Graveney school

that Living With Teenagers was morbidly fascinating. It was the first thing I read every week

I thought the kids weren't that bad, but the mum

she was a huge bundle of passive-aggression, whining, controlling, self obsessed, continually retiring to her room with a 'headache' when her kids challenged her in any way. Ghastly.

If I'd been her, I would never have outed myself- let alone the kids.

In fact she was so awful every week I got more and more convinced that she was a fictional construct

just getting that bile off my chest, where it's obv been festering for the last three years odd

...now feel free to get back to discussing Graveney

My DS started at Graveney in September. There are four streams: extension, upper, middle and support. The top two are academically intensive and operate like a grammar. The support stream is for children with special needs.

My DS is in the extension stream and standards are high - they really do ask a lot of the kids. There are plenty of imaginative extra curricular clubs - he's joined science, debating and music - plus a very strong music department - lots have peripatetic tuition.

IMO teachers are formidable and push the children hard. Behaviour is good, and the kids speak of the head with a mix of awe and admiration - I took that as a good sign.

Parents tend to be journalists, musicians, academics and so on - the arty side of the professions. Myerson types, you could argue.

And the last but one article in the endless stream of Myerson dramas was about their new house somewhere up near Walworth rd - so heading closer to Hornsey

thanks Blu- I'll have a looky

I think the Myerson's were more on the Clapham side of the intake.

But of course Graveney has two tpes of admission: the top 'selective' set, decided on entance exam, and in which case proximity is not an issue, and then the regular LEA admission criteria fo all other students. So if students have got in on the highly competitive selective ticket it is hardly surprisng that they do well. What I am unsure about (we live borderline in catchment and I will need to think about this soon) is how well it does for kids who are not in the top selective admission set or sets? Is it then the same as every other comp? Presumably it's overall good stats are boosted by the highly commpetitive top set?

SpringHeeledJack - there's a Dunraven thread atm.

Dunraven admits pupils across the range in an equal number of ability bands. I also know plenty of siblings of DS's friends going to Oxbridge and other top universities from Dunraven.

at the Myersons living near Streatham

I thought they'd be well Hornsey

sorry, don't mind me, am just hanging out here in case anyone mentions Dunraven (thinking of moving over that way)

A colleague's two girls went there and one is now doing a Ph.D. at Cambridge (she did her first degree there too). Her sister is also doing a hard subject at a good university. A neighbour's granddaughter recently graduated in English from Cambridge, also after attending Graveney.

Having read some of the coverage of the Jake Myerson affair, my feeling is that having a mother who used her children's growing up as a source of income from birth onwards is not a great asset for a growing child.

I'm not sure that it condemns Graveney as a den of iniquity, though! I know 2 girls who go there and they are as well-behaved, high achieving and law-abiding as anyone can be . They are in the section of intake that got in on the admission exam.

Son of novelist Julie Myerson and at the time Lambeth Councillor Jonathoin Myerson. In 2009 his mother wrote a novel detailing the familiy's struggle with Jakes alledged addiction to skunk, which led to them chicking him out. Julie Myerson was also revealed to be the authro of a Guardian column called 'Living With Teenagers' in which she also described the various feral activities of her 3 children.

Huge and endless press coverage - dubbed the TiresomeMyersons on MN.

Jake Myerson went there!