Prep School for 3 kids in London? Cons and finances

[Newnormal5]

Hi all

We made our mind for a prep school when we had one child but soon we will have three children. All of them will be in school at the same time in 4 years. But now we cannot make that decision easily as having three in the same school requires to calculate a lot of variables.

Is it more important now with three children to choose prep considering secondary entrance chances? As with one, you can move out of London to find the best fit but with three it will be difficult to accommodate for all capabilities. or would outstanding state school, tutoring and provide them with some extra curricular activities would be still enough?!

Then finances - we can cover the school fees but not sure about the other costs, such as after school care, trips (doesn't look a lot), music lessons?! etc. Also, the cost of living with three children would probably go up. We do not want to stretch ourselves and wish to have a bit of help too as we don't have family in London.

Any opinions? especially if you have 3 kids - do you think it is more important now for them to go to prep school and what about finances? If they are not going to a prep school is your life more expensive now?

Thank you

Those are not subsidised at all. And all but chess club is out of school. Music at school would be a similar but DS has a teacher he has been with all along. Our prep has no free after school club except choir and they’re going to need swimming lessons before Y3 and the ones even at the prep are too crowded to learn any actual swimming.

this is good to know. so no saving at prep on those anyway.

No. So if we had gone state he would have done the same extra curricular stuff. The only difference is that you can have music in school and they work it into the school day so they are not tired after school but you still pay for it!!!

The music lessons are a lot cheaper in state primary schools. DD does violin which costs me £150 a term. The lessons were cheaper than this up to last year as she had a group lesson but when she became advanced enough to need it we switched to a longer individual lesson. She has also applied to Tiffin Girls and an independent school and I think she will probably get into these (much less than a year of tutoring, which was mainly aimed at familiarising her with exam technique and VR/NVR). Lots of children get into independents from state schools round here. I did the same many years ago. DD has also done quite a lot of clubs after school free of charge (science, music of various kinds, yoga, art etc).

so good to hear Heliophilous. thank you .. and well done to your DD

Well, we are still waiting to hear! But I think she has as good a chance as anyone! I am also in SW London, btw.

even thinking that she could get in is good enough achievement :) so we might become neighbours .

It's a very nice place to live!

Heliophilous would you mind saying which borough?

I'm in Richmond.

We probably live pretty close to each other!

Haha, maybe not if your kids are at prep school! We are in the cheap(er) bit!

fantastic state primaries out there
They may be lovely schools but they seem to work at a completely different level of attainment - maths, english etc. So if your children want to pass an exam later for a grammar school, or a sought after private secondary school they may need tutoring/lots of help from you.

Ahem. So are we. We have a trek to school. We can only afford this because DH has a drastic and lucrative change of career. And because of where we live our mortgage isn’t astronomical...by London standards!

You are probably round the corner, Luchi. Do you hear the sound of trains at all?

I disagree, KindDogsTail. If Tiffin/highly selective independents are a realistic prospect for the OP's children, they will probably do absolutely fine in almost any primary school. I sent DD to the one nobody appears to want to go to, she's had very little tutoring (six months incl a break for the summer holidays of about 8 weeks so about four months really) and she is doing very well indeed. Even if she does not ultimately get into one of the highly selective schools she has applied for, I cannot really fault her education at all - she's been offered an amazingly well-tailored education that has really supported her in a wonderful way. The levels of differentiation in her class are quite extraordinary but she absolutely has not been held back at all.

No the traffic of the A316!

That's good Helio. I think I am probably out of touch as far as personal experience is concerned. Some years ago now, having seen both state and private primary at work, my experience was that the private school was well ahead with maths and reading and spelling simply because of spending much more time doing it. However the news is often about how good London state primary schools are now.

But you do hear one of the reasons given against grammar schools is that only tutored (better off) children can get in. If the primary schools were teaching enough why would the extra tutoring for the children be necessary?

Also SW London State primary here and currently going through the 11+. DC's classmates all getting interviews, offers, scholarships etc. One independent secondary school head told my friend at an open day that a lot of the state school children were now coming through with better core maths and English skills than those from prep schools due to changes in the national curriculum. The children I know at Prep schools just seem to do practice papers from y5 onwards- it must get very dull?! Obviously I'm a bit biased but I don't think some people realise how good state primaries can be.

Just to add that most of the y6 applying to independent secondaries have had some form of tutoring but it's really just help with exam technique rather than learning anything new. My DC had certainly covered all the maths necessary for exams they went for, just needed to practice some papers.

Luchi, I can almost hear that on the other side!!

