3 month old applying for private school???

[Tinasan]

I live in SW London and have a three month old baby - am a bit shocked by friends telling me that they are already registering their babies for schools in the area as otherwise it will be too late (Apparently even registering this early doesn't guarantee a place - they will all then be 'assessed' for suitability at three years old ) Is this really necessary - I haven't given this any thought at all and would rather enjoy my baby at the moment and not think this far ahead if possible! Thanks

ha ha, well we didn't give them our cvs

Perhaps not your cvs, but you would have had to give some info at registration. We certainly had to give job title and employer I think.

the most popular independent prep schools will close their list by the time your child is 3 months old! i know cos we were too late at 4 months... (but luckily wasn't that bothered tbh)

that's the way it is.
first come first served... for prep school anyway.

btw, i put my DD's name down for her daycare nursery on the way back from my 12 week scan! glad i did... then i forgot about it til i went back to work when she was 10 months - the waiting list is huge.

Not sure who they choose at 3. Habs where my oldest went used to have 7 + entry when they could test maths, English etc but found from experience they could tell at 4 as well and get as good pupils. I didn't get the impression they were lying. Age 3 must be harder. I was thinking about it in relation to my niece. My brother said every lawyer and doctor in Yorkshire seemed to have desceneded on that school on the entry test day so are they testing by checking the parents were supposed clever because then the children get clever genes (although don't genes dumb down overall?) and a good working environment at home? Or if you can pay fees you're probbaly cleverer anyway? I don't know but I think the better schools select. North London for the 4+ entry does:

"Admission to the First School (40 places)

Entry to the First School is at 4+, so for entry in September 2007 a candidate's date of birth should be between 1 September 2002 and 31 August 2003; candidates for entry in September 2008 between 1 September 2003 and 31 August 2004. Applications are registered between May and November for entry in September of the following calendar year. The closing date for receiving applications is 15th November each year.

The first stage of assessment will take place on the 8th, 9th and 10th January 2007. We do not expect a candidate to be able to read or write. The assessment will be in two parts:-

1. "Play" activities lasting about 45 minutes in groups of about 12 children.
2. A smaller list of girls are recalled for the second round which includes individual assessment on a one-to-one basis. These will be held on the 20th and 22nd January 2007. From this short list the final selection will be made.

Pupils will spend three years in the First School. They will move up to the Junior School in the September following their seventh birthday."

And my other daughter's school

"You may register your daughter at any time. In order to take the assessments or entrance examination the registration form needs to have been completed and sent to the Admissions Secretary, with the £50 registration fee, by the last week of November of the year prior to entry.

...
4+ and 5+ Rainbow and Preparatory

The 4+ and 5+ assessments take place in early January of the year of entry. For entry at 4+ and 5+, your daughter may be seen on two separate occasions. The first visit involves group activities, the second is for a short interview and simple aptitude test. Standardised tests are used to assess the learning potential in language development, cognition, physical skills and socialisation."

DS1 is at a selective primary in London. We put him down before he was one. A friend, whose child was over one, was told the list was full.

They take twice as many kids in for assessment as they can accept. So they are still selective, while working on a first-come-first-served plan.

They assess kids at 3+ for admission at 4+. This school assesses kids in groups, by watching them play.

I used to live in SW11. When DD was 3 yrs I started phoning around private schools for propsectus and realised they were all full. It turns out everyone else had names down at 6 months. I have had to move out of the area as the good state school had catchment area of 200 yards. 6 miles out of london, I had little problem getting a school place. Obviously I had to put DD into pre-school to ensure that she got offered a reception place. But that seems par for course in SE.

The closing date for registration for all the schools I've come into contact with is around Nov of the year before the Sep your child will start - even at 3+ or 4+. You can hand the form in on the last day and your child will not be disadvantaged. Selection is done on academic ability/potential. Re the registering from birth or no chance type schools - I don't get it really - if they close their lists so early aren't they just missing out on a lot of potentially clever children? It must make it harder to run a successful business if you use the first come first served model - you wouldn't do that when you are interviewing at work would you!

Interesting Mitbap, I'm quite surprised at the preponderence of selective schools in other people's areas. Where I live in SW London we have 6 independent prep schools in walking distance and only 1 is selective. And it only takes girls. So there in fact isn't a local selective private boys school for DS to start in at reception (which is good, as I actually don't agree with selection at 3/4/5).

The school that does select does not get noticeably better results than the better of the others. At 11 it "deselects" some of its children and takes children from the other schools.

That would be an interesting study - the at birth ones with IQs from 80 to 150 adn which schools they get into at 11 and what A levels they get and those like Habs, NLCS etc who do believe they can pick at 4 who will be getting the best A levels at 18.

If there is no difference may be the first come first servers by asking for parents' jobs on application forms and picking parents who say both went to Oxbridge use that as their criteria or they use the interview (allegedly what the state Oratory school does) to check the brains of the parents at the time.

The traditional boys pre system was take everyone subject to having places and then as they get older wokr out who is clever and who isn't and pressurise the parents to accept school advice as to which subsequent school at 13 would suit a particular boy.

"They assess kids at 3+ for admission at 4+. This school assesses kids in groups, by watching them play"

The extracts from the Habs and NLCS web sites I pasted below show what they look for to some extent. I genuinely think you can tell if a child is thick as a plank at 4 or a very bright spark and if you';ve been assessing girls for entry for 20 years and use tests which work and are used in many schools you really can sort the wheat from the chaff etc. They wouldn't bother assessing unless the schools found the process worked. If it didn't work they'd pick out of a hat or just take those who registered within 7 days of birth.

Nope, still

Local (Hackney) school will be fine for us, as I am hoping my little one will get a pretty good supplementary education at home too! Life is about so much more than results and tests...

