Preparation for academic scholarships in independent prep schools

[DarwinDog]

Could you give me an idea of what your DD/DS's schools do to get them prepared for academic scholarships? How early do they start preparing them? Year 6/7/8? Do they put them in a scholarship stream or are they mixed with Common Entrance pupils? Would really appreciate your thoughts, thank you!

At my DDs school (girls boarding prep) the scholarship stream were identified at 9 part way through prep. A separate class was established and the others were in to other classes. Latin was added to the curriculum for them. CE was taken at 13 by most, not 11 so the school prepared for that and academic scholarships were achieved in very healthy numbers. However they had lots of very bright girls!

Y7/8 ime. But only for certain subjects. Many independent schools now award scholarships based on performance in their own entrance papers rather than CAS or CE, so teaching a different syllabus in say Geography may be pointless. It will depend which is the destination school.

From form 7 in a separate Scholars Class. Each child is prepared for the scholarship for their particular destination school. Massive difference between a Kings Scholar at Eton and a local more parochial independent which may or may not have their own scholarship papers or use CAS. Form 7 was the preparation, form 8 the consolidation. Lots and lots of past papers done in Form 8 in all subjects.

London boys prep. Half the year take CE, half take scholarship entrance papers (forced distribution - split into 4 equal sized classes). Only split in year 8, so just two terms before the exams in part, I think because a third of the year only joins in year 7. All boys do Latin from year 6 (oddly a year later than many other preps).

Late split means that few boys achieve much in Greek because they only have two terms of teaching (unless they start early at home ).

The other prep locally I know about identifies the boys in year 7 but it is more organic, with certain boys being taken out of general classes for stretch work depending on subject and which school they go to. That school sends to more destinations so the range of levels of scholarship is more variable than ours where most years pretty much all boys go to one of about three schools.

At DS2 prep they were put into a scholarship stream in yr 8, they a had a good record for a scholarships into selective academic schools but no recent record into super selective.
Two near me with outstanding records of scholarships into big name super selectives separate their scholars from non scholars at yr 7.

Scholarship class for year 8. Decided at the end of year 7.
Most pupils went on to the same senior school, but in ds's year, a few boys went to 2 other schools. These boys were given extra classes at lunch times, and set different tasks in the class accordingly. It worked very well, as 10 out of 11 boys won academic awards.