The first state boarding school for children as young as four is set to open in September as head teachers warn of soaring demand from two-parent working families fed up with trying to juggle careers and childcare.

Wymondham College Prep School will open this September in Norfolk for 450 boys and girls aged 4-11. Children of eight and over will be able to board in its 32-bedroom boarding house, Underwood Hall, which will be run “in a homely style”, with teddy bears in dormitories, tuckboxes at tea-time, bedtime stories and Mabel, a golden Labrador, to cuddle if children get homesick.

The school, which is being opened under the government’s free schools programme, is expected to be the first of a string of state boarding schools