
What (we think!) Repton School is all about
For us at von Bülow Education, Repton School is a proper all-singing-all-dancing, all-rounder British boarding school. It has excellent academics, some of the best sports in the country, amazing performing arts and music and, very importantly, lots of happy full boarders! Pupils even eat in their boarding houses, which accentuates this full-blood boarding school spirit even more. Really, British boarding at its finest.
Cricket pavillion: cricket is one of the performance sports here
Moreover, Repton School is a proper sporting power-house. Few schools in the UK can claim as many successes in as many different sports as Repton can. Especially hockey, football, cricket, swimming and tennis are all of an extremely high competitive standard here - for boys AND girls! In fact, it is especially Repton School’s First Girls Hockey team that is feared among hockey teams up and down the country. At the same time, the school offers sports for everyone, including children that just want to do it for fun. 
Old school: In-house dining still en vogue here!
Lastly, we were again struck by how grounded, happy and caring Repton School seemed to us. Granted, we visited just before the summer holidays, where most schools present themselves at their most relaxed . At Repton School however, this struck us as even more pronounced. Everyone we met that day was friendly and seemed genuinely happy to be at the school. Repton School’s website talks about wanting to provide pupils with a ‘balanced’ experience. We think it ‚walks the walk‘ in this regard!
Reptons beautiful library
The Academics
Repton School is producing impressive academic results without being a hothouse. In 2024, 58 per cent of GCSE results were grades 9-7. 42 per cent of A-Level results were A or A star. Given that the school is neither overly selective nor especially pushy, these are great results. 
The school’s GCSE subject choices are fairly run-of-the-mill with all typical subjects offered and French, German and Spanish as modern languages. Latin and Greek are also on offer - even if demand in classics is increasingly lacking. Two years ago, one of the boys we placed at Repton School had a 1-on-1 Latin class for an entire year. (He might have had mixed feelings about it, but parents told us that returned to his school in Germany a veritable latin-ace!)
View from the Science Building
We are especially impressed with Repton School’s natural sciences provision. The Science Priory, Repton’s impressive science department is one of the best-equipped we know. With 14 specialist science classroom, a 200 seat lecture theatre complete with 3D projector (we even got a little demonstration: a human heart in 3D right before our noses!), an extensive science resource library and observatory, Repton’s pupils will be spoilt for a lot of universities in the UK! But as we all know, ultimately it’s about the teachers. “They are amazing here!”, two boys we bump into on the corridors reassure us. “It’s the great chat with the head of Biology that made me choose Repton, actually”, one of them added. More anecdotal than scientific feedback on the teachers, but we found this chat very encouraging!
A chemistry lab
Lastly, Repton College is a Microsoft Showcase School and has invested considerable money in upgrading the school’s digital infrastructure. Most classrooms have been kitted out with digital boards. Anything teachers write on these uploads automatically to pupils’ laptops and tablets. 
The schools fabulous theatre
The Extracurriculars
We’d be remiss not to start with Repton’s phenomenal sports offer. It is safe to say that the school’s elite sports programmes in hockey, swimming, tennis, football, cricket are some of the very best in the United Kingdom at the moment. This is probably also the reason that you will find Repton School in either the finals or winning trophies for most of these sports at the major tournaments year-in-year out. In hockey alone the school has won 49 National Hockey Titles, which is far more than any other British school. Six former Reptonians participated in Team UK in this year’s Olympic Games in France, including in hockey, swimming and tennis. 
The indoor hockey pitch
Needless to say, a stellar sports provision requires stellar facilities. Repton School has these in its impressive Sports Center, which includes two astroturf hockey pitches, a fully-fitted indoor hockey pitch, two indoor tennis courts, 12 outdoor tennis courts, a 25 meter indoor swimming pool and a massive gym for strength- and conditioning training. Six full-time sports coaches train with Repton’s athletes, sometimes seven days a week. They have state-of-the-art sensor and video equipment at their disposal to track the pupils’ performance. All hugely impressive! 
Repton's electric race kart
But we wouldn’t call Repton School an all-rounder school if sports was all that was on offer. Repton’s stunning 315-seat theatre is the place where all passionate thespians come into their own. When we visited, pupils were busy with a dress rehearsal for an end-of-year performance. The play had been written by one of the 6th Formers, who was now directing it. We left hugely impressed by the acting, the directing and the technical production - all after five-minute peek! The school brings at least two major theatre or musical productions a term to the stage. That excludes house plays, GCSE- and A-Level- as well as LAMDA-productions. 
