Sushi rolling and Mandarin lessons: inside London's £35,000-a-year nursery

A £2m campus for ‘global elite’ toddlers — is this the capital’s poshest pre-school?

- BY EILIDH DORGAN

What is a nursery school for the “global elite”? It’s certainly not a phrase I've ever used to describe mad toddlers.

But perusing the brochure of anew £35,000-a-year pre-school in west London called Odyssey, the campus of which cost £2 million to build and kit out, you immediately understand that you're in a different world.

Finger-painting and fish fingers, this is not. An alternative universe where kitchens are transformed into “cucinas”, art rooms are “ateliers” and children’s music lessons become “bambino soundscapes”.

Leafing through it, I couldn't help but wonder if it was just the mundane repackaged — akin to estate agent or hotel-speak where tufts of grass become “outdoor spaces” and large cupboards are reimagined as “executive suites”.

Perhaps my biggest concern from the prospectus was the emphasis on parental involvement which, due to my mortal fear of other parents, is my own personal hell. But, that’s just me, and as a person who dresses like a teenage boy and barely speaks one language, I'm probably not the type of clientele they're looking for anyway.

Located on Marylebone Road, it’s a building that I've driven past many times before descending into the sloth-paced traffic nightmare that is Euston Road. Housed in a beautiful Georgian ex-grammar school with turrets and lancet windows that wouldn't look out of place in a Harry Potter film, it's also handily close to The Portland Hospital — so if parenting feels overwhelming and your newborn could pass as a three-month-old, then you could always drop them off on the way back from giving birth.

From ukuleles to knife skills