St Mary's School Hampstead

[Barnum123]

Hello - My daughter will be attending St Mary's School in Hampstead next month- entering Year 2. What are the thoughts on this school? Are parents content with pastoral care and academics? Is the Head well-liked? It appears the exit results for this year were disappointing compared to previous years.
Many thanks for all your feedback.

hi @Barnum123. How hard was it to gain entry to Y2? Was there a waiting list? I have a DD there and a younger DD but considering sending the youngest to state until Y3 to save money. Worried I'd miss the boat and not get back in. The school and the Head are amazing. Re: exit results, it was only 28 girls last year, presumably quite a few left due to Brexit as every other year it's been 40 (across 2 classes). Also, last year a new 11+ was introduced.

Re: academics, if you look at books on exeat, when they allow workbooks home, the sheer volume of what they wrote over the year is staggering, seems more than what I did in Uni. I like that in any subject you'll see open-ended questions in the workbooks, not just give the right answer. The main music teacher is superb and we've never had a bad class teacher / TA.

As I understand it both Channing and South Hampstead lowered their intake number this year having taken much larger numbers the previous year- so all schools got fewer girls in to those places.
In my experience St Mary's is a fantastic school. I have a girl there and a boy at a nearby school with a hyper-competitive reputation, and frankly I rate St Mary's higher as it is less "one speed" and much more adept at getting girls to excel at their own rate. My daughter can't wait for the summer to end so she can get back!

Thank you both for your helpful responses.
With regards to admittance, I believe there is a fair amount of movement (perhaps more so than so than some other girls' schools) so vacancies often pop up.