Feedback on SPGS

Corona is just producing so much hot air while failing to give any sensible or credible explanation or evidence for what she asserts. I am sure anyone reading the thread is capable of working out who is commenting from experience and knowledge and who is not (and I include negative comments like laurasparrows' daughter's experience).

All the derailment is coming entirely from people without daughters at the school and often with zero direct experience of what it is actually like. Make of that what you will. I guess this too is something that prospective parents should be aware of - this type of unsubstantiated comment and unpleasantness will follow you and to your daughters around regardless of your personal behaviour and often regardless of your direct experience that stands in clear opposition to these people's assumptions and prejudices. It is unfortunate, it is largely undeserved and it is unbelievably boring. It is lucky that there are so many upsides to the whole thing that counterbalance this!

There is no smoke without fire?

As well as other girls’ schools. In the interest of sharing, what is the situation in your dd’s school? It would be helpful to compare.

Yes, agree 👍

Nice detour. Fact is, ED issues at SPGS. Would be as simple as fully blaming the school though, as others have said, not the whole story.

Is it the school? Is it the parents with DDs there? Is it the parents without DDs there? Appears to be a lightening rod.

Probably more comments than any other boys or coed schools too. I wonder why....🤔

Is it just me or does it seem that SPGS gets more comments on this forum than any other girls school? If it is true, then I don't know why that's the case.

It appears to attract both people with DDs there as well as people that don't have DDs at the school.

Re weighing food, I found the post but I am hesitant to link to it because it was a pretty heated discussion and there were a number of ridiculous statements being peddled, not just the food weighing. But the upshot was that a specific child was having her food weighed because she was getting too thin and the parents were working with the school to manage this.

Agree with every word of that post, @hampsteadmum. We are five years in and the only pressure DD has felt has come from her own desire to be doing her best, and the school has been at pains to reduce the pressure wherever they can. I back up that message very strongly at home. I sent her to St Paul's mainly because I thought she'd really like it not because I wanted her to get a string of 9s or A stars or whatever. She will probably get some and I'm sure she will be pleased when she does.

Re definitions of EDs, I had friends as a teenager who would for instance only eat fruit for lunch or who were obsessed with various other weird/restrictive diets. It's not ideal, but teenage girls (and boys, I guess, no experience) can be idiots at times. Not a single one of my friends went on to have an actual eating disorder. Some of them seem to be repeatedly dieting in one way or another but that is definitely not an issue confined to highly selective girls' schools and their alumnae! Most grew out of the weird diets fairly fast.

I'm honestly horrified at the idea that anyone would fail to raise a difficult subject with any school for fear of getting a 'black mark' and feel sorry for anyone whose experience with schools and education has been such that they think that is a real possibility or something to worry about.

I don't know that this is right. There will always be girls who do not achieve top marks in public examinations.

Achieving top grades is not what drives the school. Probably because they already have chosen an academic cohort (although girls change of course). If anything they are trying to manage expectations and discourage girls from putting too much pressure on themselves-e.g. applying to Oxbridge etc, encourage gap years etc.

In our 7 years at the school I never felt any pressure being placed by the school for any subject. Pressure usually comes from the family or within.
Covid brought its challenges around the assessment process for GCSEs and the SPGS teachers were tough markers but I think that period was seemingly insane for most schools. I personally only saw support. I mentioned a few months ago that they even delivered rowing machines to students' houses during covid. Ran cooking and exercise classes by Zoom and tried to keep the girls happy and supported.

If you need support on something (AND ASK) you receive it. The teachers (or at least the teachers I got to know) will bend over backwards to help girls. Not just academically but on MH issues too.

Problems seem to arise when one lets issues fester and does not ask for help I think. We have been lucky to have fabulous Heads of Year too.

Again, that's our experience. I am sure it's not a universal one and other will have had a worse time and realise as their daughters grow up that it is not the best fit.

@hampsteadmum your experience of the school accommodating your DD’s wishes to move to the bottom Maths set is not indicative of lack of pressure from school. At the end of the day these schools all want and expect girls to achieve top grades and sometimes being in a bottom set might help to achieve this.

