Nurseries and North London Collegiate

[tlat]

HI, It's just been suggested to me that I need to start thinking about nurseries for DD! DH and I are quite keen for her to go on to NLC at 4+ as she has a cousin there who loves it and we have heard nice things from her parents about the school, plus it's soo close to us. I think I read somewhere on mumsnet about NLC having some feeder nurseries, not officially but just where a lot of the girls attended? Do any of you ladies know which these are? Thanks so much for all your help in advance!

The point I am making, horsemad, is yes, I do exactly those things for my most able children [I have a Cambridge science PhD and two able kids of my own, in many ways that is absolutely the easiest part of my job] but ALSO have to cater in the same lessons for children at the early stages of reading and writing, who have partial hearing loss, who have mild brain damage, who attend irregularly due to their traveller heritage etc. It is the diversity of abilities, not the absolute level of the children's learning, that makes teaching in normal schools challenging and the planning enormously time consuming.

horsemadmom - thankfully your daughter hasn't experienced it but I can assure you that girls getting stressed over the huge amounts of pressure they are under DOES go on. And sometimes girls are asked to leave. Maybe not in your daughter's year but it happens.

I'm not saying this is you but I suppose if you're paying £4,000+ per term you need to convince yourself that it's money well spent and that the school is wonderful in all areas.

I am having private biology tuition at the moment as I doing AS Biology. My tutor tutors children from a range of state and private schools in the area and she is shocked at some of the poor teaching that goes on in high-achieving private schools such as NLCS and Habs. Children who are bright and whose parents are paying vast sums of money to educate them are lacking basic principles of the subject.

There are good and bad teachers in every school unfortunately.

I have enormous respect for what you do, teacher. As the child of someone who taught special needs ESL for 30 years, I understand what a challenge you face. I just don't think that you can put down teachers who work with gifted children. They have challenges too. One maternity cover teacher was reduced to tears in DD's class. She came from a state secondary and tried to talk to them in slang to sound 'cool' and couldn't cope with girls who corrected her superficial understanding of the topic. The girls smelled blood from day one. It wasn't one of their nicest or most respectful moments- got a huge telling off- but you need a specific skill set for that type of girl. You might even enjoy a staffroom filled with plenty of Cantabs and Oxons bouncing ideas off each other about how to stimulate the next generation of Cantabs and Oxons. One can certainly have a teaching qualification and be crap at the job and a state school will never be able to fire you. The maternity cover teacher disappeared very, very quickly because a private school can get rid of unsuitable teachers and subject knowledge and talent are the most important criteria.

Back to the original topic, you can see that type of girl at 4. Some of them rub along quite happily in mixed ability classrooms and some of them most certainly do not. Not everyone has a great teacher who stretches them. Our local primary does nothing whatsoever for gifted children and seems to see them as a nuisance. At 3 1/2, DD was already having social issues in a mixed ability setting (albeit a private one that allocated a teacher to her for one on one lessons)- she bit a kid who interrupted her reading time and made up imaginative games that nobody else could understand and got left to play alone. Her BF was as bright but more relaxed and didn't chafe until 7. This was an absolutely outstanding nursery. I think that if she had been someplace with a trad montessori ethos, she would have become a bully.

Places like NLCS give these girls the gift of 'normal' from an early age. At 4, you can't coach or prep them in. It was a revelation in reception to have playdates that didn't end with the guest child in tears because DD wanted to read or write and perform a play or talk about her ideas on the subject of death (got a hideous phone call after that playdate). They did not demand to watch tweenies or wait for me to provide an activity.
I've got a grounded, sensitive, self-motivated, hardworking daughter out of that school. She has amazing, diverse friends. She tries new things because it is ok to not be very good at them there and pursues her interests to the limits of her ability. Oh, DD also just gave up her holiday to work with disabled children and adults. You can be as snide as you want about it but she certainly isn't unique amongst her peers.

One maternity cover teacher was reduced to tears in DD's class. She came from a state secondary and tried to talk to them in slang to sound 'cool' and couldn't cope with girls who corrected her superficial understanding of the topic

They actually made a teacher cry....? What lovely girls. That says it all really....

