Help Please? Anyone's D got into Haberdashers or NLCS at 4+?

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My D is will be going for the 4+ 'play group' asesssment at Habs and NLCS. I'm desparate to know what they ask them to do. Really need advise from all mums whose child are already in these schools. Pleeeeeeaaaassse help!!!

Her consultations (by email) are very good too....

V interested in your link to Donna Williams, and connected through to link with Paul Shattock. Thanks.

Glad you found it interesting, Paul Shattock is a really nice guy, was very helpful regarding urine tests for GF/CF intolerance for DS1.

Infact everyone I talked to at the autism research unit at Sunderland Uni were really nice.

I am always impressed by people with (sadly) first hand experience in this area who don't become tub-thumping bores but are able to retain analytical perspective.

Captainmummy - my two children are educated privately and they have no classroom disruption.

This is partly what I am paying for.

But there ARE disruptive children in fee paying schools.

There were identical twins in my DDs class in preprep. I once asked her how she told them apart. "Oh, that's easy Mummy", she said. "X is the naughtiest."

There are several overly bright pupils in the classes who are very pushy and command more than their fair share of teacher time.

There are children who are the product of the middle-class malaise (imho and I'm middle class) of, 'Oh Tarquin darling that is sooo wonderful, you pinched your sister/kicked that dog/pushed that old granny you are so clever and talented etc" who have no boundaries and think that they are entitled to behave as they wish.

There are disruptive pupils, one way or another, in every school.

friend of mine's son is in a private school and he was talking about the 'nerds' and the 'cool people'. This doesn't happen in HE so asked what constitutes a 'cool person'. Apparently its the teens who smoke and do drugs and mess about in class.
This is despite the 9 grand a year fees and posh parents.

needmorecoffee
that really does depend on the school.
My DS is in selctive independent and the fees are expensive. He is 14.
There are the 'nerds' and they tend to be the 'bookish' extremely bright kids. The 'nerds' are no more villified than the jocks and the cool kids. If anything the 'cool kids' are trhe group on the outside because they are viewed as screwing with the oppertunities they have They are different parts of that community.
My DS swims between the groups being pretty bright but in the A teams at sports and pretty cool and handsome too. He says a couple of boys talk about using drugs but he thinks only one is actually using and the others are just trying to get bragging rights.
A couple of his friends are 'nerds' and he actually feels that several of that group have traits he recognises from his brother. Their abilities are accepted and rewarded in that enviroment and they support each other.

He wanted to help at an activity centre for kids with both physical and learning disabilities and had about five boys asking if they could apply with him.
His brother has never been treated with anything but kindness and respect by the boys who visit here and he is a regular at the rugby matches where all the boys greet him in spite of his determindly ignoring them.

As for the kids messing about in class - sorry - just not tolerated - doesn't happen or they are out.
There are crap schools in all the sectors but the " druiggie lazy snotty" stereotyping of kids in private schools is just as redundant as the "yobbish foul-mouthed lazy" stereotyping of state schools.

Either the child goes to a crap school or was showing off. If kids are messing about in class and taking drugs without the school dealing with it your friend should get her money back.

Well it does depend but I grew up near one of the poshest schools around and there was a huge drugs problem there and widely acknowledged in the press at the time too. Another local small prvate prep closed down after discipline standards were so terrible aprents panicked and (rightly) removed their kids.

OTOH there were some fantastic private schools inclusding a Quake4r one nearby, and I would be mroe than happy with my kids attending.

Fee payng covers such a wide trange that to say X and Y applies to all is completely wrong. There are good and bad much as in state education, the benefit of course is that you can talor it to you- won't happen but we'd love ds1 to go to somewhere like Millfield (DH's mate is a teacher there), as he is so incredibly talented at sports and the school here isn't sporty at all.

Exactly - it depends on the school.

I just get very frustrated by the lazy stereptyping of both sectors - prinarily as it usually demeans the children attending.

No matter how much one pays one won't be able to avoid crass people such as Belladonna who may believe herself to be beautiful whilst her opinions are poison.

Although of course there's always the option of home tutoring

Good point!

This school - Bristol Cathedral School - did expell a few last year for messing about and one lad was caught with drugs. But its also a problem even in the poshest school that has Princes attending it.
And then they all move on to Oxbridge or Bristol. Gawds, walking through the student parts of Bristol and dodging the vomit is an eye-opener. All the accents are ultra-posh, the students lunch in the organic placeyet I wouldn't want my kids mixing with braying sloaney types. ds1 wants to go to Bristol Uni. Urk.
He's also talked about going to BCC. I'd rather he stayed at home and mixed with nice home educated kids and the SN lot we hang out with

I wouldn't choose Millfield. It's where they go if they're not at all bright. Children have too much money there. But overall there is less disruption in most private schools than state for a whole load of very obvious reasons.

It's not fair to criticse accents and all children rebel at some point. Obviously university students can drink too much. I've 3 in higher education at the moment and one was at Bristol. Interesting you wouldn't want them mixing with those types. I suppose some privtae school parents wouldn't want their children mixing with those with the wrong accent from some state schools either. Perhaps the better segregation at university level we now seem to have achieved (fewer children from state schools than ever getting into better universities because of the demise of state grammars) is something parents in both sector applaud as they don't want their common or posh little darlings polluted by children from the other sector/class?

