Anyone's DC at Richard Huish in Taunton?

[duchesse]

My daughter, currently in year 11 at an independent school in Exeter, has decided that she'd rather go to Richard Huish than Exeter College. We can't afford for her to stay on at her current school for another two years and she fancies to do the English Baccalaureate. As we are in Devon rather than Somerset, I was wondering if anyone out there has any experience of applying from out of county or from an independent school. Also whether many students stay in Taunton during the week (maybe in a rented room? or a family). She's still 15 so I'm struggling to visualise how competent she would be at living alone for a few days at a time, but there's a year to go before she'd be doing it. Thank you for any input and advice.

Bumping for evening crowd.

I have never heard of Richard Huish but I know lots of children at Exeter college that love it. Some were originally at The Maynard and Exeter School they have adjusted to it well. Have you had a good look around. Where are you based ?

Sorry, MrsD, this fell out of my active threads before you answered and I hadn't seen your answer. They do the new English Baccalaureate at RH, which is essentially 3 A levels + Critical Thinking+ Community Service +an extended essay. I feel that the EB will be better for my daughter if she wants to do sciences, than the IB which I would love her to do if she's more of a social scientist/literary type. She however absolutely does not want to do any more lit crit ever again after GCSE, and you have to do English (well, your own mother tongue) as part of it.

I have heard from many sources that they have a few staffing problems with the A levels at Exeter College, with teachers not turning up for many lessons due to all being on sero hours contracts and getting better offers sometimes. Do you have more info on this?

Well guessed, DD is currently at Exeter School. She would love to stay there most of all, but I really don't want her to. Apart from anything else, we can't afford for her to stay a further two years.

DS (at a Devon Public School since he was 7) considered Richard Huish - he's now in the lower sixth - but discounted it as it didn't offer the A levels he wanted. He went to the open day at Exeter College but was pretty unimpressed with the tutors and staff and A levels on offer. He had considered a Btec in Music with 2 A levels, but they weren't particularly interested in accommodating him...... He's now a music scholar at his current school!

He does have a few friends who left his school and went to Huish, one or two are taking the IB (or possibly the EB - not sure). So far (4 weeks into term) they are apparently loving it, but it might be a bit of a hike from Exeter for your DD. A girl from our village did stay in digs while she went to Huish, but she dropped out after two terms as she couldn't hack it.

I have friends who have children at Exeter School (in all years) and they seem to love it. Although I appreciate that it might be difficult to continue with private education, Exeter School do have a really good track record for A level results.

BTW the IB (which my DD's school was one of the first to offer) is perfectly acceptable from a science point of view, one of her friends has just started a Physics degree at Cambridge on the back of good IB results. I think you still have to take english as part of the EB - but I may have been mislead.

Good luck with whatever you decide - a sixth form transition to a new schoo/college is not easy (as my DD would testify)

If she knows what sort of thing she does want to do (sciences) and also what things does doesn't want to do (more English) is there a reason why you are not considering A-levels, where you really can choose the subjects you study?

When I was at Richard Huish there were definitely people who came over from Devon, but I wasn't aware of anyone staying over during the week. It is big, though, so there certainly could have been.

The size is good because it means there are multiple classes for every subject so there are rarely timetable clashes that prevent students from taking the combinations of subjects that they want, as there would be in smaller schools.

Thank you TA- it's brilliant to get an inside view so to speak. We're going to an open day in November.

I went there but it was between 1982 and 1984 just after it had changed to a sixth form college so my advice is probably well out of date.

I used to have a very fanciable Spanish teacher though!