Why on earth would anyone reject SPGS??

NEW Where have I started on a tirade about SPGS!? I have no issue with the school where it is the right choice for a girl based on all it has to offer, I just don't think it has everything to offer every girl, even if they are offered a place. Indeed I am a total Sarah Fletcher fangirl. I think she is a fantastic educator and I totally agree with her progressive and controversial views, especially on the benefits for all in catering for different learning styles. I wish our politicians had listened to her. I do wonder how her strategies go down at SPGS, especially with the parent body. However there are equally impressive Heads at other schools and you do realise she came via KGS and CLBS? Do you think she was any less effective in those schools? In fact arguably she was more effective at KGS since she followed someone well past their use by date and had more scope to transform the school. Do you think the KGS pupils were any less inspired to achieve in all areas of academia, sport, the arts by her leadership simply because the school is slightly less selective ?

My stories were extreme examples of the obsession some parents have with SPGS as the "top school", as you put it "all being equal", as if the academic horse race that are league tables are the only measure of a school's success, and the only possible reason someone would not send their child there is if they didn't want to go. An obsession that is implicit in your posts. "Why on earth" could there be any other reason? I was simply highlighting that it is an obsession that has caused a lot of issues for my DDs peer group. As many have already pointed out from experience all things are not equal. In fact the only thing that is equal is that all these schools enable clever pupils to get to top universities. My issue is not with SPGS, it is with that parental obsession with SPGS. I am sure Sarah Fletcher shares our views.

Take your askance at netball being a decider. Well lots of pupils do choose LEH over SPGS for sports including netball because of their superior on site space and facilities. In netball their close links to Whitton Netball Club and into the county and national talent programmes have definitely been deciders for some pupils. Even more so the rowing facilities and programme.

I assume that Sarah Fletcher will have addressed this now but in the past if you had a very clever child with SpLDs then LU and Westminster were streets ahead of other schools in recognising those pupils might with the right facilities achieve great things, putting the best facilities in place and proactively valuing those pupils.

You really shouldn't be dismissing all the posters who have views born of experience that counter yours, when you still to encounter the process, as having an anti SPGS agenda. I just hope that as you reach the stage of actually stepping inside these schools and experience all the differences and similarities which influence your instinct with what feels right for your child that you go with those instincts and not this fixation on one school and the brand it has with other parents.

@newsibling123 I'm on the mobile app; it autodisplays how many comments the OP has made. No counting necessary.

You do seem more than a tad aerated about this OP - despite "signing off" for the first time on Saturday, here you remain.

I had to Google SPGS and G&L. My DDs went to/go to the local bog standard comp. DD1 came out with 4xA* and is at a top uni. Sorry for the boast. Just remember motivated and intelligent kids will do well in any decent school.

No, it's the 42 comments that make you seem obsessed!

Er...From my original OP - "The only way I can imagine conflict is if G&L offered a scholarship, or DD really didn't want to go SPGS, "

Which is exactly the reason Emilyontmoor gave you and you accused them of having an agenda

You do seem obsessed with league tables to the point where you can’t see that there’s a whole slew of schools that admit high academic performers and churn out similar exam results. Your attitude that anyone not choosing the school topping the tables for reasons that don’t suit your narrow viewpoint is frankly bonkers.

@newsibling123 I have no grudge against SPGS (not educated in London myself; don't have a DD; have got on very well with all Paulinas I've met), but your attitude is more than a little bit creepy. You don't even have a child at the school, and you seem completely obsessed! I can understand the mothers who do have DDs attending SPGS being periodically frustrated by stereotypes coming up on Mumsnet, but the level of ire in your posts is something else. Wait till your DD is admitted before getting so steamed up, is my advice.

@Emilyontmoor seems to have answered OP’s question “Why on earth would anyone reject SPGS??”

Best decisions we ever made was to let one DD decide to reject SPGS in favour of a school that was certainly instrumental in giving her the motivation and confidence necessary to succeed in a traditionally male dominated discipline / field

But apparently, despite OP claiming that they wouldn’t force a child to attend a school they didn’t like, that’s “an agenda”.

