Knightsbridge or Garden House schools - any views?

[BeckyBlunt]

Am trying to decide whether I like these better than Glendower; any thoughts from present parents, prospective parents, or just people spreading wild rumours welcome

Glendower more academic that GS, I think. Some local views that GS can tend to turn out precious princesses, but is of course v popular.

Thanks Michaelah.

Looks like Gardenhouse seemed to get v good girls exit stats this year, in spite of the less academic bit, but know it has a reputation for having excessively wealthy people's kids there; don't know whether it really would be worse than anywhere else in central London, however?

We're in the same boat and we are definitely not excessively wealthy. Were in fact very surprised to get an offer from GHS especially I was not even wearing my best (non designer) coat to the interview and DD was practically mute throughout the assessment. It's a lovely very civilised school.

Thanks Quantitativeeasing; good to hear. Are you going to accept your GH offer then?

I know many families with children at GHS both boys and girls. It's a lovely school! It is sufficiently academic i.e. the children are very well-educated, in a nurturing way and at an appropriate pace to get the necessary results (i.e. 8+ for boys and 11+ for girls). The girls school does have the reputation of being a bit more "precious" than the boys school, which is odd as most families have boys and girls at the school and so it's the same pool of children in both "haves". My impression of Glendower (also have many friends with daughters there) is that it is a bit more pressured and the girls tend to be much more competitive (which might be positive or negative depending on your perspective). Although I live near it, I hear very little about Knightsbridge. My impression, possibly wildly incorrect, is that it attracts families who don't necessarily plan for their children to go through the UK education system through age 18. Another positive of GHS, relative to Glendower, is that, while the boys and girls are educated apart, they do interact in the abundant range of clubs, musical groups, etc, as well as during lunch -- so there'a bit of the benefit of a co-ed education in the context of a single-sex school.

Starting with the positives, the Knightsbridge school building is beautiful and spacious and they offer the opportunity to study a variety of modern languages. Knightsbridge school was founded as recently as 2006 by 3 City financiers and the Headmaster is an ex-Army Captain. Knightsbridge school also seems to have "branches" in Bogota, Colombia and Panama. However, I do agree with the not-so-glowing Ofsted reports of this school, that the quality of teaching in some classes is unsatisfactory. The pupils did not appear to be disciplined by their teachers, some children were fighting with each other, were not engaged in purposeful activities during the classes and none of the pupils replied to us saying Good Morning to them. I asked the school registrar to send me the records of the numbers of pupils moving on to various senior schools and she was not pleasant... reluctantly she agreed to send me this information but has not done so ! We have registered our child at another school with a more established academic record and run by teachers. Something did not feel right at all about Knightsbridge school...

quantitativeeasing, please would you be able to shed some light on the assesment process at Garden House. My son is going to be having his asesment and I would love to know at least a little bit how it all works, what questions are asked, etc.

posadas and quantitativeasing I have PM'd you

GHS is lovely. We chose between that and Hill House, and visited both several times. We opted for HH in the end, but I have only good things to say about GHS, the kids we know that go there are very happy.