I feel we chose the wrong school - yr7

No, this was a genuinely concerning issue as to what the Headteacher and Chair of Governors deemed inappropriate (or not) conduct - things such as boys touching the backsides of girls being waved off as nothing.

Yeah I guess that will depend on the report - is it mislaid paperwork, or serious concerns about childrens welfare.....

Interesting to note that only some (just under half) private schools get Ofsted and they fail a lot more.....(as of 2025 figures Ofsted website)

Fail Rate / Standard Breaches

• Private Schools (Ofsted Remit): 12% to 17% fail to meet basic legal standards
• State-Funded Schools: ~2% judged "Inadequate" (historical overall grade)

Below "Good" Status

• Private Schools (Ofsted Remit): 17% to 25% are rated "Requires Improvement" or "Inadequate"
• State-Funded Schools: ~10% rated "Requires Improvement" or "Inadequate"

"Good" or "Outstanding"

• Private Schools (Ofsted Remit): 75% to 83% reach this status
• State-Funded Schools: ~90% reach this status

I don't blame you.

Our local comprehensive failed its last Ofsted on safeguarding so let's see where that goes...

Realistically at this point the well known selective schools like City of London will be full. And so will the more sought after state schools. So if you want to
move him, you are looking at the smaller, less selective and/or newly created privates as these are most likely to have space. I know that’s the kind of school he’s at now but they are not all the same, some do a great job of being smaller and make a virtue of it, and some (like your current one) do not.

As you say, he can now handle more transport wise than before, so that will have opened up new options. In your shoes I would start phoning around private schools that are a sensible journey from where you live (Citymapper is great for this), finding out where has spaces, ask a few key questions on the phone eg about high achieving SEN, and then visit a few to make a list of possibles for if things don’t improve.

Can you go back to the prep school head for advice on where might suit and have space if you cast a wider travel net (I mean including public transport, not a longer commute)? They may have useful contacts and inside info.

Agreed and since our local state is better, we choose to save the money and not spend unnecessarily.

It is definitely circumstantial.

I think the biggest difference is that state comprehensives generally have more challenges to overcome so the staff are kept far more on their toes.

And, despite my husband's belief that the teaching standard is generally much better in the (many) state comprehensives he has worked in or with, we would still send our child(ren) to private school (if we could afford it) because the environment is so often much more pleasant.

If there isn't a private school that seems to offer more I'd wait and see what provision the school does come up with? It's fairly likely that you'll get a place in your preferred state school given that people do move a lot in London.

Interesting perspective thank you. There are nice state schools and I do completely understand it depends where you live and the school.

We often have teachers from the local private schools come over as the facilities are better (in their view) and they say the level of behaviour is comparible.

My husband interviewed with a few private schools and felt the standard of teaching, and general effort put in by the staff (lovely as they were), fell far below what he saw in state comprehensives. He frequently wasn't offered jobs with the reasoning that it would be a step down and he'd get bored because he was used to doing so much and the roles were so small by comparison (at that point, he was SLT and doing things at Trust level but just wanted a standard SLT, Head of Department or Head of Year role in a nice school where he didn't have to deal with the daily shit from some of the comp kids!).

I think it's the age old thinking that private is better and it just so isn't.

Many parents believe this mantra and don't actually understand that for a lot of private school they have to operate a model of maximising headcount - a lot of SEN kids go there because they can't get on in mainstream school, councils send SEN kids to local private schools because of this and small schools have limited students so teams become almost impossible. Yes it's lip service - they want your money.

There are some really awful SEN provision schools and some brilliant ones. It's the same with every school.

Grades at our local state school were better than the three local private schools and were within 3% of the grammar schools across the county border - going to state where we are is better.

Change schools. Why have your kid have a sometimes 12 hour day just so they can go to private? He shouldn't be miserable and it very much sounds like you aren't getting your moneys worth.

Where in London are you? I was going to suggest St Chris in Letchworth. The school bus goes from north London.

