Winchester, St. Paul's, or Eton?

@ChnandlerBong

Surely if OP does have two kids she wouldn't necessarily choose the same school for both? What if they're very different kids or the second one isn't accepted to the first one's school. I definitely wouldn't assume my youngest will go to the same school (after primary anyway) as the eldest.

OP clearly it is possible to have dozens of the little blighters -but you are asking the same questions now you were a year ago - surely the range of views you canvased then (for a son who must be in Y8 now?) still hold true?

What choice did you make for DS1 - is that choice not good enough for DS2?

What a fantastic thread - it’s all here, from Napoleon through the pitfalls of new car purchasing to the cat who stays in bed. Love it!

Not entirely sure what the last post by Bring meant though?

@foreverbyjudyblume

What a fruit loop! Posters like you are so going to miss lockdown and you comply won’t be able to be in a constant state of negative judgment. Must be shit to live a life like that!

Just to say, like most of us, I've been hugely distracted by other goings on recently - reassuring to come on here and see the same old nutters posters who've been here since MN was a field have not a care in the world except whether Eton beats Winchester, that is even when OP is highly dubious.

always always worth coming on these thread just to read a good Peteneras rant! makes me laugh every time

OP best of luck to your son! He was 11 nearly 12 last year and this year he started in year 6 and is now in year 5......

Car not cat (the cat rarely gets out of his bed).

“Putting people the likes you back in their proper place”
Its going to take more than people “the likes of you” to do this.
Secondly I’m far from “insecure and nervous”.
My posting may have been “illiterate” but as I said yesterday was a sad day, I’m angry at the way NHS staff have been treated in particular the lack of preparedness for Covid19 resulting in insufficient PPE, I don’t know how many of those 100 NHS workers died due to contracting Covid19 at work but even if it’s only 1 it’s too many.
OP my DS spent 5 happy years at Win Coll he good excellent grades and is now at a top RG uni, he received an outstanding all round education and despite have a particular talent for one particular area he is I believe a true Renaissance man which is what I hoped he would be. He is a thoughtful considerate empathetic young man I believe he hears “a different drummer” as he has always been more of a lone wolf than an “alpha male” Win Coll has always liked lone wolves so it suited him very well. I agree with a previous poster we felt SPS was a very competitive environment, I personally am not interested in the slightest bit interested in building be they listed or grey grim and shabby it’s finding a good match for your DC and you, you also have to be happy with your choice and like the way things are done. That is easier said than done. Every school will have excellent teachers and rubbish ones, most boarding schools will have high standards of pastoral care but there will always be the odd pupils who don’t for some reason get it and parents who feel more could or should have been done. No where is perfect. As I’ve said on numerous times on these sort of threads visit the schools you’re interested in go with an open mind, don’t be influenced by Mediaeval manuscripts or alumni let’s be realistic here only a small % become famous, look at the environment talk to the staff meet the pupils ask lots of questions as I always say if it matters to you and your DS ask. Do you like? Can you see your DS there? Sometimes it’s hard to work out what the ethos of a school is, try and go more than once if possible not on an open day, watch the pupils and staff when they’re together do you like what you see? Meet older boys there often more honest about their school what do they think? Do you like what you hear and see does it sit comfortably with you?
I always think cars and schools have a lot in common so many different choices. Someone hit my cat last month I’m driving a hire car I’ve never driven this make and model before I always like the look of them but having driven it for four weeks I wouldnt have one if you paid me to buy one let alone spend 30k+ on one but someone I work with has one and loves it. Neither of us are wrong it’s just what suits us as individuals. My own car when I went to test drive it I didn’t like it when I sat in it disappointed (it was my dream car) I nearly walked away without driving it the saleswomen said “you’re here now just try it what have you got to loose?” Within a mile of driving it I changed my mind I absolutely love it, apparently it very common for people not to like this make of car when you first sit In it (primarily because it’s very low on the ground) but most people when they drive them and fall in love with them. So basically spend time and effort looking for the school is the right fit for your DS. You and will spend considerable time and your money there over the five years he’s there and it important that you can see and believe you’ve made the right choice.