The school's theatre once more
Repton School’s music offer is impressive also. Over 50% of pupils practice an instrument here, which, we thought, was surprisingly high given how busy almost everyone is with sports activities. The purpose-built Beldam Hall is where the magic happens. Its concert and rehearsal hall is stage to the Repton School’s orchestra, jazz band, several choirs (Chapel Choir performs annually at the BBC Radio 4’s Daily Service Programme) and several pop and rock bands. Other parts to the Beldam Hall house a fully-equipped recording studio, 18 practice rooms, and several Steinway pianos. 
One of the hockey astroturf pitches
And since we are on the topic of creative pursuits: Repton School’s art department is absolute class! Made up of five separate yet connected, well-lit studio spaces, pupils engage in projects spanning photography, fashion design all the way to designing architectural models and making their own films and podcasts. A novelty even for us (as you know we visit lots of schools!) is Repton School’s Fashion Show. This is a biennial event where pupils get to showcase their own fashion designs. From millinery, to leatherwork, classic evening-wear to futuristic pieces - there are no limits to what’s on show here. Pupils also model the pieces and produce the show, including sound, lighting and staging. Very cool!
Always well kept!
And finally, like any boarding school worth its salt, Repton School has an array of clubs pupils can join. Popular ones include CCF (army or RAF), Duke of Edinburgh, chess, debating, but there are many, many more!
The school's stunning chapel
The Boarding
Repton School is, what we at von Bülow Education consider, a proper boarding school. With over 70 per cent boarders. Full boarding only, so no flexi- or weekly boarding here.
Boarders are housed in 10 boarding houses, which are spread around the village but are all within five minutes walking-distance from campus proper. There are six boys houses and four girls houses.
View from School House boarding house
Repton is maintaining an ever rarer boarding tradition: in-house dining. The school has no central dining hall. Everyone eats all three meals in their boarding house. We love this tradition. It creates a strong house identity and good bonds between the pupils. Also, pupils get to practice their small-talk skills with grown-ups as teachers and school staff come take their meals at the boarding houses.
Lots of space: One of the double rooms in School House
We ate lunch at School House, a boys boarding house. As our visit was on a Friday, we were served very decent Fish & Chips for mains and a delicious treacle tart for desert. A fairly run-of-the-mill boarding school meal, but the food was definitely a notch above what we get elsewhere. But our highlight was chatting to the very sociable boys, who were curious, friendly and fun. We even met a couple of boys that had chosen Repton for drama and music, not sport!  
School House common room
After lunch, the very affable, impressive School House housemaster Mr Goudge took us around his house. The rooms were spacious and in very good repair. Communal rooms were cozy and complete with pool- and table-tennis tables. And as you’d expect from a sports-mad school like Repton, School House has its own fully equipped gym. Go figure!
At Repton School pupils share rooms with up to four other until Y10. Then it’s two years of two-bed rooms. In 6th Form everyone gets single rooms.
A deserted single room at School House
Week-ends consist of Saturday School until lunch-time, followed by sports events in the afternoon. Sundays are free with optional entertainment offered, which include activities like shopping in nearby Derby, go-karting, paint-balling, theatre trips to Birmingham and London and in summer regular barbeques on school campus. Two boys told us that they often shun all this just to be able to chill with their friends, order pizza in and play computer games. And after the weeks they have, can anyone blame them?
And it wouldn't be Repton without a gym in boarding house...
In the early 2000s Repton was red-listed at von Bülow Education due to an unresolved investigation into historic complaints about safeguarding issues. In the meantime an independent commission was appointed and has declared Repton School as completely safe. A recent set of ISI reports reconfirms this here. ISI report: https://www.isi.net/institutions/school/repton-school-6835A
Overall came away hugely impressed by how much effort Repton School is putting into its pastoral care provision. The school has a dedicated Wellbeing Team (which even includes a beautiful whippet dog to keep unhappy kids company!) which works closely with houseparents, teachers and tutors to ensure that everyone is doing well psychologically - or getting help if they aren’t.
The Priory
Who, we think, would be suited to Repton School
No doubt that Repton School is heaven on earth for any super sporty youngster. But that’s only one part of Repton’s considerable appeal. As one of the lads we had lunch with put it: „ I didn’t come for the sports. In fact I am probably the least sporty person in school! I chose Repton because it offered me a bit of everything plus a proper home away from home“. We think that sums up the school much better than lazy tropes about hockey trophies!
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