Wallington Grammar - insights and advice please!

[MotherOfSuburbia]

We are lucky enough to have been offered a place at Wallington for DS today. We just need to decide between this and 3 offers from independent schools.
My impression is that he will get a fantastic academic education at WCGS but it's the 'extras', that I wonder about, particularly opportunities in music and art.
If anyone has DSs at the school and can give me any more info I would be very grateful.
TIA

[Suttonmum1]

No ds there but locally to me it is most people's third choice, behind Wilsons/Sutton or Sutton/Wilsons.

Not heard anything positive about music there at all, whereas I have for the other two, and people who are musical would probably prefer something else, I am told.
Sorry to have only second hand info.

If Trinity or Whitgift are on your private list then they are obviously a much better bet for music.

[legallady]

Hi Mother

I have one DS in year 7 so we haven't got a huge amount of experience yet. Suttonmum's observations are fairly accurate as far as we are concerned however. WCGS was definitely second choice for us after Sutton but that was significantly down to ease of travel and better knowledge of Sutton.

Music does not seem to be a hugely important part of the school from what I can tell. So far there has been one evening concert (not particularly well publicised) and the year 7 choir performed in the O2 recently but there isn't a full school orchestra (it's described as a group) and I'm not sure how many people take lessons during school hours. There certainly wasn't much in the way of practice rooms when we visited. Fortunately for us music isn't that important to our DS (though he does play two instruments!)

On the plus side the school does have a lovely atmosphere and being a reasonably small school every one seems to know everyone else. The school is also crazily keen on rugby but there is plenty of table tennis and badminton etc for those not so keen on rugby. Very little football.

The only thing I know about art is that there is a house art competition.

Hope some of that helps!