is there an equivalent to grey coats for boys?

[nabb]

we’d love our daughter to go to greycoat in westminster when she’s 11. But I’m not sure where our son would go - is there a boy’s or mixed state school (catholic, protestant, or secular) which is equivalently good in central or south london?

Depends what you mean by "good". Why do you think Greycoats is good? By Ofsted rating? In which case there are other outstanding rated schools in Westminster - Ark King Solomon, Westminster Academy, St George's Catholic, St Marylebone girls ( the boys school is good rated)

Also - Catholic schools which are perceived as "good" are over subscribed and allocate places by faith adherence, eg your child needs to have been christened (in the Catholic faith only and usually before the age of 1), your family needs to be regular attendees at Mass and ideally also volunteer at church and have a priest verify this, child needs to have done First Communion etc.

So its not really like you can pick and choose between faith schools.

CofE schools tend to be a bit less strict on the religious requirements than Catholic schools but you are much more likely to get in if you are a regular attendees at a protestant church - Greycoats has 98 places for CofE attendees (letter from vicar required), 32 for other protestant churches and 22 for non protestants. If you look at the Greycoats admissions policy, they define what a suitable protestant church is.

So if you want to send them to a faith school, you better pick a faith and stick to it.

London Oratory or Cardinal Vaughan. But you have to be very Catholic.

You don’t need to be a volunteer, or have communion. The Admissions adjudicator threw those sort of admissions arrangements out a few years ago. For Oratory it’s baptised and practicing and then a ballot. for cardinal Vaughan it is a banding test and then a ballot (I think)

You need absolutely need a certificate of Catholic practice to have any chance of getting into Vaughan.

If you want to get your priest to sign that certificate which states they know the child and the family are practicing Catholics, you really need to be attending regularly and doing Communion (because otherwise you aren't really a practicing Catholic)
Volunteering not explicitly a requirement but you'll find a lot of mothers doing it just to be sure that the Father will sign the certificate
Your parish priest has a lot of leeway here and je usually needs volunteers so it's also a way for the church to ensure it has steady flow of mums to work for it.

VAUGHAN
4.2.Oversubscription Criteria
4.2.1. If there are more applications for admission to the school than there are places avail-
able, offers will be made in the following order of priority.
A.Catholic looked after and previously looked after boys, including boys adopted from
state care outside England (notes 9.2-9.5).
B.Catholic boys with a Certificate of Catholic Practice in the following order (notes
9.4-9.6):
B.1. Up to 12 boys eligible for a music aptitude place (see 8.3)
B.2. Brothers of current or former pupils on the school roll (notes 9.7 and 9.10)
B.3. Boys whose parents/carers are members of staff at the school (see note 9.9)
B.4. Up to 12 boys who attend feeder primary schools (see 8.4)
B.5. Other boys
C. Other Catholic boys (notes 9.4-9.5)
D. Other looked after and previously looked after boys, including boys adopted from
state care outside England (notes 9.2 and 9.3)
E. Boys who are Catechumens or members of an Eastern Christian Church (notes
9.11 and 9.12)
F. Any other boys.

What they got rid of some years ago was interviewing the parents to check how Catholic they were (although the Oratory had to be taken to court to stop doing this).

Sorry, yes @MojoMoon agree that a CCP is a basic requirement for either. But I know lots of boys with one of those whose parents don’t volunteer at all.

Anyway, I think we are both agreeing that to get into one of the top ranked Catholic schools you very much need to prove you’re a Catholic.

It's worth waiting to see what the latest Determined Admissions arrangements are, as a number of Dioceses have told their schools to remove any assessment/ranking of Catholic practice for 2025/26 - so, whilst taking First Holy Communion and date of baptism are no longer acceptable things to use as a ranking/points criteria, if somebody were baptised in a CofE or other trinitarian church, they'd be treated as non Catholic but Christian, but if they'd then gone on to take FHC, they'd be Catholic - and it would be Catholic& Practising (the CCP), then Catholic, non practising (no CCP), then Eastern Orthodox/Christian/Other Faiths/None/Not evidenced in terms of faith criteria.

They have to be published on the schools' websites by 15 March 2024 and there could be an Admissions Consultation with the proposed new policy on their website already, as they would have had to consult by 31 January to make significant changes such as those required by the Diocese.

Yeah volunteering not a requirement but I think in the arms race of secondary school places, people panic and hope it helps. And some parish priests certainly like to encourage the impression that it might help because otherwise they wouldn't have nearly as many volunteers.
I suspect it varies massively between parishes - certainly I know one where the priest really encouraged volunteering and implied it helped get the certificate and then when he retired, the new priest was much more open about it not being a requirement at all (and so the number of mums serving tea and coffee did fall!)

For the original poster, you really need to think about what a good school is. Why do you think Greycoats is so great? It's quite well known and certainly has some posh parents at it ( David Cameron and Michael Gove had daughters there , I think? But suspect Cameron then sent them boarding once he wasn't prime minister and pretending to care about public services and more) But unless you want to network with some Tory MPs, that isn't a particularly good reason to idealise a specific school.
There are other schools in Westminster with the same Ofsted rating and similar results.

In fact, googled it and David Cameron did indeed send his kids to private school once he left Downing Street!

The brother school to Grey Coat is Westminster City Boys, but it doesn't seem to be as well thought of as Grey Coat.

sorry I should have been clear in the original post. We are practicing Catholics and were long before we had children.

and greycoat is exceptionally well thought of where I live - in South london but where quite a few girls commute there.

Grey Coats have boys attending for sixth form (year 12 or 13)