New Secondary Schools for Richmond 3

[BayJay]

Hello and welcome to the Mumsnet thread about Richmond Borough Secondary Schools. The discussion started in February 2011 in two parallel locations here and here.

In November 2011 the most active of those two threads, in Mumsnet Local, reached 1000 messages (the maximum allowed) so we continued the conversation here.

Now its May 2012 and that thread has also filled up, so the conversation will continue here ......

muminlondon

You can't compare the results of Surbiton High and Tiffin Girls. Surbiton automatically takes all the girls from the junior school, many who have been there since reception and have a range of abilities. This takes up about 60 of the 130 places available at 11+.

Whilst if we are to believe that the 11+ system works then Tiffin Girls are all selected from the top 0.5% of academic ability. Tiffins results should be compared against the top third of Surbiton's and against the top stream only at Waldegrave to get a true comparison.

I have a DD at SHS juniors, and my son's prep shares/swaps facilities with Waldegrave so I know girls at both schools and they are both really nice schools.

Sorry if I sound cross, I just think that if Tiffin is really taking the top 0.5% then all of their results should be A*.

AnneLongDitton, thanks for that info. Yes, children are not robots, teenagers are unpredictable and can react badly in pressure cooker environments, As are not guaranteed in any school, and intensive coaching for Tiffin could be a mistake. Comparing A/As is therefore meaningless and unfair, even between selectives, as I've said before, so I will stop now. The new Ebaccs will also make the whole league table results pointless and/or demotivating with a cap on the top grade and 40% failure rate assumed.

Away from this very dangerous mumsnet territory and back to Lord "Nick True". He really is getting positively Churchillian in his warlike rhetoric! This is the press release on Heathrow . "As far as this Council is concerned it will be all-out war with the big money interests and slick-suited PR men peddling this foolish project." Some may have bridled a little at being described as acolytes but at least his strategy on the schools front is "vigourous" defence not all out war and he didn't criticise sartorial choices! Has no one told him that history teaches that it is a mistake to be fighting a war on too many fronts?

Hi interesting discussion about private vs state schools. I have observed that the 10% of my daughter's year that has just gone to private secondary schools from a state primary included only one child that I would call very bright (who just scraped into LEH from the waiting list) - the rest, who have gone mostly to Hampton or KGS, were averagely bright but not necessarily in the top groups for maths, english etc. So I may feel a bit irritated when they get much better Engbaccs than their former classmates in 5 years time! I went to a private school and I agree there is a very high fear factor amongst parents who did, fuelled by the Daily Mail, Telegraph etc. However, I've talked to quite a lot of other parents who were privately educated but are sending their children to state schools because they think they provide a much better life experience and they think there's enough pressure on children today anyway without the hothousing that goes on in the private sector. That's definitely my view but I suppose I have some confidence that she will get support from me and her dad at home, whereas I have met private sector parents who I felt had opted for private because they lacked faith in their own academic abilities. I could also tell you some hair raising stories about St Catherine's as my friend's daughter went there for 2 terms a couple of years ago but refused to stay any longer and insisted on being moved back to the state sector where it was more "normal". I think they have some quite troubled girls there as well as sheltered ones!

LottieP, St C's is so small, a pupil's experience will depend so much on peer group.

Copthall, talking sartorially, I remember an early comment from you about Lord True doing a sance of glee and waving his ochre coloured cords in the air [snort]

dance

muminlondon to be fair I was quoting that twitterer that posed as him, and I am sure he wouldn't think it was a critisism!!

Lottie You can get those pupils turning up at any school in any cohort. Sadly you can spend time looking around schools and agonising over whether your child's choice is the right one based on what you have seen and heard from other parents etc. but the one variable you cannot control is who will turn up in your child's class. A group of pupils can hijack the normal school norms and make it into Lord of the Flies. I speak from experience! And in our case one of those pupils was actually headed for another school until 2 days before term. I had sympathised with the parents who had written in to the school requesting that their children not be in the same class, only to find that they turned up in my daughters class at another school!

I went to a direct grant grammar school (but paid fees) and my husband went to a Catholic Boarding School and we both started out with the precondition that any school our daughters attended was to be nothing like ours!

