What is the real value of highly selective independents/grammars now?

I was just wondering if grammars south of the river are different.
@Ubertomusic

I’ve heard Tiffin Girls' has a great music reputation, and I saw on their website that their symphony orchestra minimum requirement is Grade 6+. We will find out more about it, if my DD gets a place next year.

Thank you Araminta. Yes, many go to JDs but that's sacrificing the whole Saturday and playing in NCO is not a weekly activity. What I tried - and failed - to find is a good academic school that would also offer high level music making in groups within the school day or straight after school, with termly concerts. Some schools claim they have excellent music but in reality their ensembles are grade 5-6 at best. It's either not valued by parents or not a priority for schools and I was just wondering if grammars south of the river are different.

That is exactly what I have heard. To motivate my daughter, who has become too complacent in her overly holistic private school, I would rather let the school and her peers do the pushing instead of playing the bad guy myself. That is exactly why I am now drawn to the highly selective grammar school system, provided she gets in, of course.

Getting a Grade B at A-level is not impressive. Since students only choose their best subjects and their parents have deep pockets for extra resources, the fact that 20% still get a C or D is telling. It confirms my original point that the majority of students are just coasting.

Just to be clear. I didn’t go to oxbridge. I did go to a standard (now not a good) RG. I dunno it just seems here people are comfortable talking about it.

Maybe at sixth form level. But I tend not to volunteer it as it sounds a bit stuck up to say you went to Oxford or Cambridge. I had a conversation last week about which universities we went to with someone I've worked with for 6 years, it didn't occur to me to raise it earlier. Clearly it takes me a lot longer to get to that point in a relationship.

Why is it surprising? Isn’t it just a general conversation topic? Especially when our kids are in 6th form so we’re starting to discuss universities and open days.

I'm a bit surprised that you are all discussing where you went to university.

@BonjourCrisette - it’s an all boys state grammar until 16. They are largely incredibly bright but many are chatty and silly and lacking in attention to detail/overconfident. So I guess the school feels like they need direction and competition. It’s a completely different culture than a a superselective girls school.

@Ubertomusic - the ensembles are much smaller but the music ensemble teachers are good. There are a surprising number of gifted musicians across the school. Thing is though they don’t get pulled out to rehearse for hours (or hours after school) so it’s not like an independent. But the serious musicians do Guildhall RCM RAM or Trinity plus NCO/NYO or regional youth orchestras in the holidays. DS fancies himself more of a soloist at the moment. My nephew at Eton claims he rehearses until 10pm several nights in a row, not sure my DS would ever be up for that!

Plenty of parents at our large non selective state school went to Oxbridge. And the school does get a number of kids in every year. It is in London.

If anything, the school was often telling children that they did not need to be working all the time and should make sure they had downtime and time with friends as well.

The parents do all the pressure! 😂

opportunity to do a lot of stuff that was only tangentially related to any curriculum requirements.

But that is also extracurriculars?

As far as I understand it, the highly selective independent schools simply offer higher quality extracurricular activities

This absolutely isn't true of our experience of one of the highly selective schools. The main benefit was the curriculum and the opportunity to do a lot of stuff that was only tangentially related to any curriculum requirements. Plus the other thing that was really great was that because the school was well aware that everyone was capable of getting 8s and 9s or As and A*s in pretty much everything and also that most children were working hard and doing their best, there was very little pressure.

Your children are being told to focus on work. Mine experienced a gentler and kinder approach and still came out with excellent grades and a place at her dream university. If anything, the school was often telling children that they did not need to be working all the time and should make sure they had downtime and time with friends as well.

Yes we had very similar experience at grammar @Araminta1003 which suited my DD who was only focusing on academics but would't work for my DD.
Out of interest, as your DS is very musical, what are ensembles like at your grammar? Are they decent level for grade 8+ musicians?

