Opinions on The Perse Upper School in Cambridge

[Perpetuallyexhaustedtoddlermum]

I realise with a toddler that I'm a long way from Upper School territory, but both my DP and his sister had a horrific time in local state secondary schools and left school with little in the way of qualifications due to the dreadful bullying. DP is adamant that we do private school for the secondary years.
I've done some fairly basic research and the Perse stands out as one of the best local independent schools for DS in the future.
I was privately educated at Godolphin and Latymer as a young girl myself and thoroughly enjoyed it but have no experience of private education in Cambridge.

Hi - unless your toddler turns into a super bright, robust, academic, the Perse is probably not for you. Cambridge has many other independent schools - Stephen Perse, the Leys etc which produce slightly more rounded individuals. Additionally, just outside of Cambridge there are some lovely options.

You can be horrifically bullied at a private school too. This is a strange reason to go private. You've chosen one of the most academic schools in that area too. If your child isn't super bright and tutored up to their eyeballs to get in, they will probably have an awful time there.
If you're in Cambridge than you will have a good choice of state schools. Either way, you're a long way from having that problem.

My friend’s two children have attended The Perse but her eldest child didn’t pass the entrance exam to continue onto the Upper school. He has slight dyslexia and the support for him was fairly nonexistent. The bullying is dreadful, the pressure to succeed is very high and the level of work is beyond their age group (think year 7 work at year 5 level) On the plus side, the sports facilities and opportunities are fantastic. I am envious of that part! My friend said that the Perse Upper has the top 10% of students in the country. It’s a lot of pressure on these children. You have a lot of time to decide but as a previous poster said, there are a lot of very good state schools around Cambridge. My eldest attends one and is in year 7 and is doing very well.

A friend of mine has a DD there. She is doing very well but it is an academic hothouse which means they are worked very hard and are given lots of prep to do in the evenings/weekends. My husband went to The Leys and was expelled from there, only to do very well in the state sector.

On the flip side, the Cambridge sixth form college is the best one outside London and in the U.K. top ten.

If I were you I would look at Kings Ely instead. Much more of a balanced school.

I hadn't thought of that one and it's only about 10-15 minutes on the train

The Perse is alpha as fuck. Unless you have one of those children, I'd give it a swerve. The state options in Cambridge are generally very good, although from your post I think you have historical negative experiences of them; they are not the schools they were when you were there, and your child is not you.

I also think the Perse kids were in the news a while ago for disrespectful behaviour on a school trip to a concentration camp, and for fighting in the town.

My son’s science tutor also works there and she is fantastic. If the rest of the teachers are like her it must be great.

Do give the state schools a chance. There were concerns raised about bullying at DD's school (Cambs state comp), but she had absolutely no experience of bullying behaviour in five very happy years there. As others have said, bullying happens in private schools too. There's some in most schools, but the majority of children may never be affected.

It's such a long way off - find out what your child is like before worrying too much about which school to choose at 11.

Do you need to know now? If it doesn’t affect primary school choice I’d just see how your child turns out. So many years ahead! Many couples have a mix of state/private with stories to tell about their experiences (us included) but we’ve been relatively slow to realise (embarrassingly!) that life has changed greatly and - our children are individuals! Wait and see what type of school suits them and do your homework and look around; get info, not private v state but the additional important things that will be important for them specifically.

Very interesting comments above. My son has dyspraxia, spent 5 yrs at Perse and now in yr 1 uni. He did not find the workload unbearable and there was no homework during holidays

Adding to this thread slightly late, but our child has now been at the Upper School for a term and our feelings (so far) are that it is a really great school. We moved to Cambridge recently and (to be honest) were quite surprised that our child was offered a place. He had always done well in (an independent) Primary School but isn’t an academic high-flier or hugely gifted in one area. We had no tutoring for the entrance exams, but the primary school did do a lot of preparation work with the Year 6. A lot of the children at The Perse are highly academic or gifted, and this has caused our son to sometimes feel they aren’t doing well as they come ‘bottom of the class’ sometimes or are placed in a low set. We have had to explain that to be in the low set at The Perse is the equivalent of the top set in another school (an oversimplification I know but just trying to show how we explained this to a twelve year old). Despite this, our son is really pleased (and proud) to be at The Perse. There is a whole world of clubs and extra-curricular activities for them to be part of, and the whole school runs like a very well-oiled machine. I don’t know about bullying - haven’t heard of any so far, and hoping there won’t be any. In terms of pressure, the Year 7 so far hasn’t been too much. In fact I think our son has had less homework than they had in Year 6. The school may, of course, be lowering us in gently! Overall it’s been a positive experience. I’m aware that it’s early days for us but thought it might help to hear.