The soldier who defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo

I know these threads always turn into a bun fight (between the usual suspects) but at least this one is quite funny.

peteneras

I suspect the point is while that might be historically interesting to current students it's hardly likely to convince any prospective parents in this century.

"...it makes me so angry when I read comments like the above, it's got fuck all to do with what school you went too."

Hey HG, just let me say I've absolutely no problems whatsoever with you or anybody disagreeing with things that I write but it's another matter if you try to put words in my mouth when in fact you are illiterate and blind because you cannot comprehend and see in its context what I actually wrote. At no time did I say "Eton is the only school capable of producing humanitarians."

Is this what WinColl teaches? To resort to lies, untruths and foul play when the argument is lost.

You seem to reveal yourself in most postings to be feeling very insecure and nervous?

I gave a few examples of outstanding OE alumni who left school to achieve great things other than politics which include an economist, a soldier, a sportsman and a humanitarian in response to people who think Eton only produces politicians and prime ministers and nothing else. I added my DS is another humanitarian - not a politician - because of the unfounded perception that I'm very invested in Eton and praise BoJo for an ulterior motive.

And I don't need any lessons in the NHS either. The number of immediate family members i have that have worked or is still working in the NHS must have a combined total number of at least a few hundred years experiences.

If you really must know, I was in a NHS hospital (like BoJo) earlier this month having treatment for confirmed Covid-19! Like BoJo, I had an angel of a nurse, also from Portugal, who took excellent care of me which was actually what that had kept me going in spite of the fact there were at least a couple of times when I wondered to myself if I was going to see the next daylight or not due to my difficulty in breathing. To all intents and purposes, I'm supposed to be resting and recuperating in bed instead of fucking around in these boards putting people the likes of you in your proper places.

"The soldier who defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo"

Yes, HandfulofDust, his name was Arthur Wellesley. Better known as The Duke of Wellington.

Well, if your son don't like to be a French-defeating soldier or an economist or Olympic sportsman, how about a Nobel Prize winning doctor?

"My son, a junior doctor who qualified nearly 3 years ago is in the front line of a massive NHS hospital saving lives and limbs exposing himself in these uncertain times is an OE! (As do many of his close relatives). And no, he's absolutely not interested in politics. So tell us please, what great humanitarian work do you and yours do for mankind?"
As admirable as it is that your DS does humanitarian work I don't think even peternas can state that Eton is the only school capable of producing humanitarians. I have done 35 years of "humanitarian work" I have met people from all backgrounds all schools all nationalities. No one school no back ground or nationality can claim the moral high ground when it comes to producing humanitarians. In fact I find that suggestion that any organisation or anyone can claim to produce more "humanitarians than anyone else is insulting to all of the rest of us. Today my colleagues and I stood ay 11 am and remembered 100 NHS staff who have sadly lost their loves to Covid19 what school the went to is totally irrelevant and I doubt if it had any bearing in the person they were. Its the NHS and everything it stands for, that made them into the people they were and meant that many went above and beyond knowing the risk they were taking and paid the ultimate price. Today is a desperately sad day that the NHS has lost 100 of its staff and it makes me so angry when I read comments like the above, it's got fuck all to do with what school you went too. It's the NHS that has made its staff what they are desire all its difficulties, that NHS provides the uniquely privileged role that the staff; caring for people at often the worst times in their lives reaching out a hand to a total stranger and saying let me help you, Ley me care about you, its what the NHS stands for is written through its staff like a piece of rock not what school you attended. Im sorry to rant but today is a sad day.

@peteneras

I have to say you are the number one poster who would put me off Eton (although I'm sure most parents are slightly more measured in their attititude to the school). You sound incredibly overly invested in the school and it's alumni.

It's incredibly unlikely that your son will ever be prime minister so the number of prime ministers is largely irrelevent to the decision making process of most parents. The current prime minister will be judged by his legacy - did he make the country a better place? Or appeal to the lowest common denominator to win short lived popularity ? Donald Trump has the support of the American people but he's certainly not the role model I'd choose for my son. Boris Johnson is not a man who is generally respected by anybody with anygenuine expertise. He is someone with the support of the red tops. Obviously many parents wouldn't wish their children to aspire to behave as he has done. Maybe you would and that is you're right. Either way it's completely irrelevent - every school will have some impressive alumni and some less so - the anecdotes aren't going to be what sways anyone. They're going to look at the ethos of the school as a whole and the statistics. How many go to Oxbridge in STEM, Arts etc. What impression do you get of the boys there - are they arrogant? Kind? socially aware?

