Hampden Gurney

[htbp]

Is it as good as all the hype around it? Is it a happy school?

Pros and Cons please, from anyone with experience. DD offered a place in Sept but getting very polarised views..

I know a couple of kids that went there and their parents raved about it

Does anybody have a guide to the leavers destinations from Hampden Gurney? I have tried to enquire but the school seems reluctant to reveal this. Am I right in guessing that the students do not seem to graduate to top secondary schools i.e. selective/grammars or famous private schools.

www.hampdengurneyschool.co.uk/transferring-to-secondary-school/

That's a terrible list, it's impossible to decipher!

How so? One column is for offers and the second is for acceptance. Interesting that 6 girls were accepted to G&L but no one actually accepted it.

What is fascinating is that there were so many academic scholarships offered, even for schools that don't actually offer them, like CLSG.

It’s a way of disguising those who got a bursary as it wd be unfair to reveal economic circumstances.

It is a really good school. Pressure is quite high but my kids are happy there. I have one v academic and one less so - both are secure and happy. Behaviour is good. SEN provision not at all good.

stickstick Maybe the interest in God is because it is a Church of England School

The way the list is lined up, on my computer anyway, it's very hard to correlate offers with acceptances with the school concerned. But hey ho, first world problems

That table is extraordinary - even to publish a table like that means that it's firmly identifying as a quasi prep school since the vast majority of state primaries would never dream of lauding those that got into private school (when it's not their business nor should it be). And 7 into South Hampstead! That's the equivalent of 14 girls from my kids' two-form entry primary. Even the idea that more than a couple would even apply is mad.

Also agree with PP that it's also clearly inaccurate. Saying that bursaries are scholarships is just plain wrong, they are not synonymous. And Lady Margaret Grammar? It's not a grammar, why call it one unless to promote this idea that a selective school is always better than a non-selective one. And who is the child who managed to go to a very CofE primary and then get a place at a v catholic secondary. Those parents are players.

(Clearly I've looked at the table too long but I do find it extraordinarily unreflective of a typical inner London state primary).

Marylebone Boys' School has not St.

it's firmly identifying as a quasi prep school

I think the fact that 3.4% of it's pupils are FSM eligible, i.e., one per year, while the two nearest non-religious state primaries have 37.9% and 36% FSM eligible pupils might also be a tip-off.

Crikey, User, those are very striking figures. How can anyone argue that faith schools (when oversubscribed) aren't socially selective. Very similar figures for the holy grail CofE one in my borough too.

It's shocking really. Someone I know had a kid there and rejected private places in favour of going onto Marylebone Girls as she wants to 'keep it real' and I was, like, really? Try my kids' schools, they'll have more realness in one friendship group than the whole of those schools.

(Before anyone trots out the FSM for Marylebone Girls, it's not actually about FSM it's about having parental engagement. It's not kids from poorer backgrounds that are challenging for schools, it's the ones from families that don't give a monkey, the kids on child protection register, parents with mental health or addiction issues, etc, i.e. the ones who'll never get into an oversubscribed faith school that requires huge amounts of parental organisation for admission. IME 5% of tricky kids take up 95% of SLT resources).

Farewelltoarms, Lady Margaret is a CofE school so perfectly feasible to gain admission to HG followed by Lady Margaret. Definitely not a grammar school but a comprehensive though.

Sanam - I was meaning St Michael's Grammar which is vvv Catholic but I can see my message was unclear. I looked at it for my child as I couldn't see how it could be both a grammar and have restrictively religious admissions but I think you don't even get to take the test if you don't pass the Catholic bit.

There's more than a handful of Catholic kids in the school though so that doesn't surprise me. Particularly in the older years before it got madly competitive to get in via the CoE route. There are a lot (a majority?) of non British families or children with at least one non British parent so it doesn't feel like my cousin's children's suburban faith school which is your stereotypical white English CofE. It's a different cohort. And it's in Marylebone so it's in a different space again...

Totally agree that many faith schools are selective though - and as these schools get more popular they have to ramp up the demands so that they can allocate places clearly according to the criteria, to the point that many families just can't manage them and that becomes a form of selection. And I'm sure St Marylebone is the same.

I'm being a bit harsh as obviously St Marylebone is more real than St Pauls Girls and the girl in question has gone through the school and is delightful. However, the gulf between socially selective faith/other schools and the schools that mop up a disproportionate amount of those from chaotic backgrounds is huge (disproportionate because the selective-in-whatever-form are taking none), arguably even bigger than the social gulf between the best state schools and their private counterparts.

We're not talking FSM kids here, we're talking kids on a child protection register. I'm conflicted as I'm glad my children have been to their local primary and it's been great for them in many ways but there comes a point where it feels exhausting to never dare raise any of their issues because you're so aware that the SLT resources are being sucked up by those in far greater need.

Families who attend schools like Hampden Gurney or London Oratory or St Mary Abbots or Dame Alice Owens or wherever have no idea.

Farewelltoarms - I know you said you didn't want the FSM eligibility for St Marylebone because FSM is not the be all and end all measure of school challenges, but I suspect you don't know just how different the population at St Marylebone is from that at nearby schools. I believe these are all the non-religious state secondaries within 2 miles of St Marylebone. In order of distance from St Marylebone:

St Marylebone CofE 12%
Ark King Solomon Academy 37.9%
Regent High School 39.5%
Haverstock School 40.5%
Quintin Kynaston 37.1%
Westminster Academy 30.2%
Paddington Academy 36.3%

Even with religious schools, I believe there's only one within 2 miles of St Marylebone and it has FSM eligibility of 32.9%

Oh I hadn't realised that it was quite as stark as that User.

I'd also say that of the few FSM pupils there are, they'll not be the really challenging ones I was referring to.

Falling down the rabbit hole of compare-a-school stats, St M has twice as many high achieving students as low and medium put together (and only 5 low achieving ones). Regent High, on the other hand, has almost three times as many low and middle ones as high.

In fact, St M, Sacred Heart, Cardinal Vaughan and the Oratory all have low achievers in the single digits. Must be that you have to be clever to be religious or something...