Kensington Prep or outstanding state primary WWYD?

[BigMamaMama]

Has anyone chosen an outstanding state primary over a top prep school and regretted it? We are planning to go independent for secondary. I'm sure the education is close enough between the prep and state but I would think the stress of the 11+ would be much less at the prep as they are so well prepared there. Is there anything else I should be considering?

@ES: It links to the broader question about the effects of state schools having to deal with a broader range of ability and behavioural standards on the overall quality of education they provide, particularly to DCs with higher potential.

I feel that many are of the view that the more able "will be OK anyway", and thus it makes sense to sacrifice them at the altar of educational equalisation. No wonder the market for selective independent education flourishes...

WhT do you mean be "educational equalization"?

"
Howevet, If you Do have a very clever kid, then it may not make much of a difference in outcome Between state ad private, "

Might a good prep/indy do a better job helping such DCs maximise their academic potential? To be clear I'm talking about top 100 selective schools natuonwide.

My niece is in the same year (y5) as my oldest child at an 'academic' prep. My DC is at a state primary. They seem to be doing pretty much exactly the same stuff, particularly in maths. A friend looked round a W London senior school last term and he said that he was finding that the state school pupils are now tending to have higher numeracy and literacy skills because the new national curriculum is more demanding.
We could have gone private for primary but I really don't think that the DCs needed specialist mandarin teachers, state of the art drama facilities etc. All that can wait for secondary. I don't feel they are missing out in the slightest.

Should have said the 'headmaster was finding..'

I kind of agree, LondonMum.

I'm amazed by how much more my DC's private school can stretch the brighter children (not my lovely DCs ). And although it's not a popular view, I do think that gifted children can be better catered for in the private sector. There are just more resources.

However, if all that matters is getting into a private secondary i.e. Passing one or a number of exams, then the clever kid will probably be fine. But they will miss out on the other stuff they get at a private school.

@BR: Obviously, I'm referring to a mixed ability educational system, where the bias is very much towards helping the least performing DCs (vide the new progress-based school ranking system). Stretching the most able is a non-consideration in practice.

How to you class a prep school as "top 100"? What is the criteria?

The progression based marking system was implemented to reduce any tendency to focus on simply getting children up to a grade C, reducing an emphasis to concentrate on the least able.

LM, do you have direct experience of state school education?

But I think what those of us with children in good state schools are saying is that our children are being stretched, are receiving lots of other opportunities etc albeit maybe not a specialist mandarin teacher. It is possible to cater to all abilities without failing the brighter children.
I feel sorry for those children who are 'selected' aged 3 for the 'high-achieving' schools and are then managed out a couple of years later as the school is totally unable to cope with any type of SN or they just struggle a bit. That doesn't make it a better school just a more narrow minded one in some cases.
Sorry OP- all gone slightly off track! Ken Prep is undoubtably a good school and you probably wouldn't regret choosing it (although I know some who have) but there are lots of options.

LM8,

I agree that the OLD, 'absolute grades are what matter' accountability stats for state schools could lead to a lack of focus on the most able =- and ironically on the least able as well. The children who mattered in the OLD system were those who were getting Ds and could be pushed up to a C by intensive work - so lower middles, not high, not low.

The NEW 'progress' accountability stats are designed to reduce this distortion, by focusing on the progress of all children from their starting points. Thus progress for the most able is at least as valuable as progress for the least able .. and tbh since it tends to be somewhat easier to achieve progress with the most able, it's quite likely that will be where the effort is put.

My big worry about choosing private was the lack of local friends and feeling part of the community. However 2 years in, my DS still has play dates with local friends from nursery / neighbours, and I've ensured most of her out of school activities are local. Whenever we go out locally we always meet kids she knows. So if you already have a good local network / you can work it so out of school activities are local, then it can work very well. As for the school, it is undoubtedly very good and has a big emphasis on caring.

@CKAF: How would the NEW metric differentiate between the following model scenarios:

1. All students progress from G to F.
2. All students progress from A to A*

The "progress score" would be similar in both cases, right? I hope this example clarifies why it is useless as a primary school performance metric.

@ES: Yes. I'm somewhat disappointed and not at all surprised at our lag in PISA scores. To be fair, the funding gap surely doesn't help, and but I'm not sure they are doing their best within the constraints of the system. I feel they should just stream from Y1 and be very clear and upfront about the criteria since reception - that would probably stem the flight to private to some extent. The attempts to stretch the more able feel like box ticking - yes, they do hand out harder sets of problems but then pair widely disparate children so in effect only the basics get covered.

They do stream from Y1 in state schools. The children work in ability groups and switch between those as they develop. It's fascinating to watch children who initially appear to be less able suddenly flourish as their attention span improves.