Back to OP I also didn't believe people would put names down so soon, but they did. When I registered DS1 for several schools at around 21 months I was told there was minimal chance of him getting a place. As it turns out he was offered 2 places - but after the initial offer letters were sent out. He didn't get into any of the state schools we applied to. With DS2 we registered him at 8 weeks for the school DS1 is at and was told he's on the waiting list for the nursery. They're both August birthdays btw.

I'm still sceptical, though more willing to be convinced than I was previously, about the validity of testing at 3 or 4 for reception entry.

On the one hand I'll confess that my dd is at the Junior School of one of the 2 girls' schools Xenia mentions (won't say which one). Obviously highly selective - though she was assessed at 7+ not 4+, which involved more formal testing.
My impression is that all the girls in dd's class, whether they started at 7 or 4, are extremely able. What they have in common is highish to very high intelligence, coupled with the energy to go through a broad and rich curriculum at a cracking pace, while still being left with plenty of enthusiasm for music, physical activity - including just mucking about of course - drama and all the myriad of other activities on offer.

That said, dd and her 2 older brothers started at a non selective prep on the first come first served model. Most of the girls stay to do 11+, and looking at the leavers' lists every year (I've been turning up at the school's door since the 1990's) I'm always struck by how well the school does at getting many of the girls into the top academic schools in the area and beyond.

I'm comparing this non selective model to, amomg others, another "desirable" and highly sought after academic girls' prep near us which assesses for reception and for year 1. Its leavers' list isn't to my mind notably more impressive than my children's first school. And this is after a day of assessing little girls and commissioning an Ed. Psych. report on each of them, at applicants' expense.

My munm put my little sister down for the school that my brother and I were at while she was still pregnant - and even so didn't get a place until halfway through Reception year.

ws, my girls aer both at university and left Habs. NLCS now so happier to name the schools which we found suited them both very well. I would have thought at 7 which is when the one who went to NLCS got in (no 5+ entry there in those days) you could test better. She read well, could write stories etc whereas her sister age 4 at Habs just talked a lot! But the schools did find they could check at that younger age as well.

The interesting question is whether parents who can afford fees are clever anyway and their children are and the home environment good so if you pay you're clever anyway. Or second theory we are all a blank slate bar a few genuiuses and very low IQ people and you can take any group of girls at 5 and teach them so well at 18 they will get mostly As in their A levels.

I have seen both. The boys' two prep schools although selective at 4 are not at the Habs/NLCS level and boys at 13 go to various schools depending on how bright they are and it can be quite mixed where they do go. That makes me think the selection at those girls schools does work. If it didn't work I can't see an economic case for bothering to go through all those test days, teacher time wasted etc etc just do it by whoever registers first gets in. So presumably they find they can assess.

"My impression is that all the girls in dd's class, whether they started at 7 or 4, are extremely able. What they have in common is highish to very high intelligence, coupled with the energy to go through a broad and rich curriculum at a cracking pace, while still being left with plenty of enthusiasm for music, physical activity - including just mucking about of course - drama and all the myriad of other activities on offer."

That is exactly what I see and I am sick to death of parents at other schools saying the schools my daughters were at were pressured awful academic hot houses when that's not the case at all. In fact may be it's the robustness they look for at 4, the confidence, ability to tackle things, to cope may be and I notice that's followed through now they're over 18 too but I'm not sure that's how the school made them but how they were which therefore helped them get in.

It's the end product - albeit only 4 or 5 years on - of the 4+ testing I've seen at dd's school that's persuaded me to some extent, and for the first time, that testing at this age can sometimes work. But although we always thought dd was bright, we never contemplated 4+ assessments for her because we didn't think it could be very accurate. But the fact it seems to work at her current school, and from what you say the same system has been in place for a number of years with no dilution of end stage exam results, doesn't persuade me it always works quite the same, viz the academic girls' prep I mentioned earlier. It certainly gets them into the top academic senior schools, but an equal no. go to more middle of the road schools, making the leavers' list really no different to the mixed allcomers' prep dd and her brothers attended.
I can assume therefore the more relevant factors at play there are parental background/level of support for the children, but perhaps above all good teaching, particularly at the non selective school.

Are more affluent people generally cleverer though? Or are they statistically more likely to be overconfident/ruthless/avaricious/obsessed with material "success"/unencumbered by social conscience?

It's an interesting one, isn't it?

With the exception of a very few 'silver spoons' and others with inherited wealth I suspect it does follow that if people can pay they're probably quite clever and/or hard working because it's a more and more competitive world out there - and also by being willing to pay they are presumably demonstrating that they place a high value on education and will support the kids.
Not to say that people in lower paid professions/vocations are not clever - please do not mistake me on that one!!

ok, so around Teddington/Twickenham anyone know which private primary schools are selective rather than get your name down when they are 2 days old or you have no chance then??

bc then we might have a chance of getting in!

I don't know about whether the schools with full waiting lists by August assessed or not. I have the feeling they only allowed a certain number on the waiting list and then assessed from that, IYSWIM. In my experience of 4+ assessments for selective school (hugely anecdotal and based on my friends' children), there is a heavy weighting in some of the schools towards children who are older in the year. If you had the choice, why not go for a bright older child over a bright younger child? They are even more likely to excel.

Prince Harry and his mother springing to mind.....or is that the effect on in breeding and incest that lowers IQ?

GS,that's a bit biased. Arugably the more you earn the more spare time and money you have and the more massive the amounts you can give to charity. In other words become Bill gates and you can do more good in the world than earning nothing because you feel better working for a charity.

And there was me thinking that the lady in Kindy who asked me which school ds was going to and seemed horrified when I said I hadn't given it a lot of thought it being a year away was mad.

I do have pregnant women putting their babies down for my music classes though!