Feeling Disheartened With Private School Visits: Very Unpersonalised & Felt Like Cattle Markets

I'm surprised most seem to do only 9 x GCSEs - assuming they all do maths, 2 x English and 3 x science that only leaves 3 options to cover all the arts, languages, humanities and social sciences. I know that nobody needs to do more than 8 or 9 but surely there's more to education than that. It seems a shame to narrow the curriculum so drastically (and close some HE doors) when presumably the DC are very able.

The children will learn manners and attitudes at home far more than from school

Going to be honest, op, you’re not coming across as terribly “humble and humility” on this thread 😂

Agree, we had similar experience too when doing the 11plus school rounds in London two years ago. We visited about 10 London indies and 'most do 10' wasn't true then.

ok @PreplexJ i think we have a different reading of it. I googled the independent schools average gcse taken and can see that in 2017 it was 9.7 and in 2019 it was 9.4 where the report states that it’s going down due to more schools only taking 9. Can’t find anything beyond that but at this point I just know from the schools we visited (for three different children) that the idea “all schools do 10” is just not true

If you check more details on the other page, you will find for independence school most of the information is blank in theil DfE dataset. Yes I checked these data and that is what I know.

Personally I don’t enjoy being anywhere where I’m expected to be grateful just to be allowed in. Yuck.

I've worked in a very popular, highly competitive independent school, and one which had spaces available in every year group. In the first school it was literally an open morning - the school was open to anyone/everyone, and parents wandered round looking at whatever they wanted to. In the second school (actively recruiting) there were highly personalised tours, lead by staff or prefects who had been carefully matched to the family.

Would you rather send your child to a school where you're grateful for having been offered a place, or would you rather a school that was grateful to receive your child. No right answer, pros and cons to both.

Eta: both these schools were lovely places to work, children were largely happy, and achieved well. I genuinely wouldn't rank either school as objectively "better" than the other. Horses for courses and all that.

For most London indies at this stage of admission cycle, wooing is impractical. There are 5 to 10 times more parents willing to part with £25K x 7 than they have places.

Once you have an offer, all will do much better than a weekend open day when the school dragged unenthusiastic year 8s and 9s from their bed to show a gaggle of super-eager prospective parents the school.

@PreplexJ the data above includes all schools with a DFE number (that’s what the site says), and on the other page you can see it includes independent and free schools.

@Spirallingdownwards i did a lot of work researching this three years ago when looking. That’s a common misconception and the data is released annually. It definitely used to be the case but has changed. You can see it here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/infographic-gcse-results-2023/infographics-for-gcse-results-2023-accessible#number-of-gcses-taken-in-2023-by-16-year-olds-in-england
The average across England is actually 7-8.
WHS, one of the more popular London schools does 9, Surbiton, offers four pathways leading to 8, 9 or 10, Kingston Grammar, 9. Yea, there are schools still doing 10, like Hampton which is mentioned here, and some of the grammars, but then if you drill into who is actually ending up sitting 10, it won’t be the whole year - when we visited with our Dd a lot of the schools on ten were saying they will lose a gcse if they can’t ‘keep up’ which worried me a lot. This was a massive thing for us when looking for DD and I think the ‘more the merrier’ approach to GCSEs is a thing of the past. Now looking again for DD2 and even over the past three years I’m seeing a lot of the schools that were doing 10 are now doing 9. Of course they offer, as DD1’s school does, “extras” like astronomy, Greek, further maths, Russian, Italian etc as after school courses, but there is most definitely more schools now than when we last looked who are doing 8 or 9 as standard.
im not saying oP shouldn’t consider this - I think GCSEs offered is one of the main considerations (it was for us) but it’s incorrect to think that most schools are still doing 10 for all.

The source here does not include private schools (and iGCSE)

My daughter attended 3 private schools (1 primary and two secondary) and all had very warm welcoming tours. However, I noticed that the more famous the school the less welcoming the open day, as they arrogantly assume that parents will apply anyway (which put me off).

If you're anywhere near North London, my daughter's school is having a Saturday open day on 30th October 😁 My daughter will be there doing some of the tours- not sure what impression she'll make 🤣but the school is lovely

"This thread is about schools who make little effort at the sales stage."

Why would you expect the school use current fee paying parents money to make an effort to attract future fee paying parents? If they already oversubscribed.

Don't think that is correct.

In 2021, 12.9% students in England took 10 GCSEs compared to 27.1% who took 9.

Only 15% took 10 or more.
85% took 9 or fewer.

The numbers are similar for the previous three years too.

Source : https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/infographic-gcse-results-2021/infographics-for-gcses-2021-accesible

My son had a mum and son for his tour but his friend had four families who each wanted to see every subject classroom

How completely unbearable the moneyed middle classes have become.

For both schools? Or just one of them? If results are well above average without other intake element the catchment location must be prime.

Without all these factors the only other factor is some extreme discipline teaching approach.

Sorry but that is just not true. Most schools still do 10 gcses.

@HighRopes My DC has a hearing issue so class size is important. Not just to help with hearing but also if she needs help during the lesson.

Otherwise I agree with you.

@DibbleDooDah Unless your DC specifically needs a small class size, I wouldn’t reject a school based on 25 in a class in the lower years.

Our experience (30+ state primary class to selective independent with up to 25 in some classes) is that the experience is hugely different between the two. The class size matters much more where the range of abilities is very wide, I think. The secondary has much smaller groups for some classes like PSHE, and certainly the teachers (even in the larger classes) seem to know my DC as an individual.

Open Days anywhere in outer London are rammed. Our local state school is so rammed that the Police and Council have to manage the local roads on Open Evening with usually 30-60 minutes at the end when no car can move. The tours themselves are so packed that there is gridlock in the corridors too.

I agree it's a poor show that some of your tours have been self-guided. DC was helping at their school yesterday - fortunately in a subject room but still 4 hours on a Saturday. Some of their friends conducted 4 tours of a large site in that time. I expect they were less enthusiastic towards the end.

A lot of private schools to a very 'open' open day but also have a bookable evening which is much friendlier. I'd try those if that's an option for you.

“One is based on random allocation within a catchment area and the second is based on distance. Both produce well above average results.”

Another bet is both schools are in London prime location catchments with other ability intake routes, e.g. doing band and etc.