We welcome visits from parents who are considering Bassett House for their child.  We hold open events two or three times a year.  Our next open event will be on Thursday, 5 October 2017, from 6-8pm and you are very welcome to come along.  Please let us know (by emailing Thalia, our registrar, at registrar@bassetths.org.uk) if you plan on coming. If you don’t want to wait that long or prefer the opportunity to spend more time with Mrs Cawthorne, the headmistress, she would be happy to give you a private tour during the school week so that you can see us in action and ask all the questions you have. 

Please register your child before coming on a private tour: see the Entrance Procedure section below which tells you how.  Once you have registered, we will acknowledge your registration and invite you for a private tour.

For location details and a map see the Contact Us page.

Contact Us

Register and visit

You might like to come to one of our open days or evenings.  You’ll find more information about coming to see Bassett House under the VISIT US section above. Afterwards, if you are interested in sending your child to Bassett House, please register him/her. Registration has two steps: completing the ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM and paying the registration fee of £100 per child. (Alternatively, you can fill in a hard copy form, available from Thalia Demetriades, our registrar, telephone +44 20 8969 0313, and arrange payment by bank transfer or credit/debit card.)  By registering you are formalising your interest in Bassett House and you are securing your child’s position on the waiting list for your chosen start date.  We will acknowledge your registration.  If you have not already attended an open day or evening, we will then invite you to join a private tour. 

Once you’ve registered and visited us, the next thing that happens depends on your particular circumstances. 

Offers for children starting aged 3 or 4

If you have registered and  visited and your child is coming in at the start of the academic year in September to our standard entry points of the Den (aged 3) or Lower 1 (aged 4), you have completed your parts of our entrance procedure and so just need to await an offer of a place for your child.  Places are offered in registration order with priority given to brothers and sisters of children already at the school. In terms of timing, when you will receive an offer depends on how long it is before your child is due to start at Bassett House. For those children registered when they are babies, offers of places are sent out by post about 16 months before the child is due to start.

Offers for older children

If you wish your child to join Lower 1 (Reception) after Christmas of that year, we will offer him or her a taster session in the classroom.  This lets us consider whether your child will fit in with the existing class.  This is not an academic selection procedure: the vast majority of children will fit in well with their peer group which is all we require of them. Thalia, our registrar, will then let you know if and when you can expect to receive an offer.

If your child wishes to join further up the school, please contact Thalia, our registrar, to find out whether a place might be available in the relevant year group.  If it is, the school will then invite your child to undertake an assessment to establish your child’s level of attainment (focusing on mathematics and English) to determine whether your child will be a good fit for the class.  This allows the school to judge whether your child will be able to fully access the curriculum that the intended class is following.  Thalia will then let you know if and when you can expect to receive an offer.

How to accept a place

When you receive your offer, you will also be given instructions on how to accept the offer.  In brief, this will involve:

• Returning the acceptance form, agreeing to the terms of the contract with the school.
• Making a payment of the amount indicated on the offer letter.
• If it applies to you (this will depend on which year group your child is going into and the timing of your offer), making a further payment by direct debit in the February before your child starts.
• On your child’s first day at Bassett House, paying (via direct debit) the balance of fees for the first term at the rate that then applies, along with a deposit of £2,500. (The school will return the deposit to you when your child leaves Bassett House, so long as the school has received payment of all monies due.)

The total amount you will pay before your child starts will be a term’s fees (at the rate which applies when the payment(s) fall due) plus the deposit.

Your queries

We have tried to keep the entrance process as straightforward as we can, but we know it can seem quite complex.  We are here to help.  If you would like to discuss any aspect of admission, please contact our registrar, Thalia Demetriades, by emailing registrar@bassetths.org.uk or by calling +44 20 8969 0313.

Admissions Policy

The above is a summary of our Admissions Policy.  You can access the full Admissions Policy (which takes precedence over this summary) via this link: 

ADMISSIONS POLICY

REGISTER ONLINE

The fees under Scheme T are payable in a single lump sum collected by direct debit on the first day of term.

The fees under Scheme M are payable in four equal instalments collected by direct debit as follows:

Autumn term – the first working day of August, September, October and November.

Spring term – the first working day of December, January, February and March.

Summer term – the first working day of April, May, June and July.

(Charges for any extras, for example optional subjects, are added to the second instalment.)

A deposit of £2,500 is payable upon entry to the school. This is returned when the child leaves the school, subject to the school having received payment of all sums due to it.

*LOCAL AUTHORITY GRANT AND CHILDCARE VOUCHERS: For children under 5 years of age on the first day of the month in which a term begins, the fees shown above will be reduced by the amount of the Local Authority Grant (otherwise known as the Minimum Funding Entitlement, Nursery Education Grant or Early Education Childcare Place funding) (£1,005.55 for the Autumn Term 2017) paid by the local authority to the school. Because the administration of the Local Authority Grant scheme by a school is a complex burden, not all schools participate in the scheme but Bassett House chooses to do so as a service to the parents of our youngest children. How much longer the school will continue to do this cannot be guaranteed, although the school intends to continue to participate in the scheme for as long as reasonably possible. Where such grant is paid to the school, the actual fees payable to the school by parents for the Autumn Term 2017 are therefore £1,889.45 (Scheme M) or £1,834.45 (Scheme T) for a child in the Den attending mornings only, and £4,784.45 (Scheme M) or £4,674.45 (Scheme T) for a child in the Den attending all day and for a child in Lower 1.

The school accepts most companies’ childcare vouchers. It expects also to be able to accept payments under the government’s tax-free childcare scheme to be introduced from September 2017. 

Charges for optional subjects, clubs etc

MUSIC (INDIVIDUAL LESSONS)

Piano, singing, guitar, violin, flute, clarinet, saxophone, drum kit, ukelele and creative music
(ten lessons each of 30 minutes) £241

Recorder (ten lessons each of 20 minutes) £166

BALLET/DANCE (ten group lessons each of 30 minutes) £145

PRE-SCHOOL AND AFTER-SCHOOL CLUBS from £115

SPECIAL NEEDS TUITION Each half-hour from £33

NOTE: Fees are inclusive of mid-morning milk and lunch (except for those children in the Den who attend for mornings only) and most outings but do not include any residential trips.

To download our fees sheet, please click here.

House Schools Trust is an independent charity that raises funds and awards means-tested scholarships to bright and promising children whose parents would not otherwise be able to consider sending them to an independent fee-paying school. Means-tested scholarships are available, as funds permit, for children aged 7+. Candidates must currently be attending a state school and must have the right to reside in the UK. The scholarships are for places at one of the three schools in the House Schools Group, Bassett House in North Kensington, Orchard House in Chiswick and Prospect House in Putney. For more information, please visit houseschoolstrust.org.

house schools trust