Help - Advice Needed - Mount Kelly or Sherborne Girls !!

[ExpatinCairo]

I am considering Mount Kelly for my daughter - Year 9 in September 2015. She has been offered Millfield but I think Mount Kelly may be a better fit for her. We are also looking at Sherborne Girls which has recently implemented and elite swim program. We currently live in Cairo, Egypt and my daughter will need to board.

My daughter is a swimmer and also a very academic girl (and the motivation for this comes from her), so she wants to go to a school with very good academics/teaching (this is very important to her) as well as elite swimming.

My concern is the last ISI Report which was done in November 2012. Under the "Quality of Teaching" section - this is awarded "sound" - out of a possible excellent, good, sound and needs improvement - which is not indicative of anything above average academic teaching.

However, I have visited the school and I aware of the recent merger with Mount House and management changes, new Head Master etc. I have been informed that they are implementing a gifted and talented programme within the school and are aiming to lift the academics. They also had an inspection recently and a new ISI Report should be available before the end of this month - which I am looking forward to reading with interest.

I am wondering if you (or anyone) has any experience/knowledge on the quality of teaching (and subject streaming etc) within Mount Kelly. Has there been a focus for better quality teaching? I was told that the new Head, Mark Semmence, is really driven and enthusiastic to improve the academics, and is really leading the management within the school since arriving in Sept 2014.

I also understand that they have new faculty staffing structures in place to implement in Sept 2015 - anyone have any comments.

On another school, does anyone have any comments on Sherborne Girls, swimming, academics or otherwise? We have also visited there and liked it very much, the only downside was the number of compulsory exeats they have per year, which would be hard for me to manage as we are based in Cairo, Egypt.

Thanks in advance for any advice !

The ISI report is out now and there was a newsletter announcing the appointments that have been made for September 2015.

The ISI report is out and a link is on the home page of the website. The report is just great and a real testament to how things are moving in the right direction - they got the highest grade of 'excellent' in all but 2 areas which in turn were awarded the next highest grade of 'good'. The report is really positive about all the changes, the quality of teaching provision in and out of the classroom, extra-curricular, the new management etc. Makes for a very positive read! They recently sent parents an email listing the many and impressive new academic appointments made for a September start, and a new Deputy Head Academic is due to start in September as well, with very high credentials! The Swim School of course is amazing, and even though my children aren't swimmers, I think we all take great pride in their many achievements - this Easter the squad came back with an impressive clutch of medals including a national record breaker! To boot, Devon is glorious, everyone here is really friendly and down-to-earth - if your daughter is looking for the best swim coaching available, and you naturally want it to be backed by good academics, then I'm quite sure that MK is the place for her! :)

Fatmamaof2, it's interesting that you see a list of many new appointments as a good thing. I find it sad that three of the college's most outstanding teachers took redundancy around the time of the merger, and that a further twelve or thirteen are leaving at the end of this term, presumably because they don't like the new headmaster or he doesn't like them. Perhaps the new people will improve the academics or perhaps they won't, who knows - op, how much of a gambler are you?

When my dd was at Kelly a few years ago the teaching was perhaps a little patchy, but she had many truly inspirational teachers and left with a string of top grades to go to a top university - more importantly I believe that she loved every moment of her time there. I hope it's still such a happy place for the children.