St edwards oxford

[oilkdjx]

hello everyone,

Has teddies got more selective over the last 3 years, will it become a "hothouse"

is their intake still broad?

The head says he is trying very hard to position it as an academic powerhouse. However that’s not easy. They’d have to be stealing more day kids from under the nose of MCS and Oxford High (which given the difference in fees and now VAT feels unlikely), more boarders from the likes of Winchester, Eton, Oundle and Wycombe, and more international boarders who might otherwise choose schools like Brighton or Sevenoaks. This is not easy to do without being very very competitive on fees or very liberal with scholarships, and/or taking an LOT more overseas students.

Some suspect that the academic talk is simply the head trying to improve results a bit to reassure traditional Teddies parents (post VAT) that it still offers value for money. (That, and buff up his CV a bit as he is rumoured to be angling for the top job at Eton). It will have put a few parents of lower ability children off applying and it will probably encourage some marginal students work harder to avoid being moved on at sixth form. Some marginal applicants may be kept waiting a bit longer to find out if they have a spot. But in general, unlikely to be any radical changes.

Sorry @Ziegfeld but as a current Teddies parent I feel your post is misleading. The current Warden does want to improve Academics (because all parents want their kids to get good exam results) but he isn’t trying to turn Teddies into some kind of exam factory (aka Academic powerhouse). If he was he would have changed the admissions criteria to have a higher ISEB test threshold to turn away more of the average scholars. But at Teddies a student who is maybe average academically can still get in if the school think they will thrive or be additive to the school community (e.g. a great dancer or actor or sportsperson).

Also let face it, the type of parent that wants to send their kids to a MCS or an Oxford High is really quite different to the ones who actively want to go to Teddies. The fact more people are being turned away from Teddies recently is simply due to the rampant popularity of the school these days.

Whatever the say they are doing on the academics, the evidence of the value-added in the sixth form is really quite weak given how much they are charging (and the wider nature of their cohort compared to MCS etc).

https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/123292/st-edward-s-school/16-to-18/advanced-level-qualifications?accordionstate=0%7C1

IB cohort - weak, A level cohort - weaker!

That’s my point - what he SAYS is not necessarily backed up by the what the school actually DOES in terms of admissions. I have heard him talk a very big game on this on several occasions - both aspirational (wanting Teddies to become a top school academically) and actual (saying it has already become much more academically selective). Prep school heads have dutifully trotted off and reported all this to parents - several of whom have been put off applying when in previous years they might have done.

So the rhetoric has to an extent done a job for him - without changing ISEB thresholds or fundamentally changing the make up of the school.

The question is what happens now. There is not a single private school in the country that isn’t worried about the impact of VAT and other measures (eg Oxbridge admissions) on student numbers and demographics. Even schools that have been “rampantly popular” in recent years are finding that it is increasingly a buyers’ market. It might not be the time to be putting off traditional Teddies type parents, even if their kids’ CAT scores are on the lower side.