King Edward's School Birmingham- Oxbridge Results?

[Percypig17]

I was hoping to send my son to KES Bham but was having some reservations about this decision in line with the new headmaster coming in. Can anyone in the know advise how the Oxbridge results have gone this year, as I have heard some bad things about a poor performance this year. Also would people consider Camphill a good alternative?

A new headmaster is not just the issue. They issue is attrition of key teaching staff. Many kids who passed the 11 plus and gained a place at Camphill, chose the KES private school. TBH, you can just as easily get to Oxbridge from Camphill. A word of warning, Camphill has the Singapore effect. The. spectacular aggregated GCSE and A Level results of the school are down to excessively out of school paid tuition that parents provide for their children.

portico, could you explain what you mean by attrition of staff? As in, do you mean there is some reason causing these staff to leave relating to the quality of the school, or is this just a random thing?

Also, do you mean that the Camphill education is not enough on its own? Are there any reasons for this?

Sorry, I meant to say when looking at any school, it is not just the quality of head that is important. Equally important is the quality of the teaching staff. I don't know which teachers have left Camp Hill Boys and Camp Hill Girls schools. I just make the point that when investigating the school, you should check whether their is stability of training quality staff in the core subjects.

I know parents of kids at both schools. They all undertake tuition for their children, and state it is widely done. It is still a great school, but out of hours tuition is a contributing factor to its success.

Firstly on the tuition point. Any child getting into either school is usually heavily tutored (either by tutors or a parent). Parents will deny they are doing it but it happens.

Secondly tutoring does continue in these schools all the way through to A levels - as it does in all the other local grammar schools and most of the other local independents. Parents who will work so hard to get the children in these schools will continue to push for the best academic results once they are there.

Thirdly, A level and Oxbridge results. Last year KES was 9th of all schools for A level results based on A*/As. Camp Hill was 59th of all schools. However on Oxbridge results, in 2015, Camp Hill had 36 Oxbridge applications and 20 offers - a hit rate of 56%. Whereas KES had 59 applications and 18 offers - a hit rate of 31%.

Finally this year's Oxbridge results - usually the results go onto websites around 20 January but I haven't seen anything go up on many schools yet.

Hope that helps with your decision making.

Clearly Camp Hill is the better bet, considering fees are not being paid

I don't see that there is any "decision making" to be done at this stage. Apply to KES and the Grammars, get your results and then make a decision.

Don't read too much into one year's figures. Any school can have a blip.

I know nothing about the new Chief Master but his reviews on Rate My Teacher are not good.

Dancingdreamer can you please post a URL showing KES as 9th, and CHB as 59th

The data comes from the Times schools ranking but even then I had to combine two sets of data from the independent schools list and the state school list ro get an overall ranking of all schools.

I second the advice to apply first and make your decision based on what offers you get. Getting into these schools is exceptionally difficult.