The Claires Court PTA (Charity number: 1052993) was founded in 1996 and is celebrating its Pearl Anniversary during this academic year 2026-27.
The PTA has a core set of Trustees, made up of former parents and alumni.. The PTA has a main board, attended by the principals/heads of the Junior, Senior and Sixth Form sections of the school, each of which has a parent chair of the local committee, coupled with a teacher representative. Its officers are President is Phyllis Avery MBE, Secretary Trevor Sharkey and Treasurer Simon Ball, who together with the 3 parent chairs stand for election at the AGM held during the Spring Term, usually just after the February half term. Each local committee meets termly or more often, to discuss and plan activities for their own part of the school, as well as to discuss and support the 3 (or more) main PTA fundraising events scheduled for the year.
The main fund raising supports applications made by the school as a whole or by the subsections of school to meet substantial needs and projects that otherwise would sit outside the normal provision by the school covered by tuition fees paid by parents. Recent examples from the last 3 years include meeting some of the needs of the 19 Ukrainian displaced children supported by the school during this period, the provision of ‘Flexitent’ structures to provide additional outdoor cover for parents and children on the school sites, and equipping the new Sixth Form pavilion with study and recreational furniture.
In addition to the school sections, there are separate channels within the PTA’s fund raising activities established to support the following sections: Alumni, CCF, Charity matters, Investments, Team sports (inc. Cricket, Football, Hockey, Netball, Tennis, Rowing and Sailing. The presence of these other sections is agreed because of the additional interest in specific areas and need for focussed fundraising exists.
The PTA Charity also receives additional revenue from gifts and commercial donors which are used to support its wider mission to support the school in other areas of the local community, for example the support of displaced children from Ukraine, the installation of an artificial wicket and a support cabin at Boyne Hill Cricket Club and an additional coaching launch at the Sailing Club.
The establishment of Claires Court School and the PTA Charity is very much a Family Story
David Francis Wilding (DFW) was born in his family home in Ealing in 1926, and Josephine Wilding in Paddington in 1928. They met after WW2, both studying History at King’s College, London. They married in 1950, and entered the teaching profession locally to their home in Ealing, David at his old school, St Benedict’s, Josephine at Coston’s secondary modern in Greenford. Their period in education coincided with the Baby Boomer period at the time, which meant that by the late 1950s, there was a real scarcity of independent junior places in local schools and selection for Grammar School in London at 11+ had become intense.spor
On 19 September 1960, David and Josephine opened the doors of Claires Court Preparatory School for Boys to the first 19 pupils (of whom two were their own sons); the 20th pupil joined at the beginning of October. Their venture quickly established itself, offering a day and boarding education based on Roman Catholic values and preparing boys aged from 61⁄2 to 13 years for their senior schools. The roll rose to 54 by the end of the first academic year and to 84 at the beginning of the second. Further expansion took numbers to 160 by 1965 and 185 by 1970. As boarding numbers increased so extra capacity was added but the real growth was in day pupils as the Thames Valley boomed between 1960 and 1980 and Maidenhead’s population burgeoned. Ridgeway house in Maidenhead Thicket was bought in 1964 to accommodate the further growth of weekly and full time boarding, with fellow school masters, Noel Radford and Ray Carter joining the school as teachers and opening up further weekly boarding in their homes at St Lawrence, Ray Park Avenue and Rowanhurst in College Avenue.
The same box brownie camera was used to capture the rapidly expanding school of 50 boys the following summer 2022.
From the very start, parents were central to the development of the Claires Court community, in many ways reflecting the ethos of St Benedict’s beforehand, providing match teas after sports fixtures, managing bring and buys sales and second hand uniforms too. By the late 1960s, the Claires Court Parents Society had been created, with annual dinner dances joining the calendar at Skindles night club on the River and more frequently at Ridgeway, once the further demand for day schooling and the need to expand the school’s provision to 16+, leading to the school to switch from offering boarding and expand Ridgeway to become Claires Court’ s feeder prep school instead.
