Prince George’s future school has been chosen, and it has some unusual, and some great, rules.
The son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge won’t follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by attending the all-boys Wetherby School in the centre of London for prep. Instead, Kensington Palace has told The Telegraph newspaper that George, pictured below at Christmas, will go to Thomas’s Battersea, a day school that is attended by girls as well as boys and focuses on the arts, sports and outdoors.
A palace spokesman said: “Their Royal Highnesses are delighted to have found a school where they are confident George will have a happy and successful start to his education.”
According to its website, Thomas’s most important rule is ‘be kind.’
The Telegraph reports that the school also discourages children from having ‘best friends’ as that can lead to hurt feelings.
A statement by the headmaster Ben Thomas on the school’s site makes the point that Thomas’s focuses more on producing well-rounded humans than pint-sized academics.
“Whilst we are proud of our record of senior school entrance and scholarship successes, we place a greater emphasis on a set of core values, which include kindness, courtesy, confidence, humility and learning to be givers, not takers,” he writes.
The move is a break from royal tradition of sending the princes to boys-only schools, including Princes William and Harry, pictured below in their Wetherby uniforms with their mother Princess Diana in 1989. Prince Charles, his father and brothers all went to Gordonstoun in Scotland, a tough environment that Charles once described as “Colditz in kilts.”