There is little doubt that all the parents of students starting at Thomas’s Battersea School in London will be hoping their child is one who makes friends with Prince George.
However, if they have had ambitions of their little darling becoming besties with the third in line to the English throne they’re about to be disappointed.
You see, according to an insider who knows the school’s policies well, Thomas’s Battersea discourages children from having best friends.
That’s right, neither George nor any of his classmates will be exchanging best friend bracelets anytime soon.
One of the hosts of UK chat show Loose Women, Jane Moore, who lives near the school and has friends whose children attend, spoke about the policy that encourages inclusivity.
“No, absolutely not,” she said in response to her co-panellists enquiry about whether the children are encouraged to have best friends.
Listen: Holly, Mia and Jessie chat about the issue on the latest episode of Mamamia Out Loud:
“There’s a policy that if your child is having a party, unless every child in the class is invited you don’t give out the invites in class, which I think is quite a good thing as you don’t feel excluded.”
“There are signs everywhere saying be kind. That’s the ethos of the school. They don’t encourage you to have best friends.”
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It's a bit of a stretch to go from "invites for everyone" to "no best friends policy". To enforce athat policy would seem to me to be going against human nature - kids always form friendships, you can instill kindness without depriving kids of having the experience of a close friend.
The invitation rule is nothing unusual. I know plenty of schools and individual teachers who have the same policy. It's not a difficult rule to enforce.
The best friends rule is well-intentioned but I wonder how well it works in practice. Kids are going to like some kids more than others. They're going to meet up outside of school and get closer. They're going to talk about things that they did together when the rest of the kids weren't there. Some kids might hear that and feel excluded. It's an unfortunate fact of life that sometimes, you may be excluded from something you wanted to be a part of. I'm not sure there's all that much a school can do to prevent that, nor am I sure they should try.