Taking the improvement score (Progress8) and the old (but still in use) metric together is useful as both have their own merits.

I was very surprised to find that most of my colleagues' children were tutored in addition to being privately educated. If that is the norm (and I don't know if it is), how can you tell what the academic added value from the school alone is?

If the streaming you talk about (presumably entirely separate classes) was to "stem the flight to private", that presumably assumes that those who can afford private would be in the higher attainment groups. Or do you think those parents would be happy to have their children in the lower attainment class as long as the group size was small?

HarrietSchulenberg - probably because there are private schools for every type of child. The exceptional, the art/drama children and the less academically gifted.
Generally it is fair to assume that private schools do boost the academic potential of children.

No it's not particularly fair, but it's life.

OP - if you have the money I would do Ken Prep as they could arrive quite behind their peers at Senior school and lose their confidence before they have even started.

60-70% of kps girls are tutored in y5 and 6 on top of the crazy 11+ preparation at school. Fab place, especially for the very bright, but don't think you'll escape tutoring.

'Outstanding' means it satisfied certain criteria at the time of inspection. It does not mean that the children will love going there and make amazing progress. My DCs spent their first years at an outstanding 'beacon' infant sch. Although the sch thought they were doing everything really well, I actually didn't think it was that great at all. For example, PE invariably involved tedious team games with bean bags - not nearly energetic enough for bouncy little ones who need a chance to run and jump. There was a wonderful sports field, but for whatever reason, it was never used. Art activities lacked a creative buzz - it was all very formula. Lunchtimes were made miserable with shouty supervisors. The only music tuition available was group violin lessons. My DCs were desperate to play an instrument, but the group lessons of 6 children were awful. Every time a child dropped out, the group wd start again from the beginning. In the classroom, academically, my high flier was not challenged and got really bored. My dyslexic DC was labeled 'immature' and was v unhappy. There were rigid systems in place regarding reading and spelling. The handwriting was truly awful with teachers not even realizing that DC was going the wrong way round when forming letters. Some of the staff were lovely, but some were patronizing and aloof. The sch had an obsession with handing out gold stars and certificates. They wd come out of sch daily clutching handfuls of meaningless awards, ribbons, stickers which took away the intrinsic motivation for doing anything. When the eldest was 7, we removed them all from this outstanding state sch and began at a small prep. My only regret was that I had waited so long - I cd have had a place at the prep for my dyslexic DC almost a yr earlier, but I chose to wait until all DCs cd move sch together. My most able DC had shone out alone as a rare very high achiever at the state infant sch. At the prep he instantly found a lovely group of equally able children.

@ES: That wasn't our experience - same class in YR and Y1.

Perhaps. They wouldn't have the competitive indy option though.

LM, same class but not differentiated groups for things like reading? And maths - the teacher didn't take small sub groups of children within the class to discuss specific concepts at their level? I'm not sure how else the teaching would be handled? If there was none of that I'm not surprised you didn't want to continue. Did they simply address the whole class as a collective all the time? I'm surprised about that.

Writing letters backwards for a couple of years is not unusual for non-dyslexic children. My seven year old DC has only just stopped this although she still flips some numbers around. As she isn't dyslexic, I wouldn't want the school to dwell on this - she is increasingly able to recognise and self correct so I'd rather she concentrated on the concepts.

In my experience, state school music tuition is a bit crap though, I'll agree with you there. I don't really know anyone who is serious about their child learning an instrument who bothers with it but if my experience is typical, that is a shame for those who can't afford an alternative. Actually, it can't be terrible in every case as BIL ended up at the Guildhall off the back of his but he is ridiculously good.

@ES: No differentiated groups according to my DC. On closer inspection of the report, Ofsted did point out their weakness in catering to the more able children's needs, yet ranked them outstanding. Shambles.

LondonMum,

"1. All students progress from G to F.

1. All students progress from A to A*"

The 'scores' for different levels are set differently to accommodate this.

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/561021/Progress_8_and_Attainment_8_how_measures_are_calculated.pdf

The gap between g and F is only 0.5 points on the scale used, the gap between A and A is 1.5 points, the gap between D and C is 1 point. So getting A children to get A is definitely a focus for schols.

I would also make the point that you are extrapoolating from your experience of 1 sate school to the whole sector. yes, theer are poor schools (and in particular, poor schools for an individual child) in both sectord. That does not enable a whole sector to be written off on the basis of that singel school.

DS did not thrive in his first state school, and has succeeded brilliantly in the two he has attended since then. On paper they are the same - 'good or outstanding non-selective state schools with not dissimilar intakes'. However, the first did not fit him well, the others have fitted him perfectly.

Apologies for typos.