Lingfield College is an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

day school situated in Lingfield in the English county of Surrey, for pupils aged two to eighteen. It was originally a boarding school for girls and became fully

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...

in 1996. As of 2022 there are approximately 940 pupils at the School spread over two sites situated next to one another: the Prep School and the

Senior School A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

. The School is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses Conference.

History

Lingfield College was founded in 1940 by three members of the Roman Catholic School Sisters of Notre Dame as an all-girls school. They had arrived from

Faversham Faversham is a market town in Kent, England, from London and from Canterbury, next to the Swale, a strip of sea separating mainland Kent from the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary. It is close to the A2, which follows an ancient Briti ...

, Kent with fourteen young evacuees and set up a school. The School originally occupied houses in Lingfield, before the purchase of Batnors Hall (the current site of the Prep School) and Ivy House (the current site of the Senior School), both on the edge of the village, and close by to

Lingfield Racecourse Lingfield Park Racecourse (commonly referred to as Lingfield) is a horse racing course at Lingfield in Surrey, United Kingdom. It is owned by the ARC Racing and Leisure Group, formerly Arena Leisure Plc. Lingfield is best known as a winter a ...

. Ivy House was renamed Le Clerc House, after Alix Le Clerc, the founder of the sixteenth-century order from which the

Sisters A sister is a woman or a girl who shares one or more parents with another individual; a female sibling. The male counterpart is a brother. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to ...

' congregation was descended. The School was expanded over both sites in the 1950s and 1960s; however by the early 1980s, a decline in vocations made the Sisters feel the need to focus their now more limited resources elsewhere in the world. They left Lingfield in 1986. The School's governance was turned over to a lay educational trust, after which boarding was discontinued and lay senior staff and a board of governors were appointed to replace the Sisters. In 1996 the school became fully co-educational, after the appointment of Nuala Shepley as Head Mistress in 1992. In 2011, Nuala Shepley retired and Richard Bool (formerly of Ardingly College and Sherborne) was appointed as the new Headmaster.

House System

Lingfield has four School Houses, originally named after the Saints and renamed in September 2013 to Bell, Clubb, Higgins and Yeates as a mark of respect and gratitude to the four original Trustees who created the charitable trust after the Notre Dame Sisters. Pupils in the Senior School are assigned to one of the four houses when they start at the School.

GCSE, iGCSE and A Level

At GCSE or

iGCSE The International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) is an English language based examination similar to GCSE and is recognised in the United Kingdom as being equivalent to the GCSE for the purposes of recognising prior attain ...

most students normally take seven compulsory subjects and choose three further options. Students typically study three subjects at

A Level The A-Level (Advanced Level) is a subject-based qualification conferred as part of the General Certificate of Education, as well as a school leaving qualification offered by the educational bodies in the United Kingdom and the educational au ...

but have the option to choose four. This may be a combination of A Levels and BTECs.

School Charities 2022

Prep School Charity is Wildlife Aid Foundation Senior School Charity is Bone Cancer Research Trust

References

School Sisters of Notre Dame

Sister Gisela's
story

External links

School websiteISI Reports 2017 and 2020Profile
on the

Headmasters Conference The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) is an association of the head teachers of 361 independent schools (both boarding schools and day schools), some traditionally described as public schools. 298 Members are based in the Uni ...

website
Profile
on the

Independent Schools Council The Independent Schools Council (ISC) is a non-profit lobby group that represents over 1,300 schools in the United Kingdom's independent education sector. The organisation comprises seven independent school associations and promotes the bus ...

website
Overview
on the Charities Commission website
Profile
on the Muddy Stilettos website {{authority control Independent schools in Surrey Educational institutions established in 1940 1940 establishments in England School Sisters of Notre Dame schools