And what the hell is wrong with watching tweenies when you're 4? All children need some down time even the gifted ones.

Out of interest, how will these children cope in the real world mixing with people who are not as intelligent as them?

Sorry still on the top 2% thing. That's approximately one child out of the 60 in my son's year2 at primary, but picked out when only 2 or 3. To begin with, I'm not sure how that would have been achieved, but presuming it was that would be some clever kid - I cannot begin to imagine what a whole school full of them would be like.
Off the top of my head and in my experience volunteering in the classroom, there are a couple of off-the-scale clever ones in my son's class (so that already takes up to almost 4% if the same is true in the parallel class). They are extraordinary children in all ways, but guess what, neither comes from a 'middle class' home and both of whom have English as a second language. Neither would have applied for NCLS...
And even within this bog standard primary, they seem to be stretched and happy, plus enjoying having friends thick enough to be in the bottom 98% of the population.

Well, the top 2% isn't true, of course. I'm sure some of the children are in the top 2% and many more than you'd find in a mixed ability class, and probably virtually all of the children are in the top 10% of the ability range.

Clearly selecting very little children on potential academic ability is risky. You'll always miss some. But in general (and not debating the rights and wrongs of this) schools like this can afford to miss a few because there are enough fairly clever children applying.

Dancergirl, Not their finest hour but they weren't swearing or assaulting anyone. I'm sure they will cope just fine with the 'real world'. My DD has a range of friends from after school activities. They just aren't her best mates. BTW, how diverse is YOUR friendship circle? Are they people like you with similar interests or do you make it your business to root out people who are significantly less intelligent?
If you've ever had a child tested for special needs (and I have), there are tests which are calibrated by age and allow an ed psych to determine on which percentile within the population as a whole your child sits. This can change as I child matures but not radically. The tests cover different areas of attainment- verbal, spacial, syntactical, mathematical, memory retention etc. The 4+ assessments are adapted from these at all the selective schools and are reshaped into games. It isn't arbitrary. However, some children don't have the attention span or don't have the communication skills at that age to allow a tester to get a reading. That is how you get 2%. Those statistical (near) outliers, like the ones in your son's class, won't get less bright. They may just get bored or demotivated. Or, if they have teachers or volunteers who take an interest as you do, they may continue to excel.

horsemad - actually my friends are fairly diverse in terms of religion, intelligence, income level etc. One of my friends and I are academically worlds apart (I have a degree, she left school at 16) but she has tremendous insight and intelligence in other ways.

I would hate for my children to become intelligence snobs, it's just as bad as any other snobbery.

My friends are very mixed as well. I too have friends who left school early and one who grew up in real, grinding poverty. They are all intelligent in different ways and all intellectually curious. I have friends with whom I share commons interests and friends who I met through work. I have something in common with all of them.
I don't worry that my DCs will have difficulty relating to different people. That is what you teach them at home- openness and not judging books by their covers, reserving judgement and seeing the best in people. The friend who left school (at 15 BTW) and grew up in an pretty Dickensian circumstances is the parent of NLCS DD's friend.
I grew up somewhere where we had streaming (as opposed to setting) from the beginning. There was no whole class teaching and no limits on working outside the curriculum. Reading was taught with phonics. Subjects were taught as subjects and not 'cross curricular topics'. It was a state school. I would have gladly sent my DCs to a place like that but that wasn't available here. What was on offer was an inner city primary with broken windows, 30+ in each class and a head who was notorious for rejoicing when middle class parents left because we are just too damn demanding. I live in a borough with a 24% private school population and there is a reason for it.

And as for 'drippy wallflowers'......

Sorry but that story about NLCS making the teacher cry really bothers me. That sort of subtle arrogance is something I am very keen to avoid. How dare these supercilious little girls think they know so much they are entitled to undermine a teacher.

I would be absolutely mortified and ashamed if one of my children had treated a teacher in this way.

But they 'weren't swearing or assaulting'....oh that's all right then.

