Godolphin and Latymer or Westminster

[ThatWildHam]

11+ results came through yesterday, and DD received offers from Westminster and Godolphin & Latymer

She seems to have her heart set on Westminster, but as it is the first year that they are accepting girls we're unsure about it

Currently confused and deadlocked, so any advice or insights from anyone with experience at either school would be appreciated!

Other families might consider it a sensible option. It keeps the girls together in one class to give them a larger pool of friends. But then integrates them with the boys in the different sets for Maths, English and other subjects based on ability. They also mingle in the clubs and societies which year 7 children will be able to set up themselves. The new building has specially designed breakout spaces for these activities. So not only do the girls have a stable pool of girls to build friendships. They can set up societies of their own choice and find connections with boys who are equally bright and passionate about those topics. Then by year 9 all classes are mixed up and fully integrated. Sounds like a very thoughtful way to go about it.

Congratulations to your daughter. I have two daughters of which one of them is at SPGS and the other is at G&L. I would say academic wise your daughter will do well in either school. It is what you want her school and social life to be like.
Westminster school will naturally have less girls and at senior schools this can feel a bit restrictive. But she will have the added advantage of her being able to have friendships with boys.
G&L school is only girls so she will definitely find likeminded girls and it does become a sisterhood.
So I would focus on the co-ed or girls only question with your daughter as the education part will be exceptional at both.

Good luck

Having been to the offer holders event, I can confirm that 30 girls have been made offers to and these will be split across 4 forms(?!) and
mixed in with the boys.
We come from a small 1 form co-ed and the limited number of girls is not an issue for us. 120 girls on the other hand sounds an bit intense!😀
I like the new building at WU, it is beautifully designed, spacious and bright.
I think the opportunities will be unlimited for this first generation of young girls at Westminster.

Only 30 offers? That’s pretty bold of them given first intake(!) wonder what waiting list looks like…

My understanding is that they are not very keen into filling places from the waiting list; it sounds like they have curated a list of suitable candidates and are content with those that will accept the offers, regardless of how many might decline.
I am very interested to see how it develops to September.

I'm always wary of posters with no direct experience of a school nonetheless feeling free to post negative things on a public forum. Their motives are highly questionable.

I have a DD at SPGS - so will put facts above mythologies. Homework is not "optional". Teachers only set it if they think it's helpful / relevant - which is sometimes all allocated homeworks and sometimes much less. Teachers are also very clear that girls are not to spend more than the allocated time on it, which to my mind is a sign of good pastoral care and ensuring balance in their lives. Tests are not called quizzes. There's very little "real censure" in the school and certainly not for incomplete homework. Any incidents of unkind behaviour (which happens between schools everywhere) is dealt with effectively and efficiently.

The eating disorder narrative about SPGS is so old and boring and entirely unsubstantiated that I'm not even going to dignify it with a response.

It is very clear that this poster knows zero about the school. I'm not sure what their motivation is, but as has been said on 11+ forums many times, be mindful that some WL parents come on MN to trash certain schools in the hope of freeing up WL places for their own child.

Anyone who'd like accurate info about SPGS, feel free to PM me.

Are you saying they have 30 places available and they've only made 30 offers? That would be extraordinarily over-confident of them! No school ever gets 100% acceptance rate! Or do you mean they've made 30 offers and expect 20 to accept?

I also have a DD at SPGS. Many of DD's teachers do indeed choose to call their tests "quizzes", not that any of the girls seem to be deceived. Not all incidents of unkind behavior have been dealt with effectively or efficiently. DD has yet to tell us anything about specific cases of anorexia but she has attested to many cases of bitchiness, although she doesn't know if that's any more prevalent than at other girls schools.

I have no motivation beyond making it clear that your opinion represents but one data point of those with direct experience of the school; there are many others and your understanding of the word "fact" doesn't line up with any dictionary's definition.

I regard SPGS as a good school and, on balance, am glad that DD is there, but countering hyperbole with more hyperbole doesn't help anyone.

There's no hyperbole in my post. I've not exaggerated anything. Someone calling the school a "hotbed of bitchiness and anorexia" is definitely hyperbolic. I simply wanted to counter that with first-hand experience. It is a fact that homework is not optional. It is a fact that my DD has class quizzes which might be subject based but are very clearly for fun, but tests are clearly tests (equally many of your DD's teachers may refer to them as quizzes, but it's not true that all tests are called quizzes). All schools have unkind behaviour between girls. My experience is that it's been dealt with well at SPGS. I'm sorry if you've had a different experience.