@HinHin Thank you for that balanced insight. This matches my own experience and the feedback I get from my ex pupils and parents. I’m a private tutor, specialising in preparing children in the Cambridge area for selective independent school entrance tests. The Perse are looking for prospective pupils who have natural curiosity, a strong drive to excel and an intrinsic love of learning. It is not the right school for every child but it’s clear children who love learning thrive there. As you mentioned, the facilities and opportunities for myriad extracurricular activities are superb. It’s not necessary for children to be tutored relentlessly to get into The Perse at all - the most important thing is to build confidence and resilience so they can rise to challenges by thinking flexibly and creatively for themselves.

The Perse was a great fit for one of my DDs, at Sixth Form, transferred from school in Bury St Edmunds at Sixth Form.

Hills Rd, Cambridge is also an excellent school.

I often recommend King’s Ely to my clients if they have reservations about The Perse or want a backup option. Feedback I get from pupils I’ve tutored prior to going there is always very good. Children invariably say they are happy there and the pastoral care is excellent. King’s Ely is still selective but they accept a somewhat broader range of academic ability than The Perse making it a bit easier to get a place. Despite this, the ‘value-added’ results at King’s for GCSE and A Level are good. It’s definitely worth considering applying for both the Perse and King’s Ely. Feel free to drop me a pm if you have any specific questions.

I have two children at Perse Upper. It is absolutely brilliant. Has excellent facilities, I have never encountered any talk of bullying and the children are a wide mix of interests from sporty to nerdy. All catered for in the huge range of clubs and activities on offer. Parents are a bit alpha tbh, perhaps more than the kids but nowhere near West London levels..!
My kids have found true friendship and are very happy. Both thriving and teaching is good. No overload, no homework in holidays. Mine are yet to enter GCSE territory when I imagine things would ramp up. I highly recommend the school.

Sorry, everyone, for resurrecting a moribund thread; but I need to make a snap decision about whether to put my DD in for Perse entrance (place suddently available for Y7 2024), and wondered if anyone had any recent experience and might offer a steer? For context she's clever but under confident and struggles with friendships; she also gets a bit anxious in timed exam situations etc (doesn't seem to impact her performance, but she's a bit of a worrier). We have an offer from Stephen Perse at the moment. @bimblebird @Treehouse12 @Nenen I've found your comments so far very helpful, so thank you!

(An added complication is a less academic younger brother, and I'd like them to be at the same school if at all possible... Anyone happen to know how or if sibling preference works here?)

Hi there! Just wanted to add my voice to the relevant experience above - 3 kids through the Perse, all of whom have very different personalities but the school has remained the same.

The pastoral care has been excellent. I'm not guaranteeing bullying won't happen, but I've never seen / heard of any incidents, and 2 out of 3 of my kids are - frankly - natural targets (both got bullied at other schools).

The expectations are high, but so is the teaching. My kids always felt supported and again, I have seen much worse workloads in other schools.

DD3 sounds quite similar to your DD: struggles with friendships, gets in a fret about tests and exams. To the first point, the school can't completely fix that situation, but she now has a small friendship group, she feels confident and protected there and there are so many activities and clubs that she can generally find something engaging to do with her time.

On the other hand, there are a lot of in term tests and exams. And because of the large number of very bright kids there, I @Treehouse12 is correct: the kids get a distorted idea of what academic success looks like, meaning DD3 can feel a bit of a failure if she doesn't get > 70%. This may well not happen to your DD of course ;-)

They don't give preferential treatment to siblings...DD3 bombed out on her yr7 entrance because COVID and having two older sibs there didn't help.

Can also confirm that there are a small number of buttock-clenching Alpha mums there but luckily as a secondary school you can reduce your exposure to them and stick with those of us who occasionally turn up on a bike with our hair in a mess.

