Parmiter's School Watford

We live in St Albans and my son won an academic place at Parmiters this year. There is a coach from St Albans and it is quite full. That saying, the places are very hard to get and they are given purely on academic performance in the consortium test or by the sibling or music route.

My friends DS just sat the 11+ apparently Parmiters had 1400 applicants for 80 places.

Parmitars is ridicolously over subscribed. Its also only a partial grammar school so there will still be rough/ low ablity kids there. You might as well pick a st albans school. There aren't any really bad schools in st albans especially if you choose to catch religion.

Is Parmiters with the SW Herts. Consortium? I think they are. We didn't visit Parmiters so I can't give an opinion on what Bitweepy said about the attitude. But if they are part of the Consortium, the 900 applicants for the exam could be all the pupils that will seat the exam whihc is for several schools in Herts.
We have been throught the exam this year, as my DD1 is in Year 6, and most of the kids in primary schools will sit the exams.
I think you should have a look and decide which school is the best suited.
For Secondary transfer 2013 the Consortium exams will be held in September, and the kids will know if they pass or not before the application deadline. This should help (or not) in the decission making. as if you kid hasn't pass the exam it would be pointless to put names of schools that they have no hope to get in by distance. It would no had helped us to know as where we live the only school we would have any hopes to get in is St Clement Danes as all the other (that we like) are too far from our house. But we are very happy as DD1 will start St Clement Danes come September.
Good luck with all the process I know it is a very stressful time!

Sorry, my comment also came out of the fact that under the application arrangements, you are making your choices before you know whether they have got in ie DCs don't take the exam, you get the results and then you decide whether to apply, so really the choice is not whether to "send" but whether or not to "apply". However, apologies if I offended.

Yes, but it was the 'sending' concept that made me say that - sorry if it came across as harsh, was actually trying to be realistic and therefore helpful. Having been to a Parmiters open evening, the strong message was very much that they do the choosing and that we would be very lucky if they deigned to choose our child. Not an ethos we wanted for our DC (who would definitely have got a place if we had wanted, so no disgruntlement here about the allocation process from our personal experience).

bitweepy - The OP did say " if he gets in!!". Hardly deserving of "poor innocent" put down.

Oh you poor innocent... love the idea of someone deciding to "send" their DC to Parmiters - unless you live virtually next door to it, I am afraid Parmiters will be the one doing the deciding. Not sure how old your DC is and how much experience you have of the whole secondary school transfer scenario, but feel it only fair to warn you that in St Albans/Watford the feeling that you will actually, in reality, have much of a choice is rather misguided. You need to have a good look at the entrance criteria for Parmiters and the schools in St Albans close to you and work out which one, under those criteria, you will get a place at - if you are going to be applying to Parmiters via the entrance test, bear in mind that they take around 40 pupils per year on the test and that around 900 sit it.... If, when you have identified the school you know you will get a place at, you are happy with that school (and you can't really know that until you have looked around/been to the open day etc), then grab that place. If, on the other hand you are not happy with it, you need to look realistically at your chances of getting one of the schools you are "happy" with, and even that's not a given. In St Albans it more or less comes down to how close you live to a school, and the distances are not great (ie under2000 metres in some cases). If it's all looking hopeless, then moving house may be the only option, seriously. Good luck.

Depends on which is your local school. Sandringham is the only local school that I rate near to Parmiters, at least academically.

Don't know much about the school, however the Deputy Head used to be Head of Lower School at dcs' school and she was excellent.