Queen Ethelburga's Harrogate anyone?

[TessTing]

We just had another prospectus brought home from DD's state primary for QE. The idea is quite appealing but not within our budget. It seems very expensive but mentions possibility of discounts through various bursary's and scholarships. Does anyone have any experience of this? Is the school to be recommended? (middle and high school age)

I am a very unconnected posters fascinated by the anti QE vendetta one sees on Mumsnet. It's seems weird to me. It is a school for the very bright girl. Everyone would know that. You'd do to the Leeds Grammar if you were bright but that doesn't mean it's a bad school.

What many parents like about private schools is eccentricity and lack of that very dull norm and conformity you get in the state school system. I am sure QE has its place.

Why are people so interested in doing it down?

Lol - YorkshireMum42 has never posted before, on any subject.

Long time lurker clearly.

I think you mean it is NOT a school for the very bright girl.

But they claim it is, and make out that they have some of the best results in the country.

YorkshireMum42 - no one on this thread has suggested that they have 3 year old boarders, I have no idea where you got that idea from. I certainly don't believe that they have boarders any younger than equivalent schools.

I just felt the need to give a different side as I thought the comments were unfair and not my experience. I rarely come on mumsnet as I find it too aggressive and only only really look at the diets and shoe advice! I don't think that means I can't comment. Just my opinion.

Laura and Yorkshiremum OP came on, looking for a school for her DC in Leeds Harrogate area, and mentioned QE. Far more of the advice given focused on the other schools in the area, the popular choices for local parents, and areas to live in etc. Frankly in my experience and with family living in very close proximity, it is not a school considered by local parents who are looking for more traditional options like Grammar School at Leeds (which is not a state school) , Harrogate Grammar, St John Fisher, St Aidens, Ripon Grammar......... but I am sure as I have said before that it does do a good job for parents attracted by the particular package on offer. That actually is what Yorkshiremum is reinforcing so I don't think people should be getting paranoid about her motives. Given the rhetoric in their marketing and solicitors letter I think in my opinion you could expect a lot more to get paranoid about if QE did go undercover to post........

I actually don't think the eccentricity provoked half as much of a reaction as the attempt to stop people coming on here and offering their honest opinions of the package on offer and whether it would suit OPs needs. Plenty of other eccentric schools out there but they don't get their in house lawyers to stop posts which certainly in my case, were simply, as I am sure you know yorkshiremum, what you are likely to hear in my experience / opinion from any gathering of local parents.

Come on, let's be fair. Surely we can accept other opinions, I know yorkshiremum ( I posted on the thread earlier and mentioned the thread to her as she was the only qe mum I knew well) she is who she says, not a qe plant.

"She does appear to be a real solicitor"

Nevertheless her use of the term "client" in reference to an entity connected to her employer and implying an arms length professional relationship rather than the very different in-house situation is at best disingenuous, and in my view deliberately misleading.

This could also apply to the use of the word "Trust" which to the man in the street implies an entity with a charitable or philanthropic purpose whereas many trusts are established overseas in countries such as the British Virgin Islands in order to shelter their income from taxation and/or their beneficiaries from publicity.

Laura - my interest in QE developed when they purchased my details from a marketing firm and sent me unsolicited marketing information in the post. I think that I am not the only MNetter to have first heard of QE this way. This seems to me to be an unusual way to market an independent school, I haven't had any similar approaches even from our local independent schools.

I therefore read the marketing material with scepticism. The posts that remain on this thread are partly trying to read between the lines of the published information available to fill in the gaps where published information isn't available.

I completely agree that a school/schools like QE have a place in the independent sector, but does that place match where QE's marketing suggests it is?

(Yes, I missed out the NOT - ouch).

If people feel anyone's marketing is untrue report it to the ASA and trading standards under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. I think it would be kinder just to leave QE well alone or pick on other schools in the same way).

As for quoting the poor lawyer I expect she did not give consent that her copyright be reproduced on here, did she?

