Prince George of Cambridge is headed off to big-boy school soon enough. Unlike the typical posh-boy schools which Prince William attended, George has been enrolled in Thomas’s Battersea in London, which, to be fair, is still pretty posh. Instead of making friends with the children of oligarchs, George is going to be friends with the children of the merely wealthy. His friends’ parents will be millionaires, not billionaires. There will also be fewer children of the aristocracy around George. I still believe this is Kate’s way of shading the hell out of William’s upbringing and his closest friends: she does not want George to grow up with the same chinless aristo kids that make up William’s close set of friends. Well, People Mag just ran a glowing story about how Thomas’s Battersea is going to bring a lot of chaos and sports into George’s life:

When Prince George heads out to class for the first time in early September, he will get some of the best education “money can buy” from a “slightly chaotic” school for cosmopolitan families. That’s the view of Thomas’s Battersea in London by a recently published review of schools in England.

The $23,000-a-year establishment, which is about four miles south of the family’s Kensington Palace home, is “a big, busy, slightly chaotic school for cosmopolitan parents who want their children to have the best English education money can buy,” the latest The Good Schools Guide says. “That is what they want and, to a large degree, that is what they get.”

There are “plenty of opportunities for pupils to excel but withdrawn types might find it all somewhat overwhelming,” the review adds. George, 4, will be among a wide variety of international families as “19 different foreign languages spoken at home,” the guide adds.

Like George, the school’s headmaster is also starting fresh next month. The new headmaster is Simon O’Malley, who the guide describes as “ambitious and enthusiastic.” He “generated an energy and buzz about his previous school. Much-liked and respected by parents,” the reviewers at The Good Schools Guide, which calls itself the leading, independent source of information on schools in the U.K., add.

Sporty parents like William and Princess Kate may have been partly attracted to the school by the amount of physical activity – sport takes up 20 per cent of the curriculum time. And there is a lot of emphasis placed on drama too. It “is outstanding with huge productions by each year group being put on over the year,” the review reports. ” ‘Only drawback’, said one parent, ‘is that they are always musicals. Not much use if your child can’t sing’. School assures us there’s always something for everyone.” There’s a new music center, an orchestra, bands and choirs while “two great art studios and two pottery rooms with their own kiln” add to the creative mix.

George’s parents have vowed to take him to school whenever they can. But, the guide notes, that the school owns a “fleet of buses,” some of which bring pupils from Kensington.

[From People]

I wonder how George will do in this kind of environment. I was shy when I was George’s age, and I wouldn’t have been a “joiner” in the sense of… I probably wouldn’t have thrived in all of those group activities like drama and sports. That still sounds hellish to me – I’ve always been an independent learner, content to read ahead on my own and focus on my own academics. I do find it fascinating that this is what Kate and William want for George. I get that they wanted to enroll their kids in a co-ed school so they could go to school together, but surely there’s a co-ed, posh London school that doesn’t seem so… hippie/experimental?

Photos courtesy of WENN.