Grammar vs independent

I fear I may have falsely given the impression of a task driving mom and a ruthlessly driven child. We did focus on exam prep in the months leading up to the exams but I have an otherwise normal child who just happens to have her 'spike' in academics while other kids have their spikes in sport / music / dance etc. She has a strong streak of independence and cannot wait to be all grown up and move out and pay her own bills etc, which is what makes her so motivated :D She is in a prep school so all her friends have 11+ exams so it was not weird to be in 'study mode' for exams

I am also fully cognizant that while all of us parents fret endlessly about the ideal target school for our precious progeny, the education system is woefully out of date and does not prepare kids for the real world. For this reason, it is important to nurture a love for life long learning in our children - the entrance to good schools/unis is merely the entry ticket to bigger games ahead.

It sounds like you are doing all the right things with your DD - your 'light touch' seems to be pretty good already if you are covering off advanced / competitive maths at home. My husband and I work FT so we could not do extra work with her at home which is why we sent her to additional classes outside of school.

I have seen some parents go into taskmaster mode around 11+ season, and the kids become so accustomed to learning / doing tasks only to pass exams and please their parents...this is beating the point!

Fantastic, thanks for sharing this nugget of info, filing for future reference :) after Brexit and unending doom and gloom of political/economic narrative in the UK, we are not sure where we will end up so we are trying to keep all options open...

Also we visited Boston and visited Harvard and MIT a couple of years ago, my then 9yr old now 11yr old rates MIT as her target school (7yrs more to change her mind haha) and v few private schools in the UK have a track record with MIT, while Kings Maths school (state) has definitely placed kids at MIT! A bit early for me to be worrying about uni placement potentially :) But TGS has a strong record of STEM placement at university.

It's true that TGS does not have a track record of US placements, partly also explained by demographics, three things we have in mind:

1. We are likely considering private for 6th form and would aim for top tier schools at that time if academic track record allows
2. I applied from the developing world for undergraduate in the US myself to the likes of Harvard, Princeton etc, progressed to interviews at places like Princeton and ended up with a top uni offer - I figured it out myself with no parental guidance and my knowledge will now benefit my kids, I have done the whole gamut of SAT/SAT2/GRE/GMAT. I didn't end up going because I didn't end up getting the Scholarship I had hoped for (could not afford otherwise) and I had a full-ride scholarship at a regional top university. I have done two US exchange programs at top tier / Ivy League universities.
3. my husband did his grad program at a top US uni which is well known for "legacy" for alumni community, he is active in the alum circles. His brother lives in the US and both of his kids will go to college in the next 5 yrs

Between us, we feel we have enough first/second hand experience, much more than most US admission teams at top private schools. Appreciate we have a privilege here and this is not particularly helpful for other parents looking at TGS but it is important to have a view of the home environment and all it offers too before getting besotted with indie offerings, we felt.

https://testteach.co.uk/classes/

They also have an online resource if you cant make the weekly lessons

I am happy to share info on resources we used, for e.g. My daughter loved the weekly Test Teach lessons and their video explanations for their paper are great for deep dive on concepts etc

And in response to what the intense prep involves for Tiffin Girls, yes it is about speed and accuracy on Maths (the no of Qs on the papers can easily faze a child without adequate practice) but also creative writing and English prep requires quite a bit of depth wrt prep. In her practice papers for Tiffin Girls, some of the passages she did for comprehension felt almost GCSE level, TBH!

A couple of things to note here:

1. SPGS round 2 written papers are definitely quite hard and uniquely designed to test for ability to learn quickly, so you are right in that it is indeed challenging. But while the intake admits the brightest girls who write the papers, you have to remember that it's a miniscule portion of society that can afford the fees of £37k+/year/child, so the pool of candidates cannot be as broad as TGS'. Last year TGS had some 1600+ candidates writing exams for the 180 spots. The kids who write SPGS tend to be highly prep'd, often studying at highly academic junior schools such as NLCS, so the fact that my daughter was obviously NOT prep'd for their interviews in particular ended up being an asset I think

2. Grammar exams happen right at the start of Y6, 2 to 3 months before the private process kicks off, so the timing is a bit 'off' wrt prep school timelines who assume 1st round of exam mid/late Nov for most private secondary schools - this is why we accelerated learning of concepts so she could start doing mock exams comfortably over the summer. Also, her practice papers for TGS and SPGS from resources like ExamPapersPlus were much harder than practice papers for other schools. TGS prep requires some dedicated effort over and above prep school curriculum IMO

3. The cutoff mark for TGS has been steadily increasing every year in the past few years due to increased interest in grammars following VAT for privates, so we were quite diligent in ensuring she was set up well to pass grammar exams. The day we finished round 2 papers for Tiffin Girls on 8th Nov, she completely stopped studying beyond what the school sets as homework...we are now 4 months in and she is getting quite bored in fact!

Thank you. And all the best to your daughter. After preparing for Tiffin, my daughter found all the other exams very easy TBH. We had never intended to look at SPGS but the TGS prep held her in good stead there too, so sounds like a good strategy for your daughter, good luck!

Is it an option for you to revisit the decision and explore the independent route if you are not happy with the grammar choice? I consider that as a potential option, always.

This feels like a moot point. If we wanted to go private in the first place, we wouldn't put our daughter through the grammar prep (intense workload for a few months). We wouldn't be second guessing our decision on these "moral grounds" only after the results come through

It was really scary to turn down all the amazing offers and scholarships but we have finally picked Tiffin Girls over all the other choices :) Thanks everyone for the robust discussions on this forum. Also managed to connect with a fellow parent in the incoming class and a parent with a happy girl at the school, what a fabulous forum Mumsnet provides!