KindDogsTail, I honestly think it's a sort of 'Christ, everyone else is doing it so I MUST' thing. Also, remember that the current expectations for the end of primary, while not as high as the level of the Tiffin exam (for instance), are actually pretty high compared to previous years. It is of utmost importance atm to schools that they demonstrate that a) lots are meeting expectations (these are higher than in the past), b) a big subset of those kids are working at greater depth (this is a bit harder to show under current marking from what I hear) and c) lots are progressing a long way from wherever their baseline was. For instance, DD's school, while not doing massively well on the percentages of children attaining highly or at expected levels, has generally amazing progress scores. Their attainment levels are largely a result of demographics, I think. The actual education is pretty great, or it has been until Y6 - they are now spending a lot of time practising for SATs and this is largely pretty joyless. Though we only have until May to get through, I suppose.

Also, things like VR/NVR are very definitely something you can practise. Tiffin now does just English and Maths - DD, who has an excellent memory told me a lot about the questions she encountered. From what she said, there is nothing that was on those papers that has not been covered in her very ordinary primary - it might have been a step up from what she is used to in terms of applying that knowledge but nothing that is impossible for a bright child, IMO.

And yes, I expect tutoring helps to a degree, though I specifically asked my child's tutor to concentrate on exam technique as I genuinely thought and think that DD is quite good enough at all of the academic stuff to get through on merit as long as not phased by the exam. I spent less than £1000 all told on the tutoring sessions - appreciate this is out of reach for some but not impossible for many people, considering that this was only in Y6 so I had plenty of time to save up for it if needed. She sat for some of the most difficult exams there are. If she had sat for eg Kingston Grammar, Putney, Wimbledon, St Catherine's etc, I think she'd have walked it (but I did not sit her for those schools as I do not think they are worth paying for in comparison to the excellent state options we have, which will probably bring down a whole heap of Putney etc parents on my head telling me I am a snob and wrong or something but that is how I felt - also did not feel those schools would suit DD).

Crosspost, helloSW15! Sounds like you have approached it in a similar way to me. Yes, DD's classmates are also getting offers. She is not in a school that is in the least sought after so state education must be doing something right!

That is interesting to know Helios.

Out of interest Helios, are there disadvantaged/not middle class/not children of teachers or academics children at your DDs primary school who were accepted at Tiffin? Are there any you know who were not accepted, but who you feel might have been if they had had some tutoring/knowledgeable parents to get used to the exam?

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/15/very-small-percentage-of-grammar-school-pupils-from-poorer-families-new-statistics-show
"Just 2.6% of grammar pupils are from poor backgrounds, new figures show"
"A minuscule number of children on free school meals pass the 11-plus"

This is not intended to be about the grammar school debate per se but about the OP's question about whether it is necessary to go to a prep school. I was wondering about the state primary schools' provision of education in reading and maths (without tutoring or parents' help) as many more poor children must be born capable of doing the grammar school level of work than are represented by these figures.

We do not know the acceptances yet. Only a small number of children sat for Tiffin. Two have got through to the final round (one boy, one girl) and several others did not pass the first round (all middle class, all clever children, all relatively advantaged though they have all been to a primary school that some people go private to avoid). Of the children who sat this year, both children who got through so far have intelligent parents, neither had extensive tutoring, neither are rich though neither are poor. The two children who are fortunate enough to be in with a chance are the two children who have been consistently top of the class in both core subjects throughout their primary education. They are in a class of 30 so the top 5 or 6% of their peer group which seems to be what Tiffin is aiming at. Some of the children rejected by Tiffin have already got offers elsewhere. DD is also sitting for one other school where I think she would enjoy the environment. I did not find any of the other independent schools I looked at to be suitable for her, for one reason or another. If DD doesn't get in, she will hopefully go to Waldegrave which seems like a wonderful school. I would be completely happy with that outcome!

In fact, I think the advantages conferred by having clever parents who wanted a bit more for their children came into play a long time before there was any thought of sitting exams - this is what we should really be tackling. A bright child with interested, intelligent, educated, supportive parents will always have an advantage from the off. There are a few children in DD's class who might well have had a shot at it if encouraged by their parents. Thinking about the OP, she is clearly interested, supportive etc and so I believe her children would have a good chance wherever she chooses to send them to primary school. If it's Kingston or Richmond, she is very fortunate as we have amazing schools in all sectors.

I think there are one or two children in DD's class who might have had a shot at Tiffin if they had tried and I also think their parents would not have thought of trying. However, I am equally sure that these children will also do well at the local comprehensive which seems excellent and gets good results for all children. If DD ends up there, I will be totally OK with that. The things I am trying to get for her at a selective school are pretty much all related to her finding a peer group as she is an outlier in a number of ways.