Princess Charlotte was sent off to her first day of school at Thomas’s Battersea in South London on Thursday alongside both her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and her older brother George, reported The Daily Mail.
The 4-year-old will be attending the £18,915 ($23,330)-per-year private institution for the first time, while 6-year-old George has been attending since 2017. The excited princess showed up clutching mom Kate Middleton’s hand and hiding shyly behind her. The family was greeted by head of the lower school Helen Haslem.
Both Charlotte and George looked ready for the new school year dressed in the school’s uniform. Both wore navy blue sweaters with the school’s emblem stitched in red on the left breast side in addition to white collared shirts underneath. Charlotte wore a matching navy blue skirt, white socks, and black dress shoes while George wore shorts in the same color blue, navy blue socks, and black dress shoes.
Unlike her brother, Charlotte was accompanied by both her parents as the four arrived around 8:15 a.m. in the family’s Land Rover Discovery. When George started at the school, Kate was forced to stay home, suffering from acute morning sickness when she was pregnant with Prince Louis.
#PrincessCharlotte arriving for her first day of school with an adorable smile on her face ?PA images pic.twitter.com/iC6ducfECW
— Carolyn Durand (@CarolynDurand) September 5, 2019
Just a small group of journalists showed up to photograph the young princess’s first day of school, which stood in contrast to Prince William’s first day at the school many decades ago, in which his mom Diana, Princess of Wales, dropped him off amid a large crowd of onlookers.
After greeting the head of the lower school, Kate and William accompanied Charlotte to her classroom, where she will be joined by 20 other students and known to her classmates and teachers as Charlotte Cambridge.
To ease her transition into the new school, the princess, who had previously been attending Willcocks Nursery, Kensington, since January 2018, will begin by spending half days at Thomas’s. The Christian school, open to children and families of all faiths, believes in “praise as the greatest motivator.”
On the school website, headmaster Simon O’Malley writes a statement about the school’s mission.
“Thomas’s Battersea is a busy, thriving, purposeful school, educating 560 boys and girls between the ages of four and 13. As you would expect of any Thomas’s school, the most important school rule is to ‘Be Kind’…We hope that our pupils will leave this school with a strong sense of social responsibility, set on a path to become net contributors to society and to flourish as conscientious and caring citizens of the world.”