Hill House International School

[SW3Mom]

Hi,
I'm looking at primary schools and really like the feel of Hill House (International School). However I feel the school has gone from being a mainstream local (Chelsea) school to an outsider that is slightly shunned from local nurseries by both parents and nursery schools themselves. I wonder: is the school sliding down hill?
Can any current or recent parents give me their experiences and opinions please?
What attracts me to Hill House is the focus on outdoors and sports, the relaxed academic approach in early years, that it is mixed, that it seems unpretentious and seems like an unpretentious student and parent body relative to other local schools, the music offering, greater independence for kids than other local schools, and generally what I perceive to be uncommonly happy well balanced kids. Please note - if you're wondering - I have only looked at local schools we can walk to so I am comparing Hill House to schools such as Knightsbridge School, Garden House, Francis Holland, Cameron house, and to a lesser extent Glendower, Faulkner House.
Thanks!

Well there is an Ofsted inspection in January 2018 which gives a much improved picture from what they found 3 years ago. However you might wish to note that Ofsted believe children in the lower years should be challenged more because they are capable of better progress. Most of the other improvements are really around the teachers assessing the progress the children are making and ensuring all children make good progress. I would say that they might now introduce more challenge to the younger year groups.

Is this the school that wears knickerbockers but is not pretentious? Hmmm!!!

I have a couple of close friends whose children are in HH. The feeling is that the school purposely put a relaxed academic cirricumlum in the lower years to prevent children leaving at 7 or 8+. But the workload will dramatically increase from year 5. The 13+ exit is still looking good.

So it depends on what you are looking for, if you are happy with this approach, then it's a happy school.

If you after avoiding the potential Chelsea Chelsea stuff, I would definitely look at Cameron hosue again too. Very low key compared to most in the area and definitely not hot house.

The Ofsted report is very clear on what they now expect the school to do in order to improve. They have had so many visits from Ofsted over the past 4 years, and have done so much to improve the school, it would seem reasonable that they will ensure the quality of teaching, assessment and progress will be stepped up. The new advisers are surely looking at this. However I don’t see much wrong with children working to their capabilities all the way through school. Ofsted are actually looking for improvements throughout the school and steady good progress is better than slow progress then a massive push from age 9/10. If I was looking at the school I would be interested to know how they are implementing changes to meet Ofsted’s very reasonable recommendations.

Hi,
Thanks for the comments. I sort of like HH being more relaxed academically in the early years irrespective of Ofsted’s opinion. I think at this young age they need to develop physical skills, confidence, play and music more than learning to read.
Would still love some feedback from HH parents as it sounds like the posters are not speaking from recent first hand experiences.
Thanks!

I was a bit put off my not having proper class rooms for some of early years - just temporary dividers making large cubicles in the Temperance hall, but perhaps they have found another building by now?

Totally agree on a relaxed approach in early years, assuming you're not doing 7+. Look at Habs - the junior is very chilled, minimal homework, big focus on resilience. the A-level results show that those who came through the junior actually do marginally better than those who were tutored +++ to get in at 11

Look at Habs ... the A-level results show that those who came through the junior actually do marginally better than those who were tutored +++ to get in at 11

Do you have a source for this assertion?

@expat96 yes the figures were in the head's end of term letter for the last two years.

Yes but how do you know the junior children at Habs were not the brightest and the best anyway? They would be more likely to succeed. The Head is essentially advertising their junior dept.

The most essential thing is that children are not bored and learn what they are capable of learning. This is what Ofsted would wish to see. Most parents do too. Not learning to read would have been unthinkable for one of mine and I know children who essentially taught themselves to read pre school and wound up at Cambridge. Playing just wasn’t what the brightest needed and one size doesn’t fit all. HH are being asked to make sure they assess the needs of their children and address them accordingly in the classroom. I bet Habs does exactly this.

The pushed and over tutored child is rarely as bright and the school should do more to filter these out when they select. However, how do they know their own junior children are not tutored? They don’t of course so it’s all marketing! Without full details from parents it is not known who is tutored and who isn’t. There’s the truth and then there’s advertising!

@BubblesBuddy the point is that kids who come through a school are usually quite behind those who do the 11+ and have, via tutoring, been pushed to be at least a year ahead. The point the head was trying to make is that such tutoring doesn't actually mean they are ahead at the end of the day (GCSEs/Alevels) - this was around the time they announced that those coming through wouldn't do the 11+ in any form so I think it was by way of a reassurance that not doing the 11+ wouldn't put the girls who came from the junior at a disadvantage.