Drawn back on to a Zombie but will also throw in our version.

Son had dyslexia and slow processing and support was outstanding.

Yes they are clever kids but I personally do not recognise the "alpha" "bullying" negativity spouted above. Those who call it a hot house tend to be those that didn't attend or didn't pass the entrance exam to get it which always makes me laugh.

There is more and more competition to get in with factors such as AZ bringing in clever employees with clever kids and the knock on effect is that the other local independent schools pick up students that historically would have got in thus raising their profiles too. So there is a good selection to choose from and you will no doubt find a school to suit. The fact that Stephen Perse is now co-ed too has opened alternate settings.

But I do not recognise the negative views of The Perse mentioned above.

I take it from your message that your daughter did the entrance exams back in January? In which case you and she have seen the schools and made some kind of judgements already on which you’d prefer. We let our son choose from the offers he received, as we felt he was the best judge, and it also gave him ownership and incentive to do well. So I wondered what your daughter thinks about the schools? Does she have a strong preference? Both The Perse & Stephen Perse do really well academically. I do like the size of the Perse - I felt that The Stephen Perse was

oops hit send by mistake!
The Stephen Perse felt ‘small’ to me but that could be an advantage for some. Both schools should have excellent teaching and excellent pastoral care. Exams/test can’t really be avoided in any school, but so far they haven’t created too much pressure for us. Hope this helps.

Name changed for this. I went to the Perse Upper in the 2010s, but am very much still in the loop about it for various reasons. I found the staff really brilliant - hugely devoted to their subjects, with many going above and beyond for students. Also, the facilities are really lovely. The school itself felt humanising and empowering, without too much micromanaging crap about minor uniform violations and similar.

However, the academic pressure is insane, and academic ability and work ethic alone are not enough. Socially and culturally, the transition from a very ordinary state school was extremely difficult. As nice as it was to no longer be in an environment where reading a book was "posh" and doing well was embarrassing, all my peers had attended competitive "hot-house"-style prep schools with one another, so I was totally unprepared. There was definitely some sneering and ostracisation from some of the "prepped" kids towards some of the state-schooled kids, especially those of us from non-academic families. The school came down swiftly on bullying but ultimately, you can't force teenagers to be accepting.

DC who went to state primary but had Oxbridge/privately-educated parents would probably be fine, but otherwise it can be tough. There is an extreme focus on Oxbridge and medicine and a strong expectation to achieve a clean sweep of A*s or equivalent. I have definitely noticed that it's easy to lose a sense of perspective when in this kind of environment - for example, bottom set in the Perse is realistically still higher than top set in almost any other school.

I view the "alpha parent" phenomenon as the product of the Cambridge middle-class, not the Perse itself, but the Perse is a major hub for "alpha parents", as those upthread have called them. I'm very much not trying to deter you from applying for the Perse - it's a really nice school with a progressive feel to it. I would caution that you might want to put DC in a feeder prep from around year 4 or earlier - then again, as you were privately educated yourself, you will probably be somewhat able to prepare DC culturally and academically, but it's worth considering. I have also observed a lot of parents place a huge amount of pressure on children to pass entrance exams - if DC needs intensive private tutoring to pass an entrance exam, it only gets harder once they get into the school. In my (very humbly offered) opinion, it's far better to take a "let's see" approach and apply for a few schools with various selection criteria rather than honing in on getting DC into the Perse by any means. As I hope is clear, I'm just hoping to give some helpful advice, as I have a fairly positive view of the Perse.

For snap places the ratio of applicants to place will be extremely high. Of course you’ve got to be in it to win it but it’s incredibly hard so do be gentle on yourselves and fingers very tightly
crossed for
you. No there is no sibling preference it’s all on academic performance. Both schools
have fairly similar term dates. Many families straddle several schools. It is doable. Good luck!

And I’d say there are most definitely some alpha mums and dads. The WhatsApp groups can be a little much sometimes but it’s high school and you don’t have to engage or have anything to do with them, just the parents of kids your own child is friends with. The kids are mostly a great bunch and all kinds of personalities. I had DD at y7 and DS from the prep at y3 and it is harder for y7 at first but the cliques fall away - the school works hard to make them all integrate and my DD couldn’t be happier.