Horsemadmom, I am not one to get involved in such threads but your post infuriated me to be honest. All those Cantab and Oxon references! Perish the thought that one of these kids might choose LSE or Exeter or York or to wander the Earth in the great university of life!

Teacherwith2kids - you speak a lot of sense and sound like a dedicated teacher.

That's exactly the point MammyT - these girls are made to feel like failures if they get a B!

Horsemadmom, and has it ever occurred to you to ask whether the weak teacher you describe came from a state secondary because she wasn't up to the job there and had been advised to try private education as an easier option for her?

I suspect that what you are trying to imply is 'she was a weak teacher because she came from a state school' whereas it might be 'she applied for a job in a private school because she was a weak teacher and was failing in the state sector'....

I have many friends with daughters at NLCS and we have discussed the school in length. Most are happy with the school, though some say there is too much homework and the parents can get very competitive(these things often come from the parents not the school anyway don't they).

Some of the girls are my daughters age and often come over and play. Yes they are bright girls, but no brighter than any other bright child going to other state/private schools in the area.
They often moan, whinge and can be rude, like any other child that age.
They need as much stimulation as any other child and yes some even watch Tweenies!
There really isn't anything special about NLCS girls. Many parents in the area cannot afford NLCS and many are not interested. Yes it has more brigher children as a proportion of it's population, but I really don't think that's particularly relevant especially at primary level.
I agree the school probably does have good teachers, facilities and pastoral care, it is a good school and I'm sure most girls are very happy there-I am not knocking the school at all.
However, the way horsemadmom describes them "NLCS girls would catch your spelling mistakes on the board, find a science lesson interesting and have read up on the topic by the next day to grill you with questions, write a story in the style of Dickens in year 4 to see if you notice(my DD) and can name the references, calculate the fibonacci sequence in their heads, read all their text books for fun and demand that you never bore them". This might be the case for her daughter and friends, but not the NLCS girls I meet. Alot of them are just ordinary girls who want to chill after a long day at school, they are not reading up science/maths for fun and their writing is no better than my bright non-NLCS dd.

I'm with teacher and polly here.

How funny that teachers and parents are being chastised for contributing to a thread on, eh, teaching and children, because they 'know nothing about it'.

I live near NCLS, the parking situation is enough for me to really dislike the school!
I was run off the road (literally had to pull on the pavement to avoid an accident) but one of their coach drivers this morning, despite it being my right of way not his, he just forced himself through. Tbf it was after drop off so I expect his coach was empty but it would worry me if my child travelled to school on one of those.

horseman, like dancergirl, I read your 'drippy wall flower' comments and thought .

Then I read your later posts and tbh, you sound deranged.

Sorry, but when you say "I think that if she had been someplace with a trad montessori ethos, she would have become a bully", your description of her class reducing a teacher to tears actually makes her sound as though her behaviour is that of a bully.

Yes, horsemadmom has not exactly put the school in a good light.

tlat - are you put off in any way now?

I agree with Rosebud05 and Dancergirl - horsemadmom is not doing the school any justice at all.
All this bit about drippy wallflowers and "mind mapping" and girls not being stressed at all made me laugh. Some of my friends NLCS daughters(they can pretty drippy somethimes, but then which of us isn't on occasion) come to spend the evening and they have so much homework(this is the junior school), they are always complaining about it and would rather just be playing.
It can also take up alot of the weekend and often needs heavy parental input.
At the end of the day all your child cares about is their friends(number 1 factor on whether they like the school), most children are pretty much the same aren't they, just the parents making out otherwise.

More commonsense from after8. I'd agree that having friends and liking their teacher is fundamental to happiness at school.

I'd hate my kids to have loads of homework (I rather none at all in primary, but I don't think that happens any more) and think it was okay to collectively bully and intimidate someone new to the environment, so the NLCS and the like def not for us.

I always titter at the desperate attempts to stress the diversity of friends their kids have on these private school threads, just as an aside.

In fact, I think of it as a kind of 'bingo' moment when it comes up because it always does. It's a full house for mention of a bursary and council flat, though.

Not to mention the battered cars (maybe battered by psycho school coach driver in fact)