Millfield is where hey go if they're not at alla cademic but sporty, for the locals anyway- which my aprents are. They go to Sidcot for pastoral care, which is where we'd send ds2 (Ds3's Sn too severe to consider). There's a few academic enough schools in the area, but bear in mind DS1 has often been marked out as particularly able in athletics despite HFA and dyslexia and the choice makes sense.

A good frined went to a local academic, was head girl of her oxbridge uni and is now extremely high earning, professional and successful- and miserable so I would look further

I was at one of the most academic public schools for the sixth form - I had an amazing time, the education was extraordinary, and it transformed my life - I felt accepted and stretched for the first time (had been v. miserable at a local private school beforehand) - BUT the amount of drug taking was astonishing, including in school itself and in the boarding houses (not just at weekends). (My very first day I asked someone in all innocence where I could get some coke, meaning a can of fizzy drink, and got told precisely how and where I should go to buy some coke . . .) I never breathed a word of all this to my parents, who would have been shocked and alarmed, but the thing is that this didn't stop it being an amazing school, and the best possible place for me at the time, which is not of course to defend the drug culture, or to suggest that it didn't do real damage to some pupils. But it's a complicated issue, and I think it's too easy to assume that the 'best' schools by definition don't have issues of this kind, or that if they do they aren't really all that 'good'.

I still think children are better off in day academic private schools and parental influence at night. They are then less in a culture which is dominated by whatever type of child they're boarding with and have more influence from their parents. More of the top schools for results (and sport/music even) are day schools than boarding too.

I also think more children smoke at boarding school than day school.

I was speaking to a woman today whose second son has just started at Manchester Grammar. Both boys are extremely bright but she's on her own and not at all well off. They are there due to MGS's 'blind entry' policy.

She was telling me that the education is outstanding and that they genuinely make her feel as if her sons deserve to be there. I found that interesting considering they are considered one of the best schools in the country.

The problem is, she has a daughter 2yrs off secondary school. Unless WGS follows suit, her daughter will end up at the local sink comp. What will this do for family dynamics?

Out of interest, does anyone know of a charity or similar which helps with fees for very bright girls from deprived backgrounds?

Sorry, I know that is way off topic but I thought her positive experiences (considering her social circumstances) was intersting.

Perhaps those schools who are purists in terms of selection purely on academic ability are far less snobby that some others.

I think you're right cushioncover that the absolutely most academic schools - I mean really the top handful, of which Manchester Grammar is certainly one - tend to have a different kind of hierarchy/snobbery/elitism in play (because all institutions have some kind don't they?) which is based primarily upon intelligence/wit/sparkiness or whatever. Doesn't make it better, but it is different, and certainly better for some children than the alternative hierarchies (of sportiness, or popularity, or fashion sense, or money or whatever). At the school I was at (of druggy fame, above) this was certainly true, which was a revelation for me (having been friendless before!). But one of the saddest things about it, and why I would never send a child there without careful thought, was that I knew so many boys who got all As and A*s at GCSE, all As at A-level, Grade 8 in an instrument or two, could sing or act, and perhaps good sportsmen too, and who went through school never feeling anything but mediocre. I really think it was the kind of school that made compulsory education bearable for the very very brightest, but I felt sad for those boys who felt 'average' and really weren't (and I'm sure this kind of situation contributes to the drug problem - it is by the way very largely a day school Xenia, although I boarded).

I agree with cc. I found schools like Habs and NLCS which although not needs blind, you get in if you're very clever, and lots of not too well off people compete for places are not snobby or posh and also the children are cleverer. That's why the schools like Manchester Grammar, NLCS, Habs etc get better exam results than most of the boarding schools often NLCS beats Eton.

In general I think there is less criticism of you if you're clever and going to university (as 99% of children are and go there at these schools) in those schools than the average comp so that is better if you have that sort of child.

On help for girls with fees I am trying to think of the Manchester Grammar type girls equivalent in the area. I think it's a tragedy where one sibling does really well from a poor home because they get to a good school and another doesn't as they don't even though they are both as bright. It shows the impact edcuation has - it's what I suppose we tried to stop happening when we abolished the 11+ and grammar schools but instead the bright children then end up in the sink schools because there are not good state schools in most parts of the country so all we did was damage them rather than benefit others. If the sister is equally as bright she might win a full academic scholarship at 11+. Even my sister is currently applying for a bursary at primary level for one school. It's worth trying. Try bodies like the Sutton trust or ISIS may be able to recommend some sources or try to take on a second job to pay school fees.

What an eye-opener this thread is. My dh went to Bristol Cath and we can't think of any of his classmates who sound remotely posh. They were mostly the sons of Bristol shop-keepers with accents to match.

I went, as a teen, to the best parties of my life at Millfield. That's all I have to add on that subject.

My two go to an independant school in a very rural area so the dominant accent is 'ooh-aar'. Oh well.

Ah JudgeNutmeg, you may have grown up near me LOL - mind you in some ways I'd prefer the Millfield scene to the alternative which was Taunton, and from which my XP, BIL and other sisters XP came- all seemed aprticualrly immature for their age, very sheltered existence (was a while ago now though!).

Xenia, the girls school is Withington Girls which also has phenomenal results. She was saying that they do have a scheme to help with fees but even then she would struggle with the top up. She's a teaching assistant and their wages are shockingly poor.

I'll mention the Sutton Trust to her, thank you. Perhaps someone at MGS can advise her too.