Tiffin Girls School

[fimint]

Hi,
Am considering secondary school options for youngest daughter who is bright and quite nerdy. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone with girls at Tiffin . . . what is the school atmosphere like? Is the pastoral care up to much or are they mainly results driven? Obviously, I know that actually getting in at all is VERY hard. . . .
Thanks!

In my experience the pastoral care is very good. From the few occasions when I have visited in the day, I would describe the school atmosphere as calm but busy. The overwhelming majority are what I would describe as suburban middle class; very diverse culturally and ethnically.

I always feel them to be fairly relaxed about results. Yes the girls are expected to work hard and do well but we found the homework burden to be relatively light especially in the lower school. They do work hard in class and go at a fast pace. Some girls (or perhaps more accurately their parents) are very results driven and competitive; but these are often families who desperately want their DDs to go into medicine or another popular field. Quite a few girls are tutored outside of school. DD feels that a few of these girls were heavily tutored to get in but others who are very able are tutored because their parents are paranoid they won't get the desired grades.

There are quite a lot of school trips (some very expensive). Sporty girls are encouraged. There is a fantastic music department, a small drama studio and some incredibly talented artists. There is quite a variety of clubs and so on which generally run at lunch time. Duke of Edinburgh, World Challenge, Young Enterprise, Maths Challenges all run at the school and are very popular.

In my daughter's view the main downsides are the strict uniform policy (knee length skirt is mandatory) and lateness. But in the great scheme of things these are relatively small gripes.

Thanks for that BeingFluffy, very helpful.