I moved to the Guildford area a few years ago. DD1 and DD2 have both been at Tormead ever since. At the time of our move, Tormead was the only school of GHS, St Cat’s and Tormead that had places available in the relevant years of the junior school.
I must confess that, heavily influenced by league tables, our original plan was, ideally, to move the girls to GHS as soon as places became available. We had already dismissed St Cat’s as offering, IMO, rather too much of a Mallory Towers-ish outlook for us.
We have, however, been very impressed by Mrs Foord’s changes to Tormead since 2010 when she took over the headship. She reduced the number of places in each year to ensure that the school’s USP is as a more nurturing environment, whilst also maintaining a reasonable, yet undeniably more diverse range of academic ability than at GHS. There has also been a significant changing of the guard amongst the staff with the recruitment of a raft of enthusiastic, dynamic teachers across all subjects. She has also presided over a major building project that has dragged the senior school buildings into the 21st century.
Since our move, I have also encountered girls who attend all three schools at many different sporting fixtures and met and spoken to parents who have girls at all three schools. Tormead girls are a diverse bunch. They are also open, confident and comfortable in their own skins.
GHS is undeniably the most academic of the three Guildford schools. But this is unsurprising when those girls that under-perform are encouraged to leave, if not directly, then by the relentless rounds of tests in which they are found wanting. There is also more than a whiff of the Miss Jean Brodie about Mrs Boulton who inculcates a superiority complex in her girls.
In an increasingly global workforce, I would argue that EQ, as well as IQ, is equally important and I have seen little evidence of emotional intelligence amongst the GHS girls I've encountered. Whilst the “win at all costs“ approach undoubtedly gets results, it means that those GHS girls who are enthusiastic, yet less able or even, perhaps, just smaller than their peers, rarely get to participate in inter-school competitions. Those who fall into the bottom quartile of their cohort are also left with low confidence despite achieving results placing them in the top 2% in the country.
The school’s approach is perhaps best illustrated in GHS’s annual pantomime, written by the 6th form and performed by the Yr 7s in front of parents and the junior school. This sanctions the ridiculing of girls at the other two local schools (Hormead, anyone?) despite the fact that a significant number of GHS parents have daughters at the other two schools. Enough said.