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

I agree that we should be doing more to open up this kind of opportunity to disadvantaged children! I think a lot of it is down to parents just not bothering to apply. As I said, there are a couple of kids in DD's low-attaining school who might have been good candidates. But you can't force parents to make their children sit exams!

I think, if you are middle class and intelligent and educated and support your child's intellectual development, they have as good a chance as any other child of getting into a selective school wherever they have been to primary school. I think, if you are not middle class and/or educated then your child has a lower chance of this, which is unrelated to your child's actual intellectual potential. I think it would be a great thing if someone could come up with a tutor proof test and if schools were more proactive in putting forward children who they thought might benefit from a selective environment, irrespective of background.

PS, I am educated and middle class and went to a highly selective independent school and on to Oxbridge. But DD's dad left school at 16 and is very much working class and wasn't even asked if he'd like to take A levels by his parents. Don't know what that makes DD as DH earns a lot more than I do!

Thank you all . Your posts put confidence in state system .

I can see though that the school years will be tough. I am a solicitor and my DH is in finance. We will have to find time.and energy to be more involved whereas in a prep you can probably rely on them a bit more .

many more poor children must be born capable of doing the grammar school level of work than are represented by these figures.

yes, but, most grammar schools are in areas where the percentages of disadvantaged kids are already tiny - the grammar system survived in "rich" areas - So the FSM are much lower than average anyway www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2016 Kingston upon thames is just 6.8% FSM, sadly the community itself is so full of advantage that there really aren't many disadvantaged to even want to compete for the places.

I also know people in the area, with kids almost certainly in the top 5-10% of ability who leave the area specifically to avoid the schools, single sex selective and pressure is not what everyone even in SW London wants for their kids.

I also know people in the area, with kids almost certainly in the top 5-10% of ability who leave the area specifically to avoid the schools

That sounds strange, given that there are lots of good comprehensives here.

Heliophilous Kingston upon Thames only has 3 comprehensive schools in it, and one of those is less than a couple of years old - of course there are also single sex non grammar schools but they're not comprehensive due to the exclusion by sex. That may not matter to others, choice in schooling is not necessarily a bad thing.

But I think it's also the point that grammar schools impact the comprehensive by removing a proportion of the students, but disproportionately from the strong end.

Lots of Kingston children go to eg Grey Court though. I expect Teddington is also an option on distance.

I did not know there were only three comprehensives in Kingston. Certainly there are a lot more than that in Richmond, mostly very good. I think there are around ten or so in Richmond, only one of which is single sex. That's about 2000 children per year and the numbers of children being removed from Richmond comprehensives by Tiffin are relatively low in comparison - a couple of hundred per school, not all of whom would otherwise attend Richmond schools. It's nothing like a 'real' grammar area where the top 20% or so are creamed off. There are still many high attaining children in all the local schools.

I am a solicitor and my DH is in finance. We will have to find time.and energy to be more involved whereas in a prep you can probably rely on them a bit more.

IME prep schools still expect you to be pretty involved (though the FT working parents delegate a lot of this to a good nanny, but this often means they have to pay for a FT nanny even when all the DC are at school).

Also prep school children are still often tutored to get into the selective London schools as they are so competitive to get into.

In your shoes I would go state so that you have the wriggle room financially to adapt to whatever your DC turn out to need. That might be tutoring, a hobby they love, maybe a parent taking a career break or going part time for a bit. It's not worth stretching yourself to the max for prep school and cutting off options the family may need in the future. Not when you have excellent state primaries available to you.

The Sutton Trust research on inequality of opportunity in access to state grammar schools is interesting.

The fact of their being so few FSM in a given area must have been made worse by The Right to Buy council houses - in that as soon as they were sold they became middle class and no replacements were built within the area. At the time the scheme came in I thought it was nice, but now I regret this effect.

I think in the 1960s & 1970s there would have been many more working class/skilled working class people in Kingston and Richmond.

Tiffin prioritises applications from pupils in receipt of PPG above those who are not receiving it, presumably in an attempt to widen access.

And there are still plenty of families around here who are not particularly well off. It does vary a lot by school. DD's school has about 25% FSM whereas the other closest school has 16% FSM - the next nearest has 8% FSM. This is within a very small area, less than a square mile.

whereas in a prep you can probably rely on them a bit more

the vast majority of kids in a prep school are also tutored for the 11+ and you will have to be very involved in supervising homework etc for the couple of years before the exam

thank you minipie- you are right. sounds and feel right too.

