SW London Girls' Private & Grammar - applying for year 7 in 2023

Maybe they're all just general this year?

Sorry, I meant general!! (silly of me!).
General and delighted with it! :)

Thank you - by academic do you mean general?

@Dallasdays , we do not...but our DD's indie is really strict about children (or parents, for the matter) sharing news during the exam process, quite naturally (kids that have been successful telling other kids that have not been successful would never be a good idea, especially when you are trying to keep everybody's morale high). Same with the parents.

My DD and her best friend both got academic interviews and shared the news with each other because they are like sisters since they were born (I do not think that they have ever kept a secret from each other!) and the families have been friends for decades, but the girls are adamant that there is no talk at school about results (just comments about how they found the exam) and that, when a particularly 'gossipy' girl tried to extract information, all others just clammed up (and mentioned that, if she tried again, she will be reported to the teachers).

Does anyone know of anyone who has been given a subject specific interview for KGS rather than a general interview?

@secondaryquandries , in the past the KGS scholarship assessment exam had all the 10 plus successful candidates as they don't sit the 11 plus exam. I don't know of many 11 plus candidates who have been invited over the years.

@secondaryquandries , the KGS mentions scholarship assessments in November, so I assume that the invites were sent out on the 21st November or thereabouts.
I would assume that the academic (subject specific) interviews would have gone out at the same time too. It would make sense to send all interview invites more or less at the same time to start organising things (I envisage that it will be quite a logistical exercise!)

My son said Hampton and Ibstock at the weekend like some of yours. He also found the Ibstock online test time pressured. He enjoyed the group task though. Hampton he enjoyed the English, found some of the maths good and some tricky and found the words and reasoning hard.

Also, does anyone know if the kgs scholarship interviews / subject specific interviews came out with the general ones? I assume that they did.

Two weeks and all the exams are done for us!

@futomaki , @swgeek , many thanks, very useful (and reassuring) to know.

At least last year, if I remember correctly, they pretty much all send an email as well as posting a letter. If I remember correctly, Emanuel were the only ones who only send the letter without the email but I may be mistaken. KGS and many of the consortium schools etc were email and letter or email only.

Last year, every school we saw was via email.

On the issue of notifications, I notice that quite a few schools still refer to posting letters ... which concerns me a bit in the context of a potential postal strike and also as quite a few people might go on holidays: That applies to us for Christmas, for instance, when we are expected to receive news from a couple of schools (any idea if when they say "posting letters" they refer to both hard copy but will also be sending emails?). Thanks

@highRopes thanks

It was 2 December last year, by email.

Hi all, for those who sat WHS last year, did you receive a letter or email with results from the first round? think we are expecting results on Friday

@QuiteAJourney it's a bit far for us too tbh but I wanted to apply to a spread of places because I wasn't sure of his ability.

Hope Radnor went fine. It seems a lovely school - we ruled out because of distance but seems to have a lot going for it.

@KindergartenKop No idea, sorry. My dd didn’t have a reference, so it can’t be a vital
part of the process.

@HighRopes so do you think they use references as well as the grade (given 500 kids all get a similar grade)?

I've got no skin in the girls' school game btw, I'm just interested in how they decide this stuff. I have a DS and they have all been paper exams so far, except Radnor House which had a never ending computer test apparently...

I wondered precisely this last year. In the end the email came on 7th January, which seemed like an oddly long time after an entirely computer based test (which I think was Atom-based last year although PHS didn’t specifically say so, as dd said it looked just the same as the Atom website).

PHS will let you know the results of round 1 in ‘early January’ for round 2 on 18th January. Not sure why there is such a large delay given that round 1 is computer marked so presumably they already have the results.

Related to the above, does anyone know when first round results for PHS will be released?
More generally, do senior schools (which by now have received school reports and/or references) sense check them before releasing them?

It will always be tricky but we have never had to factor in this adaptive aspect that essentially means each girl is setting a different test and relying on the Atom wizardry to create comparative results.

LU also have to sift through 1000 results and there will also be a big middle portion that is hard to separate. 500 kids might have scores within a 10% range. However brutal this might be you at least know that the playing field was level and all children had an equal chance.

With Atom it is just a coin flip. The same candidate might get 120 or might get 140 depending what questions are asked, how the difficulty was defined by the machine, the subsequent questions asked and the SAS score generated.

@bjmin - as you say, it will be interesting to see whether the overlap is same as in previous years. But still so tricky as you never know how much is the lack of alignment is because of factors that have been there like children having a bad day or the exam focusing on different aspects (not only scope of the exam but focus on timing vs depth, for instance) and how much because of the issues with the new exam platforms.

Plus I assume that the secondary schools do not share the raw results so schools might become aware of the most blatant cases but it could be quite tricky to know for those 'more in the middle' / more marginal cases.

That may very well be true. Although, I wonder how previous used Consortium tests differentiated the mid-800 students as well. My only observation is that when you look at students taking different tests for different schools, often there's significant overlap in the students who receive offers, meaning regardless of the exam, many of the same kids were given offers. Again, we'll see if this year is any different. I don't know.