No patterned furniture and vanilla-scented Ikea candles: The secrets of Britain’s best primary school

David Sellens – 61 years old, OBE holder and headmaster of a state primary in west London – gets sent lots of letters. Some are from GPs explaining on behalf of parents why a child must attend his school; some are from paid-for psychologists doing the same; some are from the parents themselves, personal appeals that beg Sellens for a spot. There was once a family who travelled from China simply to have a school tour. They were planning to move to the area; they arrived at the front gates with their suitcases.

‘We are ridiculously popular,’ says Sellens, sitting in his office. Last academic year, the average distance a child needed to live from his school to have qualified for a place was just 96.5m.

Sellens oversees Thomas Jones in Notting Hill, arguably the best state primary in the country. The institution has 236 pupils (around 30 per class); ranks in the top one per cent of schools in England; was named Primary School Of The Year 2026 by the Sunday Times; and – even though Sellens believes exam results don’t really indicate quality – it feels worth mentioning that, in 2025, 93 per cent of pupils achieved the ‘expected national standard’ in their SATs. The national average is 63 per cent.

It also feels worth mentioning that the school caters to a group of children who are, often, living otherwise tough lives. At Thomas Jones, 41.6 per cent of students qualify for free school meals (compared to the national average of 25.7 per cent). Opposite the school entrance is Lancaster West, the estate that contained Grenfell Tower.

Sellens joined 25 years ago when Thomas Jones was in a deficit, had a high suspension rate and was ranked 24th out of the 26 primary schools in the area. ‘I was a young head,’ he says. ‘I had lots of energy and ideas.’

Thomas Jones in Notting Hill ranks in the top one per cent of schools in England and was named Primary School Of The Year 2026

I visit on a Friday, at drop-off. Sellens walks me to the playground and tells me not to be alarmed but, ‘the children are going to want to chat to you’. Also, he adds, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re going to see me disgrace myself,’ and then he picks up a megaphone from his office floor which, in a few minutes, he will use to boomingly greet each student by name.

The children do want to chat. Almost all of them approach me without encouragement, introduce themselves, shake my hand and say: ‘Welcome to Thomas Jones!’

They’re tidily dressed, a measure introduced by Sellens. ‘There was no uniform when I started,’ he says. ‘I wanted sailor suits and Paddington Bear duffle coats. I wanted capes. But it was so expensive.’ He did, however, provide straw boater hats, which only Year Six children can choose to wear. Before we begin my school tour, led by students, one of the Year Sixes asks if I want her to put on her boater. I don’t mind; does she want to wear the boater? ‘Yes,’ she replies, before grabbing it and plonking it on her head.

We walk to the hall, which functions as the assembly room, dining room and, last week, the stage for a production of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. One of my guides played Mr Tumnus, and demonstrates his character’s walk. Another asks if I’d like to stand inside the wardrobe they designed for the performance. I worry I’m too large. ‘Don’t worry,’ says a Year Five pupil, ‘the floors were reinforced!’

We stop at a display board, and I say how good the handwriting is. ‘That’s not even the neatest handwriting in the school,’ I’m informed, authoritatively, by a Year Three.

Several aesthetic changes were made to the school such as raising the ceiling heights, painting the walls brilliant white and replacing cushioned chairs with pared back, wooden ones

Headmaster David Sellens chief improvement strategy was to also create a nursery in the school’s centre, for 25 children aged three to four

On arriving at Thomas Jones, Sellens made several aesthetic changes. He raised the ceiling heights, painted the walls brilliant white and implemented a ‘furniture scheme’, replacing cushioned chairs with pared back, wooden ones. There are ‘no patterns allowed’. He also positioned Ikea candles throughout the school, which are burned during the day. (Vanilla scented normally, cinnamon in winter.)

‘I have a rationale,’ says Sellens. ‘Yes, I have a thing about tidiness – if a space is free of clutter, children respond differently.’

He also wanted ‘to find the antidote to the very small flats, often with no garden or balcony’ that the majority of pupils live in. ‘The school’s play space was badly thought through.’ He planted trees, redesigned the gardens and acquired two beehives.

Sellens’s chief improvement strategy, though, was to create a nursery in the school’s centre, for 25 children aged three to four. ‘We thought, if we invest in the nursery, it’ll pay off because some of those families, if we do a good job, will apply to reception.’ Local authorities ‘had more money then’ and supplied Sellens with funds. The nursery was originally free, though in 2018 they became the last nursery in the borough to introduce fees (£2,000 a term) and now one-third of families pay.

Although Thomas Jones is rated ‘outstanding’, Sellens is ‘not a slave to Ofsted’. He has certain teaching rules. ‘There’s no dumbing down when we speak to the children.’ By Year Six, pupils study Milton and Shakespeare; several parents report their tiny child has come home chit-chatting about ‘the human condition’.

The council selects which children go to Thomas Jones, with 75 per cent coming from the local estate

Sellens appointed staff cautiously. ‘I’d say, “Look, this is what my vision is. If you want an easy job, this isn’t for you.”’ He also has a strict ‘no cynics’ policy (‘people who work here need to be effusive about life’) and teachers move years regularly, to avoid stagnancy.

Teachers must like it here: Sellens’s deputy, Lindsay Johnson, preceded him and has been there for 32 years; and a senior leader, Abigail Kantoch, has worked at Thomas Jones since 2007.

It is phone-free (children who walk themselves to school must hand in their mobiles) and discipline is ‘more carrot’ than stick. ‘What we don’t find works is a punitive [approach],’ says Sellens. They don’t, for instance, fine parents – as some schools do – if a child is absent. Instead, they have things like the daily ‘punctuality cup’, awarded to the class that arrives most promptly.

The council selects which children go to Thomas Jones and, while 75 per cent come from the local estate, there is now a ‘very small percentage’ of parents who could have gone private but have chosen Thomas Jones.

The children all bump along together happily. And, says Sellens, ‘I’d hate for this to be misunderstood – or for people to think I’m some kind of woke wet blanket, because I’m not – but multiculturalism definitely works here.’ At Thomas Jones, 89.5 per cent of students come from an ethnic minority background (compared to 38 per cent nationally) and there are 32 ‘discrete ethnic categories represented’. There’s no majority ethnicity at the school, though the largest ethnic groups are Black African, Moroccan, ‘Other Mixed Background’, and White British.

A lot of my talk with Sellens is about why Thomas Jones has succeeded. But, he says, ‘What we do is extremely difficult. I don’t want you to get the false picture that this is a privileged place – we are literally 200 metres from Grenfell Tower.’ Two former pupils were killed in the fire, and another year one student was the only person in her entire family to survive. Today, by the school gates, there are five fruit trees planted to commemorate them. So, Sellens says, ‘I don’t want this to be sugar coated’.

Still, recently he saw an ex-parent who told him her child had become the first person in their family to enter higher education. ‘He went to Birmingham, graduated with a first and is about to start his master’s in robotics,’ he says. ‘I think we do instill in our pupils a sense that anything is possible. We talk a lot about the fact that no one’s going to come along with a trust fund. No one’s going to bail you out, you know? This is it. This is your chance.’