It seems that people's views of schools like BGS and BMS tend to be very influenced by the experiences of their own children. The parents who I have spoken to have clearly taken against the school and its culture because of their daughters' issues with anxiety and bullying. These issues also occur in state schools: does this mean that it is the school's fault? My own opinion is that parents should do what they can to make their children strong and able to cope with the normal variances of childhood. A predisposition to anxiety will manifest in any environment in which a child is placed. To really drill down into whether either BMS or BGS is 'failing' in some way, we would need to examine data on the psychological profiles of their cohorts. Are more 'nerdy', high-neuroticism introvert personality types more attracted to BMS, and more 'sporty', roll-with-the-punches tougher extrovert types attracted to BGS (just a hypothesis)? If this was true, then the few high-neurosis nerds who end up at at BGS will be in an environment with much tougher girls and may feel extra anxious as a consequence. Without any details on the cohort profiles, we are very much making judgements by pluralising anecdotes.
The issue may not be BGS's ability to support children and deter bullying, it could also be that a preponderance of anxious children and their parents are attracted to the school (seeing it as a place of nurture and safety, for example). Modern children also have a very low trigger point for the word 'bullying' - most people in their forties and fifties would use the term 'teasing' to describe what many children (IMO) overreact to. My own opinion: rather than seeking to make the environment more cushioned, safer and low risk, concentrate on building your child's strength and ability to cope with the world. Send them in to environments where they need to be tough, and learn the skills to cope: just like muscles in a gym, the biological system responds by compensating for the weakness by becoming stronger.
We have started trying to prepare our daughter for both the academic and social challenges of school: for instance she attends Kip McGrath tuition and also martial arts club. She is already exceeding expected standards in school, and the tutoring helps to expand her competence in many areas of English and maths. I wonder if any other parents have the experience of local tutoring providers in Bedford and how they have helped for Harpur Trust entry (or general school performance)? Kip McGrath has been really good so far (and uses professional, qualified teachers in an old castle building), but I am sure there must be other providers who may also help.
We send our daughter to martial arts to help her develop a tough mindset. It is a reliable psychological statistic that 3-4% of the population can be clinically identified as psychopaths. This is really scary to me! What should we do about it? My plan is to help our children be so tough that if they are sitting next to a psychopath in their class (or a sufferer of its childhood precursor, antisocial personality disorder), or if the boss in their first job is a psychopath - they can cope! If our sons and daughters are weak and anxious, while we can protect them at home, they will be unprepared for the real world and will be prey for the predators out there. I hope that martial arts helps to develop resilience and strength - does anyone know anything else that can help in this regard?