Harrogate grammar / rossett?

[sbt2]

Hi,
Anyone out there who's children go to either. Wondered what they were like?
Thanks!

Mine are at Harrogate Grammar, what do you need to know?

i love HGS, think it's really fab. Teachers seem happy to go the extra mile, loads of extra curricular stuff like sat morning rugby, debating, trips away. