Wetherby Prep 11+ 13+ destinations

[Selia]

Dear parents, can anyone share an inside into Wetherby Prep 11+ 13+ leavers destination data? Wetherby Prep’s website only lists out overall (I think Y6&Y8) destinations and ONLY good destinations for the past 5yrs, but no info about total number of pupils at Y6 and/or Y8. If I only use their 5yr data then it seems 50% pupils go to Tier 1 secondary schools which is too good to be true. Anyone?

Try to back-check by looking at the destination schools prospectuses and seeing where the kids are coming from. Do you have an upper school in mind?

Latymer prep or upper is what I’m aftering, or Westminster. Trouble is, Wetherby data on destinations are so obscure. I’ve no idea how many of these results are by 11+ or 13+. I know they have 3 classes of 20 to start with each year group. Every year there were around 30 pupils going to Tier 1 day or boarding schools (WS, Kings, St Paul, Eaton, Wellington etc) If all these 30 left at 13+ then Wetherby prep has an astonishing 50% premiere league rate! Too good to be true?

Is the upper school open yet? Remember there will be a number of boys who go out of London or abroad.

A quick look - going to Westminster upper (so 13+) :

2016 - 1
2017 - 3
2018 - 4

Yes I saw that too. But the list says “Westminster” no idea if it refers to under school or great school. Same apples to latymer.
Wetherby senior school opened since 2015 expecting their first A level to be released this summer...

As I recall Westminster 11+ entry (WUS) is for state schools and preps which end at 11. They do not usually accept students from 13+ preps at that point. I suspect the same applies to Latymer.

WUS 11+ is open to anyone state or private.

If your school goes to 13+ upper schools tend to take you at that point. Westminster 11+ would be for the under school.

Some schools don’t allow you to register for 11 and 12 plus but the entry process has changed for Westminster upper and St. Paul’s recently so check this! So you are looking at Westminster, St. Paul’s, kings, city?

Yes or no b/c not sure DS’s is quite competitive enough for those top 3. But we certainly hope for Latymer. We have an offer to join Wetherby prep but we just really can’t understand their destination results they published online. No differential between 11+ & 13+ Leavers hard to know percentage of pupils leave for Tier 1 schools.

Have you asked the admissions officer? Have you looked at CLS?

their office closed as of yesterday! Term ends sooner than others

And no one is around? Our school closed on Wednesday and staff were still there yesterday.

Hopefully a Wetherby parent will be around to cast some light.

Wetherby Prep parent here. Almost all the exits are for 13+. And yes the exit results are strong, about half to top tier schools. This year, apart from a large contingent heading off to the usual suspects (Eton, WS, SPS, Winchester etc), there were two academic scholarships to St Paul’s and one to Winchester. Too good to be true? Not really, probably not very different from what a similar school, Sussex House for example, will achieve. About half of the boys come from the excellent pre-prep school (Wetherby School) and the other half from other schools through selective exams. So at least about half or more of the year will be academically strong candidates. Add good teachers and highly motivated parents into the mix and a 50% exit rate to top schools is not surprising. In fact, the exit data would look even stronger if you adjust for the fact that many parents like the “Wetherby system” so much that they pick the new senior school (Wetherby Senior) over some of the more established tier 1 schools. And given the strong progress Wetherby Senior has made in a short period, it’s probably going be an increasingly attractive choice for more Wetherby parents in future.

Thank you CAC3. Finally a Wetherby prep parent! Great to hear the results are so strong. 2 questions: 1) is tutoring rampant? Everyone’s got a tutor for 13+? 2) Wetherby prep has 80 boys at Y4 (4 classes of 20) but how come the published results only have 45-65 boys (number of boarding + day school)? Ie 2019 results add up to 59 boys, 2018 only 45, 2017 63 boys.....what happened to the missing 20 boys? Could their destinations not recorded online b/c they aren’t too Tier? Millions of thx! Xx

Year 4 used to have three classes (20 each) until about two years or so ago when the school expanded its physical space and added an extra class. So four years or so from now the exit stats will show 80 students.

Tutoring is not uncommon. But there is a simple and probably sensible reason for this. Prep schools were set up to educate children in the national curriculum, at the end of which they take the common entrance exam to senior schools. Wetherby (and all the other good preps) do this well and the common entrance pass rate is about 100%. But in recent years, competition for top senior schools has led to the emergence of new fangled exams like the ISEB pretest at 11, the Eton computer test etc. These tests allegedly test aptitude rather than the national curriculum. Prep schools don’t like them and generally don’t prepare children for them. Prep schools are set up to teach maths, history, geography or whatever, not verbal aptitude and pattern recognition (non-VR). The test makers claim the tests can’t be prepared for, but parents (probably sensibly) reckon that familiarisation with the style of the exams will be helpful and so get tutors to help prep their children for those exams.