Prince George starts school this week

LONDON: Son of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George, who turned four in July this year, will begin school this week.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have chosen a fee-paying independent school in a South London borough for their four-year-old son. 

According to local media reports, Prince George's new school costs more than £17,604 a year, which serves freshly prepared organic meals for lunch.

The Good Schools Guide has described the school as a big, busy, slightly chaotic school for cosmopolitan parents who want their children to have the best English education money can buy.

George's first day at school on Thursday will also mark a new chapter for the Cambridge’s as they are now mainly based in their Kensington Palace.

George;s father, Prince William, is a full-time working royal after leaving his job at the end of July as a helicopter pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance.

The expectation is he will now carry out more royal duties in support of the Queen and his own charity work and causes.

As a 14-year-old, Kate (now princess), withdrew from the independent girls' school Downe House in Cold Ash, Berkshire, after just two terms when she was reportedly bullied.

She started afresh at Marlborough College, a £36,525 a year co-educational boarding school in Wiltshire, where she went on to blossom, captaining the hockey team and doing well in her exams.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be particularly conscious of making sure their son Prince George enjoys his school days.

The Duchess is a patron of school-based counselling charity Place2Be, and, with William, attended a child mental health conference to learn about issues surrounding the transition years between primary and secondary education.

The couple also selected anti-bullying charity Beatbullying as one of the recipients of their wedding gift donations.

William's first experience of school was Mrs Mynor's Nursery School in west London which he joined aged three. From the age of four, the duke went to Wetherby School, also in west London, before spending five years at Ludgrove School in Berkshire.

He went on to board at Eton College, as did his brother Prince Harry, for five years and it offered him a sanctuary when his parents were in the middle of an acrimonious divorce and provided stability in the difficult years that followed his mother's death.

Publicity surrounding Kate's time at Marlborough College has benefited the school, which was recently able to open a Marlborough College in Malaysia.

Her prep school was St Andrew's School in Pangbourne, Berkshire, where she returned for a visit in 2012 shortly before the announcement she was pregnant.

She joined the public school, where fees are up to £4,980 per term, in 1986 when her family returned to the UK after spending two-and-a-half years in Jordan where she attended a nursery school.

She stayed until she was 13 and was predominantly a day girl but in her later years also boarded for part of the week.

Both William and Kate were academic at school and went on to university, achieving a 2:1 at degree level.

George's grandfather the Prince of Wales had a difficult time at secondary school.

He was sent to Gordonstoun School in Moray, Scotland, following in the footsteps of the Duke of Edinburgh, but was picked on and described his days there as "a prison sentence".

Charles did admit, however, that the school instilled him with self-discipline and a sense of responsibility.

He spent part of the school year in 1966 as an exchange student at the Geelong Church of England Grammar School in Melbourne, Australia - the first member of the British Royal family to attend an overseas Commonwealth school

Gordonstoun is also where Zara and Peter Phillips, the Duke of York and the Earl of Wessex, were taught.

The Queen, however, was educated at home with Princess Margaret. After her father succeeded to the throne in 1936 and she became the heir, she started to study constitutional history and law.

She also studied art and music, and is fluent in French.