I was having an interesting conversation with my older daughter yesterday. She has been to a few schools and is now in touch with a lot of her former classmates and it is interesting to hear what they are doing now age 20, as opposed to what GCSEs they got. Her Old Vicarage (and then on to selective schools) and French International School peers, both quite old fashioned and academic schools, are now predictably at 1994/RG unis with the brightest girl at the Old Vic having gone to a top art school and the brightest pupil at FIS being the one to get to Oxford reading Maths. However her peers at her lovely encouraging British International School which aspired to benchmark itself with the best of British State Schools have excelled. Out of 35 there are 5 at Oxbridge and another 10 at elite universities in the world top 10, 3 at UCL with her. The rest are all at very good unis world wide and yet she feels that if anything the (bigger) cohort at the French International School were brighter. I heard whilst I was there that follow up studies showed that the pupils from the school did do spectacularly well. I don't suppose Gove would be interested to hear an encouraging ethos and the best of the British education system could produce pupils who could compete with the best in the world though.....

I get the point of experiencing diversity in a state school. But if your child is average or below average that is of less concern. More important is what school will best enable the child to make substantial progress. Which school will give it more attention and wide range of different facilities to develop talent. Unfortunately in those cases the state system may not be able to give them best chance , especially if the state school nearby is just avg or good

You should visit the local schools and find out! Don't make assumptions - go and ask the heads. Some have a picture or name of every single pupil in their office and can tell you in an instant if they are on track. They are having open evenings in the next two weeks.

Some schools are due for an Osted uprating - the last inspection was two or three years ago. I'm also curious to know why 'good' isn't good?! Teddington is the most oversubscribed school in the borough and is most certainly 'good'.

Jeev If only it was so simple that there was such a thing as a private school around here with amazing facilities that would nurture your average or below average child to achieve their full potential. Unfortunately the fact that there isn't is evidenced by the scary tutoring industry around here pushing children at hurdles that represent a narrow margin for success and a perception of a gaping chasm of failure. Look around these Mumsnet pages and you will see that many parents percieve that the better the results the better the school. I once overheard a parent saying to another who was putting her daughter into Surbiton High at 7. " I hope you enjoy it there. We might be joining you there if Mrs X (head) doesn't buck her ideas up" Surbiton is a brilliant school and I doubt the silly woman had ever set foot there! That means the most academic schools are the most popular, can be most selective and therefore can afford the acres of sports facilities, theatres etc. whilst the St Davids of this world struggle and even go under (and that was a lovely school). I doubt St Cs would have survived without it's wealthy backer. It also means that there are some very pushed competitive children in the most popular schools, often with fragile self esteem and some of the schools continue to push because they are concerned about staying at the top of the league tables.

It probably isn't the best environment for the confidance and self esteem of your average child even if you are prepared to risk it getting them there. Even Ibstock Place and Harrodian are now intent on pushing up the league tables and Ibstock refuses to support a child diagnosed with an SLD (though the LEHs and St Pauls understand that 10% of their cohort will have SLDs and they should support them because statistically that is the level of occurrence at every level of intelligence).

The real problem is working out where your child will do best.

I don't want to knock some of these smaller less selective private schools, many parents and their children are very happy there, but as muminlondon highlights our state schools in the borough might well have lots of advantages over private schools in terms of nurturing all the talents of your "average" child.

Jeev - most of the state secondary schools around her contain a big chunk of bright, middle-class children who do very well and go on to get plenty of qualifications and go to University. They are also very happy and have lots of friends. Big generalisations but I have seen a lot of my friends' children grow up over the last 15 years. There are masses of families who can't afford private education, especially if they have several children, as it's so expensive to live around here and some of them have moved here for the good state education so are not going to even think about private. I probably suffer a bit from lack of ambition for my daughter but I am fairly sure that LEH and its ilk would not suit her personality and I'm happy for her to not get 10 A*/A and not get anorexia or fragile self-esteem. When I was at my private girls school there were two deaths of girls who seemed to have been pushed over the edge by pressure and that definitely influences me as levels of competitiveness seems to have got worse not better. There's a good chapter on this in Oliver James' book "Affluenza" - he says that girls are much more vulnerable to prize-hunting exam fever than boys and its influence is life long.