Oh and by the way the very bright girl above who got a place at St Pauls, went to visit hated it and went to a coed.

Well OP has had a little taste of the madness that descends on parents as the entrance exams loom. If OP thinks these anecdotes are extreme she is in for quite a ride. There was a girl we knew who had been earmarked for SPGS almost from birth by both sets of grandparents (never mind the parents) who paid for the tutoring for two years before, even though she was in a prep school that did have a track record of girls going on to SPGS. Then she didn’t get in. I just can’t imagine setting such a high and narrow bar for your child to succeed and such a huge abyss of failure. There was another girl at a school narrowly beneath SPGS in the league tables who had had more than one sister go to SPGS who used to identify her to other people as “the one who didn’t go to St Pauls”. When one of a friends daughters did get in to St Pauls that mother commented “Congratulations. Mind you it’s hard, my girls are just average there.”

I could go on but many girls’ self esteem suffered from that competitive vicarious ambition based on an over preoccupation with league tables.

And I absolutely do think that if you took a girl from SPGS and put her into Putney High or KGS or Surbiton they would enable her to achieve the same results. Indeed might actually enable her to do better. I know so many girls who went to those schools who have gone on to Oxbridge and elite universities and to do medicine etc. They are still some of the top schools in the country in terms of results, the gap parents put between those schools and the ones at the top of the table, and even more so between LEH / G&L and SPGS are largely illusions, easily explained by being more selective in the first place.

Best decisions we ever made was to let one DD decide to reject SPGS in favour of a school that was certainly instrumental in giving her the motivation and confidence necessary to succeed in a traditionally male dominated discipline / field, then to let the other DD leave that same school (who didn’t want her to go) for a less academic coed where she thrived in the less pressured more encouraging environment and almost certainly did better academically.

There is some good advice on here from people who have been through the process and seen how it turns out long term.

Because league tables only tell part of the story. Intake is a huge part of the successful results of such schools and if you think otherwise you are extremely gullible. They don't have some weird success recipe. My DC had to choose between top selective schools and we considered things like how they could play the sports they loved. Maybe you will see things more holistically down the line. I hope so.

Should say:

*rather than the academic instruction

@newsibling123 I think academic results would be the same. Pastoral care and ethos go to the broader meaning of 'education' and won't drive results but overall well-being and personal growth.

But yes, I think all the top schools have a similar value-add and the differences in results are down to the ability of the cohort the the academic instruction they are receiving.

So taking St Pauls boys as an example, about 50% of their cohort is in the top 3% of the ability range nationally (based on their own published information) with almost all within the top 10%.

At another boys school, perhaps only 20% will be in the top 3% with the rest falling at various points within the top 10%.

In either school, the top 3% will get the same results academically and attend similar universities. Those near the bottom of the top 10% will also achieve similar results and attend similar universities. Its just that St Pauls get a higher number of top applicants which pushes it up the league tables.

This is true for SPGS as well. The league table standing simply reflects an intake that skews slightly higher in average ability.

So what if someone is choosing between schools where they know their DD will do equally well and factor in something that will enrich her and make her happier. And so what if it is netball. Not everything has to be part of a tick list to get you into a specific college in Cambridge! Outsiders don't know anything about the ins and outs of other people's choices and the weighting they put on their own criteria. How does that render people insecure?

I am only reading what you yourself wrote about how you would treat a situation with your own DD @newsibling123. However you set a certain tone of unhealthy over-investment yourself by starting a thread about why someone else's child who presumably you don't even know would turn down a place at a certain school. Could I maybe suggest a hobby more fulfilling than scanning school league tables.

I just don't see why it is such a big issue is if the girl wanted to prove that she could get an offer and turn it down. I would be far less concerned about that girl's state of mind than one who is pressurised by parents into accepting a place because they are 'lucky' enough to get one. You yourself said in your original post " (if) DD really didn't want to go SPGS, even then we would try and show her what a brilliant opportunity it was." Many would find that pressure more concerning.

If one has a child with the raw intelligence and confidence to get a place on her own steam at ten, I don't think her parents need worry too much about any school tie.