Hi,
My DD is currently in Yr 13 at KCLMS. She loves it and will not have a negative word spoken about it! The school really does embrace the whole "maths and science are cool" philosophy and nerds, non nerds and maths geniuses and non maths geniuses alike feel comfortable at the school. There are some students who are basically studying all the maths modules because they love maths and are so good at it. There are also students who took GCSE Maths in Year 11 and didn't study GCSE Further Maths/Additional Maths. The school seems to do well by all its students.
My DD scored better than we hoped at AS - the school has definitely "added value" to her grades. The Maths teaching appears to be superb. She has the Head Teacher as one of her Maths teachers and tells me that there's nowhere to hide in his lessons. He's very enthusiastic and he makes sure that EVERYONE understands the work by the end of the lesson. She says he's her best teacher. They also have Maths Problem Solving classes which help the students to tackle problems that they're likely to see at STEP or in the MAT. These go "beyond the curriculum" and will stand the students in good stead for when they reach Uni.
The Physics teaching is very good. My DD found A-Level Physics difficult from week 1 but managed to pull an A at AS.
She had 3 different Comp Sci teachers last year and the school dropped the full A level Comp Sci for Yr 13's this year. Disappointing but it shouldn't affect her Uni options. She tells me that the Comp Sci dept got better results than the Economy dept at AS last year. The school are (rightly) proud of their excellent Maths/FM results but have yet to offer actual stats for their Econ/Comp Sci results.
Regarding Uni options - the school seem not to "over predict" when it comes to UCAS Application Predicted Grades. None of this BBB at AS leading to predictions of A*AA that you see all too often on The Student Room. DD asked for one of her predicted grades to be lifted by 1 grade to match some of the Uni's she's chosen but they refused (to be fair - students were given the predicted grades early in September and were told it was unlikely that any of them would be changed)
They also wouldn't let her see her UCAS Teacher Reference, however we did get to see it under the Data Protection Act by paying UCAS a small fee. It was a glowing reference and showed that they knew her well on a personal and academic level. The only issue was that they they omitted mentioning the numerous changes that my DD's Comp Sci class had (they had told her not to waste space in her statement since they would mention it)
The school had a good chunk of kids go to Oxbridge last year including one student who the school recommended should not apply. They seem a bit "private school" when it comes to these things but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. They took the students to Open Days at KCL (of course!), Imperial and Warwick at the end of Year 12. DD has indeed applied to KCL but it's not one of her favourites as she's now over familiar with the Uni since they do go there a bit and have people come from the Uni to the school for talks/teaching sessions quite a bit too.
They are surprisingly accepting of students who don't want to apply to Uni and will support them in applying for Apprenticeships/Employment. One girl last year went off to work at Dyson.
They support weaker students well - but towards the end of Year 12 will call those who look like they won't get at least BCC (I think) at AS level into a meeting and warn them that unfortunately they won't be able to start Year 13 unless they achieve BCC. Several kids from DD's cohort did not proceed to Year 13 but I think they do allow kids to repeat Yr 12.
One thing I noticed last year was that come AS exam time there was no study leave. Some days my DD would come out of an exam and go straight into revision classes to prep for upcoming exams. The students were also given individual timetables around this time so they only went to classes based on which modules they personally needed work on (but were welcome to sit in regardless)
The students have 4 set internal exam periods each year (Nov, Jan, March, May) and "predicted grades" are generated and updated based on the results of these with the benchmark "predicted grade" based on, I assume, how the student did at GCSE and on the school's entrance test. The school is very data driven in that respect. Each student also gets a suggested timetable for recap and review classes that take place at lunch time and after school, again based on each student's strengths and weaknesses.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
. Had a couple of questions from dd - one, what the catering provision is ie does the cafe actually serve lunch or is it just an eating area, bring your own packed lunch? Secondly, what is the workload like compared to other schools (homework and free periods-wise)? I worry a little about the walk to/from Waterloo - any feedback on that from a general safety point of view? Oh and another question - how are the laptops used, as it seems that you have to get one from them, or can you use your own?