Obviously no current parents are going to be swayed by your slightly strange list of anecdotes : "The soldier who defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo" .

Eton is no doubt the right school for some boys it's fairly over subscribed but not as competitive to get into as many grammar schools and certainly no where near the top London day schools which have more impressive recent alumni. Certainly Eton wouldn't be the school of choice for a very academic boy.

You do sound like you're insanely invested in the school and it's not really clear why.

Can't blame you @wonder7. You are clearly not a sports person and therefore, you don't have a clue what I'm talking about. Those who know what it's all about are willing to pay over the odds like, e.g. more than a quarter-million £s to get into such school(s).

If it's only academics that you want, gee. . . you can get it for peanuts i.e. absolutely nothing, elsewhere in some state schools - there are at least 4 such schools in my backyard/front yard (two girls; one co-ed and one boys - all grammar, everyone of which can seriously embarrass the 3 schools mentioned on this thread) of which DS also got places at the time.

"How many scientisits has each school produced? How many novelists? How many published papers does the school have from it's alumni? How kind do the boys turn out to be? How many boys have gone on to do great humanitarian work?"

That just about sums it all up for me. You are obviously totally ignorant, absent-minded and incoherent in your thoughts.

It's only just a few short months ago that the whole of the UK gave their resounding approval, support and confidence in BoJo, a man who according to you has "absolute no substance" but has in the process decimated his rivals - an achievement not seen in nearly a century (85 years). Well, I really wonder what "substance" you have; and whatever you have, why aren't you running (say) a company, or a school or hospital or any organisation/institution etc instead of wasting your time here in front of a keyboard communicating with faceless individuals with fictitious names?

Are you for real?

BoJo and politics were/are being discussed here by me because the subject was first introduced here by some others with quite a lot of inaccuracies (including now by yourself) and I merely appeared to refute these inaccuracies.

Now that you've mentioned some other aspects (beside politics) that you think are also important for a school to produce and assume Eton don't have them, let me now just quickly say again how wrong and ignorant you are. A few quick examples, and I do mean a few: one of the world's greatest economists, John Maynard Keynes was an OE. The soldier who defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo was an OE. The winner of 8 Olympic gold medals in successive Olympics is an OE. The winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine a few years ago is an OE.

My son, a junior doctor who qualified nearly 3 years ago is in the front line of a massive NHS hospital saving lives and limbs exposing himself in these uncertain times is an OE! (As do many of his close relatives). And no, he's absolutely not interested in politics. So tell us please, what great humanitarian work do you and yours do for mankind?

For readers of this thread, nowhere did I say Eton is "better" than the other schools. Yes, the alumni it produces is out of this world and that's only my opinion and no one has to agree. I don't really give a monkey's who goes or don't go to Eton. Also, Eton does not need me or anybody else to promote the School. Even at >£42,000 p.a. basic fee, Eton is more than 4 times oversubscribed annually for as long as I can remember, both from home and abroad. Not being funny here, I've posted links at MN in the past to show there are people really to kill for a place there.

Also, what on earth does the pp mean about everyone at Eton wanting to beat a certain internal college in the same way as everyone wants to beat England?

I think you may find, nobody gives a hoot about England - well, no more than the next country anyway.