Just to clarify, you mention being on a waiting list for a state school, but if you submitted an application for a state school place, either on time or late, you must be offered one, so did you turn down the place offered? Is your LA paying the fees at the moment? Has your son ever attended a state school?

gosh I'd be so unimpressed if I was paying for that. My kids go to a state which i'd say is probably slightly above average in the league tables. But at the open day the kids were openly enthusiastic about the school and that really struck a chord and is the absolute opposite of what you're seeing. The school is not perfect especially as it is huge (well over 2000 kids) however by and large the kids seem to be happy to be there and the turnover of teachers seems fairly low. Two fairly small things that mean a lot.

If you are considering moving house then More House School in Frensham might be the perfect place. The nearest town is Farnham, Surrey. From Farnham station you can commute into London Waterloo in less than an hour, if you need to still be able to get to London regularly. It really is an amazing school and sounds like it would suit your son very well. https://morehouseschool.co.uk

I think you're absolutely spot on about the ideal being Y7-Y11 at a grammar school and then switching to a state comprehensive for sixth form.

I always say I'd have achieved higher GCSE grades if I'd gone to my local comprehensive (for various reasons, but not least because I'd have continued to have been top of the class and driven by competitiveness... Which went out the window at grammar school when I realised it was futile!) but I wouldn't have had as much of a well-rounded education.

I've also just realised an error - GCSE Russian went from a B to an A* (not an A). Slightly trivial, slightly important distinction!

What you say about those near the bottom of the class definitely resonates with what I saw of my classmates - they absolutely did not have the same view of the grammar school experience as those who didn't struggle so much.

State grammar schools definitely have their place in the world. They are not for everyone and parents who push their children from early on, with tonnes of tutoring, just so they can squeeze through the entrance exams perhaps don't do their children any favours. The environment is, after all, a tough one.

I know enough who were in that boat. That said, due to the pushiness of their parents, and the prep-school education beforehand, they were resilient buggers and definitely made the most of their grammar school education.

There were also students who'd suffered years of bullying at their primary schools for being "nerdy" (and knew that the same, if not worse, fate awaited them at their local comprehensive) so grammar school was a life-saver for them (one of the girls in my form joked she'd probably have been murdered before reaching Year 8 had she not go into the grammar school!).

Largely, though, grammar schools are great for those academically-minded, high-achieving, self-motivated individuals whose parents can't afford private education. Some will argue that state comprehensives should be brought up to the same standard as grammar schools but it's just not possible when they have a year group stretched from non-attenders, those with extreme learning difficulties, completely average students and those who are very gifted academically. They don't have the resources to meet all of those needs, on a daily basis.

It's the same argument for having more schools only for SEND students (not that all SEND students need to be in specialist schools). With a limited demographic, those schools can cater for specifically to the needs of their students.

Thanks for sharing your story, it really offers a great perspective. A few quick thoughts on what you said:

1. Moving from a grammar school to a comprehensive for Sixth Form gives a student that classic 'Big Fish in a Small Pond' advantage. A high-achieving kid in a comp naturally becomes a priority for teachers, getting the kind of tailored support that would be diluted in a grammar school surrounded by straight-A students.
2. I read research that actually shows that grammar schools add the most value at GCSE rather than A-Levels or university admissions. Looking at your experience, my takeaway is that the ideal path might be passing the 11+ and spending Years 7 to 11 at a grammar school. That way, a child gets the benefit of a focused academic environment and strong peers during their formative years. After that, they could switch to a comprehensive for Sixth Form to be the 'big fish' and get targeted help (plus potential contextual university offers), or move to a private school for small class sizes and bespoke tuition for uni applications and exams.
3. I completely get the sink-or-swim nature of grammar schools. I went to a top selective school in Asia where teachers rarely micromanaged us. Most of what I learned came from competing with brilliant classmates, some were natural geniuses while others were remarkably well-rounded, and that pushed me to raise my own game. That peer effect is why I like selective schools, though I know it only works for kids who handle pressure well. At a recent class reunion, some of my old schoolmates who sat near the bottom of our cohort remembered school very differently. Their memories were far less positive, pretty much like what you described. So it really depends on whether the school suits the child.

Do you find that Grammar school kids struggle more in this way than kids from private or public school at Uni? Just curious anecdotally as I'm guessing both would be pushed to get good marks and private/public school perhaps receive greater attention due to smaller class sizes. I know Bristol give contextual offers to students from aspiring schools as they tend to outperform the cohort and the list includes quite a few grammars.