With regard to St Cath's I think rather a lot of parents are moving their daughters there because they are a bit worried about their behaviour and expect St Cath's to be full of quiet, religious girls who will be a good influence, but the "boisterous" girls are actually quite a big element. My friend sent her daughter there because she moved back to the area and couldn't get her a place at Teddington or Waldegrave for the start of the Autumn term so she was quite grateful to St. Caths for taking her and pretty open-minded about what they would find there, but it didn't suit her daughter at all. I expect St Cath's does a good job with its intake though.

'there were two deaths of girls who seemed to have been pushed over the edge by pressure'

I thought it was my age but in my comp there was no sign of eating disorders. I had one friend who talked about dieting - not that she would stick to it. No one took drugs and parties were few and far between anyway - you had to have a house that was big enough and soft parents. It seemed a bit boring at the time but I just got on with my homework!

All these problems, eating disorders, drug taking, binge drinking are spread across the schools. The latter two are part of a subculture and those 14 year olds in Marble Hill/ St Margarets Recreation Ground on a summers evening, drinking, smokling weed and engaging in sexual activity will come from a variety of schools, LEH, Teddington, Orleans, Oratory. The cool party crowd find each other. It just amazes me that their parents are so naive, lax or can't be bothered to protect them from harm. The obsession with eating disorders can also crop up anywhere. As I said before you can get a group of manipulative attention seeking pupils and they can subvert the norms in any school.

I worry we have been indulging in a few stereotypes here. Yes there are girls that are pressured at LEH but I don't think the incidence of eating disorders is worse than anywhere else as I say above, and there are a lot more very bright girls who thrive on what is on offer there. There is a steady stream of girls from local state primaries who go there and many are happy and do do well without ending up in The Priory!

OK so back to your comment about councils battling with the government in support of their residents. Lord True is willing to pick a fight on Heathrow and planning laws. So who are the 36 councils and various schools challenging the English regrading? Lewisham is among them. Would the LibDems have done this?

I agree. This one of the fronts morally he should be going to war on.
This has been unfair to many of our 16 year olds, regardless of whether they are at state school, Catholic or non Catholic, or private. I would have thought it a priority over defending the rights of the Catholic church to set up exclusive schools by pushing at the boundaries of the letter and spirit of the law and quibbling over a change to the planning laws that seems by the range of ever longer back extensions to the Edwardian houses around here, ranging in style from brutalist communist to Ponderosa ranch, to have been undermined by Planning Inspectors anyway.

muminlondon: It appears the list has not been published; the signatories, mostly Labour councils it seems, have put out the same press release to their local press which hasn't got it. I imagine the Tories have little sympathy for this special pleading.

I think the councils' prime concern is not so much the pupils as the schools which have a lot of poorly performing pupils and are only just above the 40% 5 GCS inc Eng + Math threshold for special measures: raising the bar for English may push the schools into special measures.

Apparently there are 11 London councils including Brent, Ealing, Merton, Islington, Camden and Lewisham.

Special pleading? It's about children's futures, their distraught parents, and schools and teachers, The exam boundary was moved with no warning, and as examples, more than 15% of Wimbledon College's pupils (and 10% of Hampton pupils) have failed to pass their English exam but would have passed if they had done it early. Like Copthallresident says, it affects children everywhere, irrespective of how their parents voted. It's a scandal.

All thanks for sharing your thoughts on state v private. You have certainly given me some food 4 thought. I have big concerns about TA and hence despite the hardships, leaning towards taking the pvt route for my kids. www.mumsnet.com/emo/te/3.gif

I hope you do still visit TA. Changes lower down the school may not have filtered through yet. If you are near Hounslow, all schools there are now rated good or outstanding. Were you hoping for a Catholic academy or new free school?

Mum in London - I was not going to name the school I was at but actually it was LEH and there was a girl who committed suicide at school and a girl who died of anorexia. Also a girl expelled for drug dealing whilst I was there. Hopefully these tragedies don't happen in private girls schools now but it was all hushed up of course and I find it hard to shake off the worry that things still get hushed up sometimes and at any rate there is still quite a lot of unhappiness in very pressurised private schools. I wasn't actually particularly unhappy at LEH myself but my older sister was totally miserable so it's never seemed like an experiment worth repeating for our family. Not to mention the fact that she got a free place there and I got a very cheap one which I don't suppose are very common now!

