6 | Acquisition International, Business Excellence Awards 2026 Best Independent Prep School 2026 – South London Dulwich Prep & Senior offers families proven preparation, excellent opportunities, and the reassurance that every boy is known, supported, and challenged.” Based in South London, Dulwich Prep & Senior is a premier-choice independent school that offers a co-educational nursery for ages two to four, and an independent boys’ education from Reception to GCSE. The school combines the strengths of a warm, leading preparatory education with a distinctive, deliberately small and nurturing senior school option. Central to the philosophy at Dulwich is the concept of education that is tailored to how growing boys learn and develop. The school has a deep understanding of boys’ developmental stages, energy levels, and learning styles, and has leveraged this knowledge to create an environment that is designed to help them thrive. It combines outstanding teaching, exceptional pastoral care, and a strong focus on wellbeing to ensure that its pupils develop the skills and mindset necessary for the next phase of school life and beyond. “When families first consider boys-only education, questions naturally arise,” stated Louise. “In an increasingly co-educational world, why choose a single-sex school? At Dulwich Prep & Senior, the answer lies not in limiting boys’ experiences, but in expanding them. In an environment designed to help boys flourish, pupils can discover their full potential without feeling constrained by expectations or stereotypes.” Dulwich’s approach to creating this environment is rooted in its eight core values: Love, Courage, Gratitude, Humility, Justice, Service, Self-Discipline, and Honesty. This values-led framework is especially important, as far too many men and boys struggle to name emotions, ask for help, or find a space in which they can feel vulnerable. When boys learn to speak meaningfully about Love, Service, and Humility, they develop emotional literacy at a young age. As a result, these values become a bridge to deeper conversations about wellbeing and mental health, building habits that can last a lifetime. Rather than channelling pupils into narrow ideas of masculinity, Dulwich’s values teach them that strength includes kindness and leadership means lifting others. The school’s extensive co-curricular programme provides pupils with breadth in addition to depth, with more than 150 co-curricular club and activity sessions held each week. Clubs are grouped into the categories of sports, music, creative, academic, and cognitive enrichment, with examples including Amnesty International, Coding, Dodgeball, Drumming, Greek, Orchestra, Lego, Snooker, Young Writers, Yoga, and many more. The outcomes of this forward-thinking approach speak for themselves: Dulwich Prep & Senior has awarded seen more than 350 scholarships awarded since 2020, and 95% of boys secured their first-choice senior school. Yet beyond any metric, the school boasts something much more profound: a thriving community of boys who feel known, supported, and challenged; who have built friendships for life; and have been empowered to speak openly about what matters most to them. September 2025 saw the launch of Dulwich’s new senior school provision, with a deliberately small senior school comprising a maximum of 60 boys per each year group. This new offering provides the community with an alternative option to the traditional secondary education route, which typically offers larger year-group cohorts of more than 200 students. Of this expansion, Louise commented: “Taking this different approach enables us to really know every pupil and their family, tailoring our support where it matters most and providing a nurturing environment where every boy can be himself.” She continued: “We put heart into every part of a child’s journey. We don’t ask boys to fit a mould; we give them space to discover their own shape. That is the promise of values-led, boys-only education done right: not limitation but liberation.” For this pupil-centred, modernised approach to comprehensive boys’ education, Dulwich Prep & Senior has been named South London’s Best Independent Prep School 2026. We at Acquisition International magazine would like to congratulate the school on this well-earned success and wish the team luck in another year of delivering exceptional education! Contact: Stephen Gudgeon Company: Dulwich Prep & Senior Web Address: www.dulwichprepsenior.org.uk A pupil’s transition from classroom to career requires an in-depth education that covers every facet of modern life. This is becoming especially true for boys, who often face various challenges later in life due to not learning about emotions, vulnerability, and mental health. Dulwich Prep & Senior has set out to change this, with an outstanding academic and co-curricular educational programme that places each individual boy’s development at the heart of learning. As Dulwich is named in the Business Excellence Awards 2026, we heard more from Head Master, Louise Davidson. “
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