DS is in yr 10 at SWBGS. He's obviously brainy, they all are there, but by no means top of the class, if anything he thinks he's not doing well enough as he's "only" predicted 9As and 3Bs, whereas a lot of his friends, even the boys, are predicted 12 As.
Borlase is great in a lot of ways, certainly the academic expectations are extremely high, any slippage is immediately addressed by the form tutor or head of year. No one is allowed to fail, essentially, so the pressure is quite intense.
On the plus side, the extra curricular stuff is outstanding, eg there are loads of little rock bands who take it in turns after school to use the rehearsal studios and fully equipped recording studios. On the sports side there is a very good rowing team and ds has basically grown up messing about in boats in the evenings and weekends, does lots of racing at national level. There are lots of other sports teams, I don't know about any of the dance stuff, ds dropped it as soon as possible at the end of yr 9.
In a nutshell, Borlase pupils work and play very hard. There's a lovely atmosphere of fun and respect between the boys and the girls, without any pressure at all to go out with each other, but there's a lot of mixing at weekends on a friends basis.
We were hooked on the visit as it was a lovely summers evening, the roses in the quadrangle were in full bloom and the headmasters golden lab was padding around, the pupils were all very confident, polite etc. There's very little racial mix and the pupils are all, that I can see, in very affluent families which may or not be a problem. Many of them live in massive houses with tennis courts and/or pools which can be a bit offputting!