This exam grades alteration seems completely mad, especially as it seems to be resulting in lots of children on the C/D boundary not being able to take up college places and thus dropping out of education altogether. There hasn't been much publicity about how individual children have been affected in LB Richmond which might have focused councillors attention on it a bit more.

muminlondon: TA is now a direct grant school controlled by the Education Secretary. So the LEA = the Council has no role to play in this affair on behalf of its pupils. Part of the motive in pushing to turn it into a Labour-Academy [i.e. an independent school run by somebody else] was to get it, a failing school, off the Council's hands.

The other larger motive was to get access to the government's school rebuilding fund which was at that time being spent only on academies, I think.

TA can itself join the consortium of 113 schools and 36 councils pursuing a legal action. However this means publicising the fact that the school has many pupils who score at the bottom end of the C range in English GCSE, which is not what aspiring parents considering sending their dc to it want to hear.

It was Hampton Academy that had a 10% drop in English results against predicted. Don't know about Twickenham Academy - I would applaud them if they are among the schools launching this legal action if, as you say, they have been dumped by local politicians. Wimbledon College is a Catholic VA school and by making this challenge Merton is backing its pupils and staff. It may have other motives but it's still a more principled stand than inertia or fear of bad publicity.

Lottie I am sorry you had a miserable time at LEH but I am pretty sure that there isn't that sort of thing going on there now, and being hushed up. I do hear all the teenage gossip from my teens. I had a miserable time at my Grammar School. It was one of the best schools academically in the country at the time, but it was run by some really miserable spinster blue stockings, who ruled by sapping your self esteem. You either rebelled or were crushed. I remember when Friends Reunited first started someone started a thread about the Head "Miss Black How many girls lives did that woman ruin"! I don't think you get their like any more! The only good thing I can say about them is that I learnt subsequently that they were a lesbian cabal, so it's nice to think they had something positive in their lives...

I do know girls who went to/are at LEH and very happy. However as we said before different schools suit different children. I would never send a girl there who wasn't very bright, confident and preferably talented in sport, music or drama.

My girls do transmit the gossip about some of the attention seeking "cool" gang and they really do originate across South West London but equally I know they are not representative of any school or of teenagers generally. A lot of them disapprove as much as we would if we really knew all that goes on. They also appreciate that some of these teenagers have really sad home lives.I was speaking to a teacher who retired recently at one of our private schools and she said she had a a couple of teenagers in her year in her last year of teaching and in thirty years she had never heard such horrific stories of bad self indulgent parenting, she would go home at night and weep for them even though they obviously had some pretty severe behavioural issues.

It is probably a symptom of the problem that there is a unit at The Priory that treats teenagers with drug problems, eating disorders and depression. I am sure it helps a lot of young people but my daughters wonder if for some teens it isn't a badge of honour and a place where all the troubled teenagers in South London meet each other so that they can go on to even more extreme behaviour.

I think it is true that a lot of schools are not coming out and being honest about the impact on their results. I know anecdotally that just about every school locally was affected at both the C/D boundary and the A*/A/B boundary, and it seems to have been especially English Literature and English but also a deflation across the board. I have a 20 year old and a 16 year old and though it is not a scientific measure I would say my younger daughter's peers have done about 10% worse than my older daughters and that it isn't accounted for by a difference in ability or effort. As I posted before the Head at Wycombe Abbey was one of the few private school Heads to come out and comment but it turns out she was leaving....

The impact at the C/D boundary is scandalous. As I am at uni I do know that certainly at my uni we know exactly what was going on and that these GCSE results will have less credibility in the admissions process, which in any case was completely changed in character this year as a result of the drop in applicants, the fishing for those with AAB and definite deflation in A level grades. Many more applicants than usual missed their grades. However how many employers will understand this?

I am also aware that many young people in the borough have been really devastated emotionally by the results. If you have worked really hard towards a grade your teachers have told you you are capable of achieving and that your coursework was on track for and you get a grade lower then psychologically you percieve you have failed, especially if it was a grade you needed to get a pass or into sixth form college.

I wonder if the politicians have actually worked out that the young people whose lives have been affected by all this political meddling with their education are going to have the vote in future years?

The Priory costs money as does an expensive drug habit and a partying lifestyle. Cider drinking in the park is the cheap equivalent, but that sort of behaviour still very far removed from my experience, or that of friends or family with children recently at state comprehensives.