Difference between PREP and PRIVATE

[MascaraOHara]

Is there one?

I'm worried about her fitting in anyway though because she will start school at 4 next year and will nobody from her nursery will be going to the same school as her where as the other will have mostly been to playgroup together.

And also depend on the secondary that they were going to.

What is the rough size difference in classes?

Yes, 7 would be fine and of course it depends on lots of things but you'd need to know you had a good state and I mean a good one as opposed to meant to be good.

I wouldnt worry about that at her age. Ds went to private nursery and knew noone in his primary but made no difference.

Depends on the state and private schools. For us it was the difference of two reception intake classes of 30 in the state school (considered to be a good one) and one class of 8 and one of 14 for ds. He is in the class of 8 and I feel sure that if he had been in the state class he may well have been excluded as he had some behaviourl 'issues' at the start of the year. In a class of 8 the teacher could cope with him and coax him into behaving. However good the state teacher in (and I realise she/he could have been excellent) that would have been almost imposible to do in a class of 30. he would have spiraled downwards.

dd will have 16 in her Reception class I think (with teacher and assistant), as opposed to 30ish. ds (Prep) will have 20.

We are very lucky as ds's state primary is in that every year and we pay nothing!

Lucky! It is realy the numbers thing that drove us, and if I'm honest they also have excellent pre-post school childcare that makes my life easier with afterschool meetings etc. The local comps are also very unsuitable for our kids for a variety of different reasons

Is the GSG online? tia

I didn't realise the difference in size was so dramatic!

I also thought prep would be more likely to have before and after school clubs..

I thought you meant the times good school thing.

Mine do get the longer holidays but they also run a holiday club (which is a separate cost) for most of the holidays. I only have to sort out the difference between state and private schools which is a godsend

I did a search on the GSG web pages and both came up, does that mean they're both in it? i clicked on the links but I think I would need to buy it to see??

Oh so do I ks so I'm a saddo too.
Yes Prep is preparation for CE at 13(Glad you're thinking about it already too ks)

My dd is moving from a private (independent) school which goes up to 11 to a prep school this September (which does Common Entrance at 13)

I think your ds is a year younger than my dd (she will be Year 4), ks?
And is also changing schools?

Sorry KS, I've only just come back to this.. nothing specific - just wanted to see if they were in there and what it said.

Only have one child so I'm new to all this school business!

There's a certain set of criteria for schools to be 'prep' AFAIU. DD's school, only opened for five years, is currently a junior school to its senior (over 100yo) but last September was inspected by relevant body and has been approved for membership of some prep school organisation (sorry not at home and it all went over my head a bit). I'm not sure if this means its stationery will now change to read 'XXX, preparatory school to YYY'!!

DD's school is well outside London and offers care from 8am to 6pm. AFAIK, pretty much all the independent schools locally do this, at least until 5.30pm.

Ah see I didn't remember it correctly, of course now I remember your ds is the same age as my dd.