Hurst Lodge School

Hurst Lodge School, established in 1945, is a non-selective independent school in Ascot, Berkshire, England, for girls and boys aged three to eighteen, with about 250 children of all ages. The school offers excellent pastoral care, in addition to an extended curriculum allowing all children to learn forestry, robotics, dance, performing arts and foreign languages including French, Spanish and Mandarin.HistoryMiss Dorice Stainer, of Hurst Lodge, founded the school in the aftermath of the Second World War as a course of "Dancing Classes". A sister of the film star Leslie Howard, and also of Irene Howard, the London casting director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in the 1920s Stainer had been a partner in 'The Misses Stainer and Sinclair, Dancing Teachers', of 39, Onslow Square, South Kensington, London S.W.7, and after 1928 had continued the business alone at the same address. Immediately before the War, she had been a travelling dance teacher based in Ascot, teaching classes at Camberley, Godalming, Guildford, Sunningdale, Virginia Water, and a variety of schools around England.The actress Juliet Stevenson, a pupil of Miss Stainer's at Hurst Lodge in the 1960s, has described her as "a progressively educational woman who had been a prima ballerina and who believed the arts were fundamental to a child's education".