Your DC sounds very able Helios.
As she remembers what she was asked, would you say the exam questions were the same type as the National Curriculum SATS asks for Maths and English? Would passing for Tiffin be like getting high level 5 in Maths and ENglish Nat Curr SATs, say? Or is the whole entrance exam a bit different in the type of questions asked?

pigshavecurlytail - the headteachers of the preps we visited do not recommend tutoring but they say when one parent gets a tutor others start to do it . they all said that they are giving enough support to succeed in these exams and with tutoring probably the children will get in a school that is not right for them and they will probably struggle there and will always need tutoring.

If the primary schools were teaching enough why would the extra tutoring for the children be necessary?

I can't speak on the matter of private schools but would like to correct this misconception. It is not that primary schools do not teach enough, it is that they teach to the specified National Curriculum. 11+ tests bear no relation to this curriculum and have a specific format, which is why tutoring is often needed.

It is worth remembering the distinction between private school tests and grammar. The private school can choose who they want. The test forms a basis for that decision, but in my experience bright kids from state school with a rounded set of outside interests eg sport/art/music do get the offers from privates. I only know of a couple of kids from state without private offers from the schools they really wanted them, and those both had SEN issues and ended up at 'lesser' privates.

If you are happy to pay for private, use the money now to pay for sport/music and save up for secondary.

the headteachers of the preps we visited do not recommend tutoring

of course they all say that, they have to but they know that it goes on. And their results should be taken in the context of the fact that they have been obtained with the help of tutors as well as the school.

Don't get me wrong - tutoring is much harder if you're not at a prep. but don't think that you can send them to a prep and then sit back and it'll all just happen.

As she remembers what she was asked, would you say the exam questions were the same type as the National Curriculum SATS asks for Maths and English? Would passing for Tiffin be like getting high level 5 in Maths and ENglish Nat Curr SATs, say? Or is the whole entrance exam a bit different in the type of questions asked?

I think she would say (from what I remember of what she said at the time), that the questions did not have anything in them that she had not covered to some extent at school but they were more complex - so lots of hard multi-stage word problems in Maths etc. She did not find the English particularly tricky (but that is v definitely her thing) but she did find some of the Maths problems difficult. I would say it sounded harder than the old Lvl 5 in SATs (which no longer exists). DD has done a number of old level 3-5 papers at school just recently and found them very easy, dropping only one or two marks per paper or none at all, even in those that were designed to be taken with a calculator but she took without (because there is no longer any calculator paper in the new SATs). She found the Tiffin test manageable but I don't think she would say it was easy. I can ask her later if you like!

Minniemousse In light of what you say
"It is not that primary schools do not teach enough, it is that they teach to the specified National Curriculum. 11+ tests bear no relation to this curriculum and have a specific format, which is why tutoring is often needed".
Do you know what the difference is between the National Curriculum Maths and English tests, and the Grammar school 11 plus versions of tests for these subjects?

Is maths not maths in the sense of needing a basic understanding of the most usual maths attainable at a certain age by the more able - and the same for English? Is it possible to stay the standard for both sorts of exams is the same, but what is asked for is different?

Thanks Helios. What you say explains it well and answers what I asked Minniemousse.

so lots of hard multi-stage word problems in Maths etc.

I do think that not giving practice at primary schools in this sort of thing is a problem generally. The whole point, and the whole real difficulty in maths, is using what you know to think and work things out without panicking. So just teaching to the national curriculum may not be enough.

There is also a need in English teaching to let things be more open ended, and exploratory.

exactly ..why don't they design the national curriculum to cope with these exams too.

Newnormal5 The national curriculum is for learning the things you need to know.

The idea of selective school tests is to remove the ability to tutor and learn specifically for the test, but to attempt to identify those who achieve due to ability as opposed due to practice. It's very imperfect of course, as it's impossible to remove the impact of practice. However the practice has no useful impact other than for the tests, so that is why it's not part of the national curriculum.

It's also possible that the tests are specifically designed so that things off the national curriculum are tested so as to select for children who's parents are so invested in the school that they will tutor them for it, hence recruiting only the most invested parents and therefore externally motivated students.

That would depend how cynical you are though.

is for learning the things you need to know
What you really need to know though, and need to practice, is how to set about using what you know to think around a problem. If the national curriculum is mostly just knowledge, and does not heavily emphasise thinking, that means it is letting the children down imo.