Poor lawyer? Shall we send some donations?

I don't think that their marketing is untrue. It might have a certain spin on it (obviously very common in marketing) and might not be doing them any any favours.

I am not convinced that the lawyer's message is covered by copyright. Considering that she set it out as "The True Position", there should be no problem in quoting it.

QE brought themselves to my attention - they didn't leave me alone. No other school brought themselves to my attention in a similar, unsolicited manner, so I have no reason to seek out the publicity material of other schools and analyse it.

They way QE gets treated in MN has built up over time and is entirely of QE's own making IMO. Other schools are mentioned and some people say positive stuff and some say negative stuff and then the thread dies out.

QE and one other school on MN insist on tackling anything slightly negative by throwing lawyers at it and telling MN they will use the libel laws against them if the posts/threads aren't removed. They are shooting themselves in the foot because people who might have sent their children there are put off because the the way that the schools are acting makes it look like they have something to hide regardless of whether they do or not.

This thread would have died after about 10 posts if previous threads about QE had never happened and a lot sooner if QE hadn't got their lawyers involved on this thread. Whoever mentioned the Streisand effect was right.

"or pick on other schools in the same way" But they do laura, maybe not exhaustively searching the financials and structure of charities / trusts etc. in the absence of defensiveness, but certainly I have read far far worse said of schools in threads like these. Girls' schools that are full of eating disorders, boarding school that churn out entitled brats etc. etc One even implied recently that if you sent your DD to a certain girls' boarding school her virginity would be treated like a dishrag by Eton schoolboys (and I really did think mumsnet should have deleted that one). All these schools would be spending a fortune on lawyers if they took action on every bit of negative noise caused by someone's opinion. They wisely prefer to focus on the positive and leave their reputation in the hands of good marketing strategies that target the customers whose needs they meet and word of mouth recommendation.

I'm intrigued as to which the other school is.

I'd tell you but I'm having a mental block and can't remember the name. It's a secondary state academy in London I think. Most of the threads on it have gone.

TBH it's probably for the best. I find this sort of thing "car crash interesting" and could do with getting some housework done instead.

I think the thing that really i object to is the distortion of the truth, and selective use of stats to try to prove a point.
I would have no issue what so ever with QE marketing itself as itself, ie a blingy school with great facilities (although rather odd changing rooms, in my opinion, of individual loos, hair dryer/basin cubicles instead of the normal friendly benches).
But to try to pretend to be the best school in the north, in my opinion, by very misleading stats (ignoring numbers to oxbridge/numbers to medicine/numbers gaining A*-B apart from native chinese/russian gaining own language quals and those with Cs or less not being allowed to progress to A2) is not reasonable.
Honesty, openness and clarity are qualities i hold as important. I know plenty about the local indi school market, and many of the state schools mentioned in this thread, not one of them seek to distort figures for their info, but are proud, and happy, to be hoist by their own petard.

Oh this is one of those threads that keeps on giving.

Oh dear Hobnob, I think you're going to get an email from Kay via MNHQ again.

I must check out their changing rooms.

If you issue a press release you give an implied consent for it to be reproduced. However that does not apply to all copyright works. If I write a letter of advice to someone I am not consenting to its being published anywhere whereas if I write a letter to the Financial Times which is clearly implied for publication then it can be reproduced. Obviously if the letter says she agrees to its being reprinted then it's fine.

"proud, and happy, to be hoist by their own petard"
i wish people wouldn't use cliches without checking their meaning.

"Hamlet's actual meaning is "cause the bomb maker to be blown up with his own bomb" wiki

I think the lawyer should send out a cease-and-desist to tell people to desist from explaining what it is the lawyer was telling people to cease doing. And then if that one gets posted on here, they could smackdown that one too. And it would be an infinite spiral of lawyers and legal threats eventually causing a wormhole and destroying the universe.

I asked for mine to be deleted as it added absolutely nothing to the argument - was a query about theatre masks, didn't even mention the school but i am too wet not to crumble