As far as I understand it, the highly selective independent schools simply offer higher quality extracurricular activities and that roundedness is actually specifically encouraged at all times. So they can be pulled out of classes for music lessons and sports fixtures which does not happen to the same extent in grammar schools (you can get away with missing 1 lesson a week for eg a music lesson).
Looking at DS12’s recent school report from a superselective grammar school it notes how well rounded he is and how many activities he has done (and he is some sort of rep for the year and talks at open events etc), but they specifically are already telling him to focus more and extra on his academic work. And when they test them at his school, it is really high expectations all round and really hard tests from the get go. There is zero flattery forthcoming, just more and more academic expectation. And the same applies to my DD in year 12 at a superselective grammar school. DD has friends who have dropped out of further maths because the peer group is so insane. Pretty sure the same kids in most comps would be at least upper average in their further maths sets.
So they are simply in an environment where the expectation is that everyone is very clever and has to also work very hard. So that is fine if that is what the child and parents want.
The same then applies to elite unis. Make sure the kids actually want to be a small fish in a big pond and that that motivates them, rather than discourages them. My DC have all been fine with it, but natural it is not, and plenty of DC struggle with it (feeling second best, when they are actually super duper in reality, compared to the national average).
I suspect highly selective independent schools in London kids can get a very skewed view of what type of wealth is normal. So they can be well off, but actually feel poor. Again, that is not everyone’s thing. Some people do not mind being the poor relation, but others do and just really value the opportunity.
As for unis and contextual offers, it all comes out in the wash as employers are now contextualising too. So anyone getting in who is not quite up to the mark can suffer for it further down the line so I hope the unis are making sure they do offer to DCs who really can cope with the demands (and I don’t just mean academically, I mean self belief and confidence and thriving, as explained above).

Agree on this,
Then the difference between grammar and PS is mainly in sports and to some extent music.
There was virtually no sport to speak of at my DC1 grammar and the parents' priorities are stem, stem, stem.

@footbeds maybe several tiers was going too far but eg Forest School which has been mentioned on this thread as a lower tier independent school in London is nonetheless selective seems to have got over 80% A*-B grades at A level last year, and it’s certainly competitive to get into.

Ok. So what OP was actually talking about here is the value of hype-selectivity,. Labels like grammar, comprehensive, private are just red herrings.
A hyper-selective intake does two things that standard schools can't touch: 1. It unlocks accelerated learning. The pace is fast, the depth is there, and teachers can actually deploy top-tier academic resources because they have a room full of pupils who can keep up. 2. The peer effect is guaranteed. You get a cohort of motivated DC backed by self-selected parents who prioritise education (nobody gets past these super selective entrance exams by accident).
Frankly, actual 'teaching quality' is a distant secondary factor here, as high achievers get those top grades through heavy independent self-learning anyway.

I'm just referring back to the OP, it says "highly selective" PS so I just picked one of those. What's the point in comparing grammars and non-selective PS, they belong with different worlds. Our friends were choosing between HBS and SPGS, they never applied say to Forest School.

There are 150-200 all-through 4+ private schools across the UK, hyper-selective ones like NLCS are rare exceptions. I was talking about the other 99% of them.

However, even if I could afford and wanted a private school the idea of putting a child in for a 4+ or a 7+ just seems completely alien. Preparing a 6 year old for an exam they could fail. It just seems completely unnecessary stress for the child and family.

This is what I mean when I say it's self selection first of all.

Only one uni in England (Bristol) to my knowledge offers contextual offers to all students at specific schools. Most require 2+ contextual ‘flags’.

Private school just isn’t an option for our family and there are no grammar schools in the county. I don’t think about school ‘choice’ because there isn’t one. I just encourage DD to work hard and make the best of the opportunities she has.
However, even if I could afford and wanted a private school the idea of putting a child in for a 4+ or a 7+ just seems completely alien. Preparing a 6 year old for an exam they could fail. It just seems completely unnecessary stress for the child and family. I didn’t even know it was a thing before I read about it on mumsnet. When I read about the prep some families do for the 7 or 11+ exams, it just seems a very stressful childhood experience. I know people say some kids enjoy it, but I’m sure some hate it but just want to please mum and dad so get on with it. I remember reading about one little girl who ‘failed’ to get into the same school as her older sisters at 7. I just felt sad for her.

Plenty of kids at independent also miss out on the extra curricular. There is a real correlation between having driven parents and this sort of achievement whether in state or indi. Some parents are very pushy and expect their children to be high achieving. My dd is in a selective indi and off to uni this September. I’ve been pretty determined that she make the most of opportunities so have encouraged her to join everything with a view to having a story at university application time. Some of her friends have just gone to lessons. It worked and she got offers for her first choice course. The state school she would have gone to is pretty middle class as the catchment picks up the wealthiest area of my fairly wealthy city. There is a well attended annual ski trip for example and plenty of law firm partner / doctor parents. But because 20% of the catchment is more deprived it also as a whole qualifies for contextual offers. The course she wants to study is an A star offer but contextually 2 grades below and it’s pretty galling to actually know someone in her year in primary who has an offer of 3 B’s for the same course whose family is objectively as privileged as mine (professional educated parents, tutoring, fancy holidays) and has done lots of extra curricular too (as it is on offer you just have to look for it). Anyhow, I’m no longer convinced on the value for money proposition and my 11 year old dc will be going to said state school September and I will have an objective view on all of this soon. If it doesn’t work out for them we will move them to private.