How Harris Westminster conquered Oxbridge

Westminster School is being kept on its toes by its partner sixth-form college round the corner, Harris Westminster. There’s no imminent threat yet, in the ‘How many did you get into Oxbridge?’ stakes: last year, Westminster (private, £10,497 per term for day sixth-formers) got 71 of its pupils into Oxbridge, and Harris Westminster (state, £0 per term) got 36 in from a cohort about twice the size.

But watch those Oxbridge statistics draw closer to each other in the next few years, as Harris Westminster’s highly motivated and excellently taught students continue to soar, and Oxbridge colleges become ever more nervous of offering places to the (as they see it) over-entitled and over-advantaged privately educated middle classes.

How do I get my son or daughter into Harris Westminster? Well, you don’t. For a start, the teenagers do it themselves. Their motivation, not yours, is all. As James Handscombe, the principal, tells me, the 60-40 ratio of girls to boys is there from the moment of application because girls seem to be better at getting themselves organised to apply than boys of GCSE age.