I worked in admissions at a selective school. AMA

[AdmissionsChief]

I worked in the admissions team at a selective private school in the south of England until the end of last year. Ask me anything you like!

(btw I have namechanged for this thread)

Has anyone ever tried to bribe you with cash or gifts??

I’ve known ‘selective’ independent schools where anyone who could write their own name on the exam paper got in. And others where pretty much every applicant could expect to be rejected. What was the actual degree of selectivity at yours?

Also, did you select purely on academic results, or seek to have a balance of qualities within the pupil community?

Do you ever reject children because of the parents?

What's the weirdness name you've come across?

(Seriously, @CatamaranViper - you want to set up real life, identifiable parents and children to be mocked or laughed at for their names?)

Yes just a couple of times. Both times it was the father who made the approach. Both times they were astounded and offended when turned down.

Do schools that don't have an official sibling policy generally take siblings if the parents are good fee payers?

Totally get where you’re coming from. The school I was at definitely was academically selective - usually there were about 3 applicants for every place, and roughly 140 places. Places would be offered to the top 180-200 (based on entrance exam results). Interviews and refs from current schools also considered. However there wasn’t a set pass mark - the school was a business and so some years the overall standard on entry was a bit lower.

Selection was purely on academics. The “balance” tended to come from the bursary pupils who were, in my time at least, 100% from very different backgrounds to the fee-paying pupils and 100% had at least one parent who wasn’t born in the UK. Bursary pupils were selected on academic merit (and family income/assets). It was much easier to earn a place as a fee-paying pupil than as a bursary pupil as the competition for bursaries was extremely high.

Sadly not - and, honestly, that was one of the many factors in my decision to leave!

I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m not going to answer this!

I don’t know about other schools, but at the school I worked at I’d say YES definitely- it was very hard for a sibling not to get in. Especially once VAT on school fees was implemented and private schools started fighting for survival.

We did turn down a few siblings but this was the exception rather than the norm.

Unlike state schools we didn’t have a sibling preference policy. Siblings had to go through the same admissions procedure as everyone else.

How academic are we talking? Average and above? or top 10%?
public /´name’ school or private?
what are your aimed for gcse results? 7s?

Also do you have an opinion on whether there is a benefit in choosing a corporately owned school vs an independent?

because I can’t decide if this is a good or a bad thing. Maybe more financially stable or likely to be closed if not profitable for investors?

How important was the interview vs the entrance exam, and what did the interview aim to test?

Was the school financially healthy? Have they had to lower their standards since vat? Did you ever say negative things about competitors - this used to be a big no-no and an unwritten rule, but some schools are now actively disparaging other schools. It’s very sad.

Top 10% (children who didn’t get accepted at my school were usually offered places at other selective schools, based on parental feedback)

Private day school which is very well-known in the county and surrounding counties

GCSE-wise, between 94% and 98% of pupils attained grades 6-9 in all their subjects during the 10 years that I was there. I’d say that a grade 7 was looked on quite sneeringly by a lot of teachers (and parents) - another of the many reasons in my decision to leave

It is a difficult question to answer in the light of VAT. Some corporately-owned schools will be more financially stable than others, and you may find that one or two of the schools within the group are propping up the other members of the group financially speaking.

I think this is the case with a lot of prep schools now - they are surviving purely as guaranteed feeders for their senior schools but aren’t profitable in their own right. In terms of big names that hopefully most people have heard of, Canford and Winchester College have both recently taken on prep schools - in both cases they were unofficial feeder schools anyway, but now both have been formalised. The birth rate just isn’t high enough for those prep schools to be viable on their own.

We are trying to choose schools and struggling to feel confident in our decision cos they all look brilliant.
What makes a good school in your opinion?
Were open days truthful or all show?
Was your school reviewed by muddy stilettos / good schools guide & do you think these give true insights into a school?
Which sector did you move on to?

You made more offers than places, were there ever times when the acceptance of those offers left you with too many pupils?

Most pupils apply for more than one school, probably with a pecking order in mind. Where was your school in the local pecking order?

Our interviews were low-key and designed to try to work out if we felt the child
would be a good fit.

Other schools have far more rigorous interviews.

Yes financially healthy.

Yes standards have had to drop since VAT but this also coincides with a declining birth rate. Day schools don’t have the option to increase the number of foreign boarders to prop up their offering.

No we NEVER said anything negative about any other school. Massive no-no as you’ve said and I regularly made sure that my team weren’t doing this.

If I am totally honest, you need to go with your gut feeling when you look around.

Open days were truthful but obviously certain pupils were deliberately selected to show parents round etc.

Yes we were reviewed by the odiously-named Muddy Stilettoes (as a man I hate that name as it seems to imply that school choices are made purely by women?!) and Good Schools Guide & Sunday Times etc - we always came out really well. I don’t think any review can give a true insight as, rightly, there are so many things that can’t be disclosed by a school due to GDPR and safeguarding.

What makes a good school? It depends on your perspective. For a lot of parents it’s exam results. For me it’s whether the children are happy.

I’ve now semi-retired and am pottering about in the garden, playing golf and considering some part-time consultancy work!

Never - due to pecking order, people’s finances changing, not being offered a bursary, getting a place at a good state school…

We were top in the pecking order for most parents. Those GCSE exam results are a big lure! If a pupil didn’t accept our offer and instead went to another selective private school, it was ALWAYS to a boarding school.

I've often wondered how schools lower down the pecking order manage their admissions, because they'd have to over offer massively to account for other schools creaming off some of the applicants.

This is really interesting. Is it really obvious which applicants have been tutored within an inch of their lives and which have just done some exam familiarisation? And did you expect a higher standard from prep school applicants than state school?