I live within tdo minutes walk of St Paul’s Boys and it’s just seen as a local school really. Yes there’s an entrance exam, but it’s no more competitive than most other day schools in the area. That’s SW London for you. I don’t think there’s many boarders there. Most boys are local, Barnes, Putney, etc or come in by tube. DS was offered a place there, but this was when the buildings were very scruffy a few years back, just before they were embarking on the refurb. It was so grey and grim. He went to a school directly across the river which is co-ed. I know loads of boys from SP and they’re just normal kids, quite scruffy and more serious than average, I’d say. The site looks better than it did, but some of those minimalist new buildings will be an eyesore in a few years. Very different to Eton and Winchester, I would think? Totally different experience.
In London, the only ones who bother with boarding are the ones who can’t get into the day schools. The boarding selection is slightly less competitive as a smaller target audience.
Just have a go at them all and see which one you get (If any). If you’re considering SP, you might as well consider Westminster? Or you may consider a move to London and then you could have a go for 11 plus for Kings Wimbledon, CLBS, Latymer Upper, Hampton. All much of a muchness.

Wow I don't think OP was rude at all although some of the posters here are massively over invested in their son's school. Completely bizzare competitiveness over which school is "better" which is not at all attractive and actually probably very off putting to any parent who might be thinking about these schools (especially Eton - the posters trying to sell it make it sound absolute dire!).

If you think producing Boris Johnson (a man with a huge amount of confidence and absolute no substance) is a massive selling point you obviously value fairly superficial characteristics in a school. Obviously it's also ridiculous to imagine that playing sport is the only way to become competitive - a daft suggestion. How many scientisits has each school produced? How many novelists? How many published papers does the school have from it's alumni? How kind do the boys turn out to be? How many boys have gone on to do great humanitarian work?

To imagine that one school is objectively better is ridiculous. Most people want a school which encourages their son's interests, allows him to reach his potential academically and gives him the space to actually discover his own passions (rather than forcing a pre determined set of hobbies on him with a view to channeling him into a very specific career path). Ultimately they also want a school which provides an enviornment in which he'll be happy - this clearly won't be the same for every boy so people saying "X school is better because it does more sport" or because "boys are more competitive and less awkward" make fools of themsleves. One boy will thrive in a compeitive environment another will resent wasting time on so much sport and would prefer to build robots in his spare time with his geeky friends.

There is no one better school - there are schools more suited to certain boys. If your self worth is tied up in the fact your boy goes to "the best school" it's all going to come crashing down in a few years when he's off living his life and no one wants to listen to you droning on about your son's old school any more.

I don't really see the point of these threads tbh ...

Oddly enough I found the independent school threads astonishingly helpful more than a decade ago when we first started assessing possibilities. And I think they still can be - but en masse rather than individually.

So if I were a parent considering prep/public schools now I would, rather than starting a thread, simply search each named school and read those entire threads, as there's always a good deal of comparison going on. One has to wade through a vast amount of sheer rubbish - especially on boarding - but (despite name changes) one soon learns which posters have current, useful experience to share.

I don't really see the point of these threads tbh. All are fantastic schools, but are very different from each other, and suit different boys, and these threads always descend into the same old bun fight (usually with the same people wielding the buns).

We had initially considered Winchester for our DS but were steered towards Eton as a better fit, which I think was absolutely right - he left three years ago having had a great time there. I can tell you quite a lot about that school, but I wouldn't have anything of value to say about Winchester. Realistically the same goes for parents with boys at Winchester unless they have boys at both schools.

You can only tell which will be best for you by going to visit the schools in question with, if you are a genuine OP, your DS in tow!

If he's uber-smart, I would also consider the scholarship. It's way more interesting for the kids than C/E, even if they ultimately don't clear the scholarship hurdle.

Personally I've always thought St. Paul's was a bit nuts, I wouldn't send anything but the most competitive child there. It also couldn't be considered a real boarding experience.

I'm also curious about why you haven't considered Westminster? I have one son there and it's a great school but be warned, they will let your son do his own thing i.e. fall behind if that's what is to be.

I have one at Eton and I couldn't say more about what an amazing school it is. The tutor and the housemaster and the dame form a little team that care for every aspect of the boy. It is strange how well they know my son.

He was originally to go to Winchester but not only are we in London and did we want to see him very often (which we do), but he is more an alpha and we thought he'd fit in better there.

The societies are really what sets Eton apart from the others, mine is interested in medicine so he'll often go to an evening lecture on how memory works or growing organs in labs or whatever.

As you'll know, Winchester is considered the more academic between the two and often mentioned in the same breath as Westminster.