That’s still advertising the benefits of their junior school though. No school uses an assessment measure of “1 year ahead” either. It should be a far more sophisticated use of data and judgements on whether learning is secure.

If the Head means children have been force fed a secondary curriculum at 10/11 years old then I would also have concerns too and it’s not helpful to those children. If they have set their 11 plus exams to require this level of teaching then they are correct to abandon it. Most people know that over- tutoring at 11 isn’t going to identify the brightest pupils. I live in a grammar school county and tutoring is endemic. However all the very bright children I know who have achieved highly in university entrance haven’t been tutored at all. It’s the mid division and the desperate ones who get tutored to within an inch of their lives and, believe me, they are never the brightest or the ones who go to Oxbridge. They are tutored to keep up and not to get ahead.

The Head of Habs still doesn’t know whether their junior children are tutored though!

@laptopdisaster Thanks for the source. I've asked at several other all-through schools but not found anyone willing to be explicit about any difference between 4+ entrants' and 11+ entrants' GCSE or A-level results. The other question I have to which they have always fudged the answer is the fraction of 4+ entrants who stick around to GCSEs or A-levels. Does HASG reveal that information as well?

@expat96 not to my knowledge but its very unusual for more than a few to leave at 11, less than 5 and often due to relocation. They don’t seem to manage out in the way that some schools do.

@laptopdisaster Do any significant number leave at or before 7+ for other schools? I've heard that all-through schools often "correct their mistakes" out at that point.

Not in my experience. One or two a year max usually for very valid reasons like moving house or moving to a school a sibling is at.

It’s not unusual for children who have gone right through an all through school to be higher performers at exit than children who have joined part way through. There are many factors at play - it’s not as simple as how difficult the 11+ entrance exam is or the number of candidates per place. Changing school is known to negatively affect children's academic performance - it’s far from always a useful move.

However, the vast majority of children do move at 11 or 13 for secondary and plenty of them do extremely well. As there are so few all through schools, it is surely difficult to know what effect this has? Some children get sick and tired of the same place and that is a negative for them. They thrive on a fresh start.

My friends' very (very) bright grandchildren left an all-through school to go to super-selective state grammars. The all through school lost very bright children whose parents were both Cambridge grads. That would dent their stats in terms of performance because I assume these children were replaced with less bright ones given the presence of the grammar schools. Only the less bright children stayed at the school from age 11.

There is no real evidence that proves one school system is better than another. We have no idea of the quality of assessment data for all-through children and joiners, or how much of an impact changing schools makes, given that nearly every child does it! We only have anecdotes and assumptions made from anecdotes.

There is data, Bubbles, and I have seen it as one of our DC wrote his MPhil dissertation on returns to education and was using it! There are lots of all through schools in the private sector.

Yes but they are a small proportion of the private sector and usually only special schools in the state sector. So the data must be taken with a pinch of salt because it’s a tiny sample and it can be manipulated.

The interesting thing about all schools data, Bubbles, is that much of it is garbage when aggregated regionally or nationally. Local markets distort data massively. Digging down into the detail of individual schools and local competitive dynamics tells more reliable stories about what drives performance than nationally aggregated data. Obviously national data is very interesting from a political or macroeconomic point of view, but extrapolating from that to try to determine drivers of the performance of individuals is fairly useless. Other measurements are required.

Of course. You could, however, just look at state grammars and lower performing independent schools in a local area to see how children perform from 11 onwards althogh I do not know what this would tell you becaue they are not directly comparable. However, there is no getting away from the fact that all-through schools are non existant in the state sector and only in a miority in the independent sector. The vast majority of parents cannot, and do not, choose them. Children leave through schools for all sorts of reasons.

The number one driver of performance, and it is no secret and substantial research shows this, is great teaching. No substitute. Not even for all-through schools!

The number one driver of performance, and it is no secret and substantial research shows this, is great teaching.

Would you be so kind as to provide links to some of this research? Because most of the research I've seen shows parental socioeconomic status as the biggest driver.

expat96 - the number one driver of school performance is teaching quality. The number one driver of children’s life outcomes is parental socio-economic status. Those two statements are perfectly compatible.

expat96 - in general (see my post above), the reporting of education research tends to confuse people about the differences in drivers between aggregate performance (which interests governments) and individual performance (which interests parents). The tension between the two is a never ending source of conflict on these boards and others!