Sanction Wood entrance assessment for year 7

[Sweetsong1]

Does anyone know if this is really gruelling?
Our child is bright but anxious - the school seems right for him but not sure if he will 'fall at the first hurdle'.

As the school is hoping to double in size and currently only has 80 pupils in the senior school I think they will be very keen to take your DS and the assessment will be something of a formailty.

You just need to be really sure the school is viable. It has just been taken over by Minerva, but that is not a guarantee that it will stay open. A school local to me was acquired by a chain, only to be closed a year later because it could not be made to fit their 'business model'.

Thank you SisterViktorine. It would be a disaster if the school closed after settling DS in. He's still in year 5 (just starting) so we've got a while to see how this school does under new ownership. Does anyone know any more details about this takeover?

I really don't know anything about accounts, but if you look the school up on Companies House the paperwork does suggest to me that the school has some debt. I suspect the private owners had to sell it to Minerva and Minerva will be looking to make it a viable concern. The question is what happens if they can't.

Do you have any other options where the numbers are bigger? DH is in a Senior position in an Independent school and thinks you need about 300-400 pupils in a mainstream Senior school (and 200 in a Prep) to make it tick and offer a decent breadth of education. Less than this and you end up with the maths teacher teaching history and then PE and then acting as the caretaker after school- Miss Rabbit style- which really affects the quality of the education. I know there are smaller schools than this around, but they will be the first to go to the wall if we have another recession.