calling frogs or any other experts on schools in london - getting into pushy selective private school 7+ entry

[bossykate]

...thinking of moving ds from his high-performing state school to private. the nearest options for us are the dulwich foundation schools, which are of course very selective. what if any preparation would be necessary to ensure he has a decent chance of getting in? i don't want to go down the tutoring route but bet other parents will have no such scruples, not to mention the applicants that will be coming from pre-prep

please help!

some of you might be interested in www.schoolshow.com

shouldn't the 7+ entry tests be renamed as a 7+ entry competition, it isn't how well a child does in the test but also how well every other child does. It all depends on the quantity and quality of opposition, I would be very surprised if any private school left empty desks although perhaps they expect them to be filled partway through term as children change schools.
Have looked into it for dd (and older dc's now both graduated) but have decided to keep her at good state school as can't be bothered getting her into the stress of entrance hurdles (at 7 and 11),

DOT - Our school does have empty desks - by choice - but then the parents own the school, so its a non-profit organization. If profit is the goal, you are probably right in most cases I think,

starfish2 - I am in exactly the same position of you - if you come back to this thread, I'd love to meet up and rant/commiserate together!

hello everyone

sorry for disappearing! it is always very frustrating when people do that

am back with an update

we met with ds's class teacher to discuss our issues. we didn't get to the bottom of it all but did establish:

(1) the school restricts progress through ORT - they don't allow progression to stage 9 until juniors because "there's nowhere left for them to go"

(2) the maths curriculum for the year will focus on 2, 5, 10 times table, sizes, shapes, time and currency - i don't think they will be doing multiplication or division

(3) the teacher has come back with some ideas for stretching him and in general her attitude was positive and encouraging - we didn't have very long to talk and she committed to meeting with us again when she had had more time to think of strategies.

in terms of progression to private schools, dh and i have decided to progress with open days or appointments from next week after half term. at the moment there are three schools on the hitlist:

flowerybooze
treefarmcomponent
actor's juniors

those seem to be the obvious three for us but would welcome any further suggestions (and promise to get back more quickly this time !)

having looked at the habs papers linked by ladymuck below, i think he could have a very decent stab at the english (would need to practise his hand-writing though!) but i think simply hasn't and won't have covered a fair bit of the maths by the time the tests come round.

i really, really don't want to move him now, i've realised. we have a lot of stressy family stuff going on right now and it will complicate our childcare arrangements .

however, we will continue to pursue the two options of getting his current school to stretch him a bit more and investigating the private alternatives. i think i will also have to lobby the school to offer more after-school enrichment activities.

thanks so much to everyone for your help

That sounds as if it's working out.

For Starf, don't panic but do look at which pre-pre schools feed into the prep school and future schools you want - Dulwich etc. Also check how the schools you might choose do in terms of sixth form results, which universities people go to etc. We were lucky our older 3 children all went to schools in the top 10 - 20 in the country in part because we live in the SE too where there are more schools to choose at those levels. We also found it easier to get the children in at 5 or 7 years old so that they moved more seamlessly in schools which had a junior or prep part at 11+ rather than having perhaps more stress of exams at 11 and more competition from outsiders coming in then. But it depends on the school whether or not they have a junior part at all.

All sounds positive bk.

After-school enriching activities tend to come as standard in a private school setting, also they tend towards longer schooldays.

Have fun looking round your potential schools next week