It’s always a pleasure to visit Sylvia Young Theatre School. Its astonishingly attractive building is a light, bright, lofty former church just off Edgware Road. Complete with stained glass, pillars and grandiloquent staircases, it has been converted to include two vocational floors (studios, rehearsal rooms, recording studio), two academic floors and a large canteen with two courtyard gardens. On the top is a penthouse home for the eponymous Sylvia Young and her husband, Norman. At 83, she still comes downstairs to work every day and is every inch a hands-on principal.
Founded in Drury Lane by Sylvia Young in 1981, today the school provides a rounded full-time education for around 220 (capacity for 250) 10–16-year-olds. Frances Chave is the headteacher and she leads a strong team of teachers of academic…