Thanks for clarifying, that makes sense. The school doesn't necessarily cause a third of the students to develop EDs, but rather students who go there have a greater propensity to develop EDs because of their personal lives. Good point. ta

Yes, there are a few more severe cases. But from what I have seen (and I can only speak of the cohort I know of) they are not caused by the school, academic pressure or the school friends. Often the girls arrive with issues after the simmer holidays for example or there are family or personal life complications. Our cohort also spent Y10 and Y11 mostly on lockdown at home...

Really good points. So is the range of 25-33% because of various definitions of ED? Does the school have more severe cases of ED maybe? I can't find the post, but didn't another thread talk about the school weighing the food several months ago?

How does one define ED? I asked my DD (currently in the school-last year/A-level) and she asked this question. If one counts girls who avoid carbs, eat limited carbs, skip the occasional meal then yes 1/3-1/4 is, according to her, probably about right.

Is this ED? If it is, then I fear all my adult friends have ED.

If one limits it to more serious cases then the number seems exaggerated. She also advises that food issues tend to peak in Y10.

As I said before, the school offers great support if they sense /suspect body dysmorphia or ED and they extend it to friends of those with ED if desired. My DD used to be at NLCS junior school and rumours of extreme ED cases higher up in the school were rife there too. Funnily enough though most rumours came from non NLCS parents. Lots of "almond mums" there too. We know of several girls at CLGS and SHHS with serious ED (hospitalised etc) and a couple of cases at SPGS.

I fear that most girls' schools have girls with some form of food issues-but also co-ed schools-e.g. Westminster, Highgate etc.

In my view and experience the SPGS staff seemed to be quite on it and proactive.

Who among the courageous outraged people here have actually asked the school? A lot wouldn't for fear of getting a black mark. Who among those have actually read ALL posts from parents at the school here without really wondering?

I have no dog in this fight (DD isn't in SPGS), but you can't casually drop a statistics like that (quarter to one third ED) and expect people to not question your source. If it's entirely made up (or anecdotal observation), then it's worth mentioning it in the post, because otherwise, it doesn't help at all the OP who is seeking information about the school for her DD. She may accept your stats as close to reality (even 25% ED, your lower range, is distressingly high IMHO, if accurate).

So you made it up?

I don't think gossip and supposition makes for good 'learning lessons'.

You can also read about how popular was Clarissa among the girls at school. But what would she say - I wonder 🤔

😅 you guys are so funny, you love the drama, taking the top of a range and ignoring the past tenses and all.

The learning lesson is, if your daughter is not an absolute resilient top performer, then the school is not for her. Is not the other way round. Parents may drop their dreams and also must take responsibility for the pressure they may put their kids under, when they are not able to take it. You know your child. And it's a marathon.

Yeah, a third sounds like a fairly extraordinary estimate to me. Maybe in a ballet school I might expect those sorts of numbers.

A few years ago there were some numbers published showing that, yes, all-girls' schools have more of an ED problem than mixed ones, also ED's are disproportionately uncommon amongst kids with better educated parents, so, yes, based on the above it's not difficult to imagine SPGS being a mini-hotspot of sorts... but the data doesn't suggest that the difference in ED rates between e.g. regular and girls' school is night and day, it's a fairly modest difference, so a figure like a third just doesn't ring true to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/sifting-the-evidence/2016/apr/28/eating-disorders-are-more-common-in-some-schools-than-others-but-why

What does the cohort look like for oxbridge? Is the ED widespread there too?

I think even earlier than 2019 (she'd gone by the time DD applied and she started in 2018).

The nearest I’ve seen to statistics on this is from the previous Head’s book (https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/clarissa-farr/making-of-her/9780008271305?cq_src=google_ads&cq_cmp=19545754695&cq_con=&cq_med=pla&cq_plac=&cq_net=x&gclid=CjwKCAjwhJukBhBPEiwAniIcNdhPJWtvwcCrRf2q7OmLan2o3zc7XZ2emMAPn1LWjT5MwOoYRhzKPhoCpQYQAvD_BwE#GOR01020032)

She left in 2019ish, I think, and there’s a bit that talks about eating disorders and the attitude to food and the canteen. Her view (bearing in mind she was obviously biased) was that the school probably had fewer girls with EDs than you’d expect for a cohort of that sort.