Your experience seems very similar to ours. DD left last summer and had a very chilled seven years with a lot of kindness from staff, very little academic pressure and a lot of fun. Any issues with unkindness were dealt with swiftly and well in our experience. The staff really genuinely want to help.

No school is perfect but, assuming what I hear from parents at other schools is correct, St Paul's is a lot kinder and less pressured than the vast majority of secondaries.

I stand corrected and apologies for wrong numbers in the earlier post - they have 30 places for girls and 10 for boys this 11+ cycle so they have tried to balance out the ratio which is great. The girls will spread out in 4 forms of 20 kids each. The building is absolutely breathtaking and designed more like like an intellectual hub for all the bright kids to build teams and collaborate on anything that suits their fancy. Also they have a new head of girls sports joining and offering everything from dance, gymnastics to rowing, netball, football and cricket and fixtures with their girl teams playing against other girls schools/teams.

Agreed.

Westminster was not the school for us.

Still: my respect for its leadership - developed as a function of having spent real time with the same - is significant.

To imagine them capable of such hubris is difficult. At best.

Entirely possible that I misunderstood your earlier post @RareWinter - if so: my apologies.

No need to apologise @IsThisRealLife
I do not want to speculate on what they expect or not or what their strategy is.
My understanding from the chats I had with a couple of the WUS staff is that they have made 30 offers and they don’t know if these will be filled and that’s fine. I feel like that’s what the headmistress implied too, in no specific terms.

Maybe someone else who was on one of the tours these days could clarify.
I might have misunderstood completely in which case I need to apologise.

As a CF person who nevertheless like to join in, I am going to give you my considered opinion:

They both sound very, very good.

🤪

There's no hyperbole in my post.

It is very clear that this poster knows zero about the school.

It is a fact that my DD has class quizzes which might be subject based but are very clearly for fun

It is also a fact that, when girls in DD's class asked if the results of the "fun little quizzes" would affect their end of year reports, the teachers replied in the affirmative. And one of the things I dislike about the school is how many girls ask questions like this and how often they seem to do so.

It is my opinion that the school could have dealt with some incidents better. Your opinion differs. Neither are facts. And it's unlikely that we are both aware of exactly the same incidents.

My DD's experience so far agrees with your DD's except for one word. I would describe the girls I have seen as extremely accomplished, fairly bright, mostly well behaved. I would not describe them as chilled. Most of the girls DD knows are very ambitious and many seem to feel a lot of pressure. To be clear, I believe that the pressure comes from their parents or from the girls themselves, not the school, but many of them show it, with 11 year olds sometimes crying after a "fun little quiz" that they'd blown their chance at Oxbridge. I genuinely hope that your DD's experience is closer to the norm at the school but there do exist some girls for whom the experience is different.

For our DD we didn't consider Westminster, but she will be going to G&L. It comes down to if your daughter wants co-ed vs single sex. Further, I'm not sure I'd want mine, even if she wanted to go co-ed, to be somewhat of a guinea pig.

I understand and respect your opinion however comparing these girls to guinea pigs is a ridiculous dramatisation. They are not going to be sent to a different planet. It’s just a co-ed school in central London. Alright, maybe not “just” 🙂

Hi @ThatWildHam hope you've made the decision that is the best for your daughter and family. Do let us know what you decided in the end?

Still working on it! Deadline is Wednesday so this might go to the wire🤔

Three of our DDs favourite friends - two from her current girls' prep, one from her nursery (who attended a state primary) - were offered Westminster.

Properly outstanding children - not just in terms of intellectual ability but in terms of character. Kind, outgoing, truly curious about the world - with parents (I found) notable in terms of their approachability, warmth and general loveliness.

In the end: none of them opted for Westminster. (One: SPGS - no debate. One: SPGS - with real difficulty. The last: Latymer - no debate.) But, for your decision, those data points don't really seem important as neither SPGS nor Latymer are in your decision set.

Ultimately, in terms of what their Westminster offers say about the way that school thought about its desired cohort, however - there is no question but that their selection process was rigorous and brilliantly (!!) conceived.

With that in mind, whatever girls accept will, I suspect, be absolutely amazing.

We went with Godolphin in the end. They may have made offers to 30 girls, but if they only have 4 people on the waitlist, there is no way of knowing how many girls will actually be there in year 7. If it ends up being say 15 girls vs 65 boys, that is not a coed school - it’s a token presence in what still remains a boys school

I think what they should have done is just focussed on having a properly 50/50 coed intake at 7+ and let it flow through

We thought hard about applying to Westminster but ultimately didn't precisely because I thought they'd end up with 20 girls in the first intake. From the sample on here my guess is that they'll have even fewer! @ThatWildHam we'll see you at G&L!