francis holland or south hampstead?

[Carly1000]

Does anyone have the low down on these schools, my friends needs to choose between them for her 10 year old. I hear south Hampstead is generally fully of very balsy ultra confident 'alfa female' girls. If so I think this might be a little overwhelning for her. Years ago it had a rep for being pushy and some of the girls who couldnt cope developed all sorts of issues.. is this still the case? How does it compare to francis holland (the baker street branch). The child also got into queens college so any info on that school wd be great. All thoughts welcome.

nobody got any views?! ;-(

I went to SHHS and have friends who went to that FHS and Queens College.

I left nearly 10 years ago but I hated it, I know it is a love/hate thing though and just because you're not ultra Alpha type doesn't mean you won't thrive.

I can try and answer any specific questions if there are any

I can't answer anything about SHHS, but my daughter went to Francis Holland from year 7-11, and enjoyed herself and came out with good solid results. My impression is that they work the girls hard, and get the best possible results out of them. I would say that this is sometimes at a cost to challenging the girls - the aim is good results so once the GCSE course start there felt little room for deviation or expansion on a subject. However, the results are very good indeed. Every year all the girls make it into good universities with a handful of oxbridge places and an increasing number of US university places.

It is a nice straightforward and happy school with some very good staff and a very committed head mistress.

It thinks of itself as a far bigger school than it really is - there is a genuine and ambitious attempt to have as full a range of extra-curricular clubs, sporting and musical activities as is possible given its site and location.

The building is nice, well maintained and possibly a little small for the number of girls using it.

We chose it and were happy with it for our daughter. At 16 she wanted something different (mixed and larger) but we would have been very happy for her to stay at FHS. As it is, the change does seem to have been a good thing so perhaps our lesson is that you can choose a good school (and FHS is a good choice) but it is also good sometimes to have a change at a later date. FHS prepares the girls more than well enough to be able to change school with confidence at 16 if that is what they want.