(Op, sorry to derail thread, just curious on this point)

It is so refreshing to hear of the support your child with SEND is receiving in a grammar school - mine had a part-time SENDCo whose office (no joke) was the cupboard under the stage and pastoral care didn't exist!

All the very best of wishes to him.

That's a really interesting take.

My experience of grammar school was - here's the lesson and it's on you to follow it. Zero support when struggling (just told "try harder" when asked how to improve).

Moved to a state comprehensive for sixth form and the support levels were insane - for example, my Maths teacher would have me in his office every day (my choice) getting up to speed (I had ground to cover from parts of the curriculum my grammar school Maths teacher hadn't taught us and left us to teach ourselves, plus I hasn't done any Maths for over a year so needed a bit of a refresher). I'd sit and work through exercises and past papers while he did planning / marking, so I could keep asking questions. Absolutely zero chance of that at my grammar school. There was definitely no "extra coaching" - it was very much "one size fits all".

Interestingly, my A Level predictions at my grammar school were DDD but at my state comprehensive they went up to AAB.

The effort that went (and goes into) students at state comprehensives, in my experience, is well beyond what grammar schools will do. You get a broader curriculum in grammar schools because there's less need to differentiate lessons or deal with behavioural / social issues in quite the same way as most state comprehensives, but that's it. So much more is on the students to access what's there, rather than the school doing its utmost to help.

My husband is a teacher and the difference in the effort he puts in and the opportunities available to his students for them to access support is wild compared to what was available at my grammar school.

It was also far more competitive at my grammar school than at my state comprehensive - everyone was crazily intelligent at the grammar school so you could be exceptionally academic but not an exceptional student. A lot of people find that hard. Opportunities to represent your form / house / school were also harder to access because everyone was competing for those positions, rather than just the driven few.

There is also the difference in exam boards which seems to go largely unmentioned. Grammar schools tend to choose the "harder" exam boards (something about Oxbridge and medicine caring), whilst state comprehensives go for the easier ones. At my grammar school, we sat AQA Maths - after the exam, we got hold of the Edexcel paper and the difference was insane. I only got an A on AQA but would have scored almost (if not) full makes on the Edexcel paper (A). Had a similar experience with Russian. Sat (I think it was) OCR Russian GCSE - got a B 😭 (Absolutely gutted - I loved Russian!). A year later, with no extra lessons and very little revision, I re-sat Russian GCSE but this time through Edexcel - came out with an A.

When (some of us) moaned about being taught things way beyond the curriculum (we just wanted to focus on what we needed for the exams) we were constantly told how the school repeatedly had feedback from the universities that our school's students were way ahead in their first year of studies.

Maybe there has been a shift since I was at school but the idea grammar school students just sail through goes completely against my experience (and, seemingly, that of many others who have either been or had children go).

Setting history and social impact aside, I do think the existence of grammar schools is a natural practice with its own rationale, independent of any flawed historical research you mentioned. Selectivity is the core issue. Whether or not it benefits every individual or society as a whole, high academic selectivity is strongly demanded by parents of academically able children. Given that private schools routinely use 11+ or 13+ selection (which has little to do with the history you brought up), the state system should offer a similar option. I view grammar schools as the state counterpart to selective independent schools (in London, for instance, Henrietta Barnett, QE Boys, or Tiffin serve as the state counterpart to St Paul’s, NLCS, or Westminster) After all, selection by examination remains standard practice in education systems worldwide, with perhaps only a few Nordic countries being the exception.

Its not all about results! People choose school being the best fit for their child not to suit some leftist agenda.
There's nothing wrong with choosing private and it doesn't sound like results are op's main concern. School needs to be a good fit for the individual and if that means paying or grammar then that's all good.
My boy is at grammar, his choice, he loves it and I really don't give a shit what people think about that as long as he's happy and doing well.

Load of rubbish. Your history is correct but don't slag off grammar schools you don't know. Lots of kids do really well there and while it doesn't suit everyone they fill an important part of parent choices particularly if they can't afford private but have a kid that wants to be stretched.