Hugh and James Wilding were both amongst that cohort of 19 founding pupils, completed their prep school education with Common Entrance into Douai School, Woolhampton, and returning to Claires Court as GAP placements after their A-level studies. Both entered the University of Leicester for their undergraduate studies in 1971 (Combined Studies) and 1972 (Combined Sciences) respectively. Each later returned to the school as adults — James in 1975 to teach Maths, Science and Games, Hugh in 1980 as Bursar — and from 1984 they led Claires Court together as joint Principals, a partnership that lasted for the next four decades.
James’s focus was academic and curriculum development, the school’s extracurricular life, and its wider relations with the local community; Hugh’s was modernising the school’s administration, its finances, and the buildings and campus as they grew. Both were long-standing contributors to the work of the Independent Schools Association and the Independent Schools’ Bursars Association, and were themselves recognised as innovative users of digital technology in teaching and in communications. Between them, the brothers took Claires Court from that original small intake to become the UK’s largest proprietorial independent school, before stepping down as employees in February 2026 when the school joined the Licensed Trade Charity.
In the meantime the Parents Society continued to be an active contributor to school life, providing the books, cups and medals awarded to pupils as prizes for their achievements through the year. The donation of the Denis Compton portrait by Denis, his godson Brendan Donnelly (1964-1970) and family established the overall House Trophy competed for at the Senior Boys school to this present day. Other parents who provided excellent support during their sons time in the school included Henry Cooper and Terry Wogan, and in many ways helped cement the growing relationship between Claires Court and the all through independent School for Girls in Maidenhead, the Convent of the Nativity, renamed in 1982 as Maidenhead College (bearing the name of the former boys school which closed in 1940 on its site in College Avenue). The 2 schools merged in 1993, enabling the school to educate both boys and girls, but taught separately and becoming one of the very first ‘Diamond Schools’, a better description that co-educational at the time. The Coeducational Sixth form opened in 1994 with 17 boys and 1 girl, and its provision expanded to manage the 150 students in more recent years.
1996 saw the formal foundation of the Claires Court and Ridgeway Society as a Charity registered with the Charity Commission, with Brian Cullingford nominated as the First President, with his wife Laura as Vice-president, together with Roger and Marsh Spanswick, other hardworking PTA members who together with Trustees Phyllis Avery, Rosemary Barker and Sheila Hooker helped develop the PTA to the scale and involvement in school life to the current day. The more recent significant contributions of Felipe Foy and Tina Webster over 2 decades has been recognised this year at the AGM in February with their appointment as Vice Presidents of the PTA. Since 2006, the serving President Phyllis Avery MBE has continued to spearhead the involvement of parents with the school and the wider community. In more recent years, the significant donation to the Charity by Keith and Franca Knowles (the Knowles fund) to recognise the contribution by David Course (RIP 2007) to their own children’s education in the school established the PTA’s separate channel for donations to be made for wider purposes, such as the Sixth Forms outside each activities, Rugby coaching in the townships of Cape Town in South Africa, sports coaching and water well building in the Gambia. The decision of the separate Maidenhead College PTA (present when the school acquired Maidenhead College) to merge with the school’s after 2012 united the different PTA major events under one collective set of Trustees completed the development of the PTA as seen to date.
Mrs Phyllis Avery MBE, current President (2006 ->), has led the PTA through a host of initiatives, and overseen the expansion of the PTA’s support for the pupils in a host of different ways, as well as increasing its fundraising significantly, with over £500,000 raised since the end of the pandemic. Phyllis is a welcome visitor at many of the school’s own events, such as Founders’ Day held as close to the 19th September as possible, commemorating the school’s date of opening in Ray Mill Road East in 1960. Recruiting new members of the PTA at any level is her on-going ambition, and this summer has seen the addition of 4 new Trustees to the board, bringing additional expertise in Charity Law, systems development and financial acumen.
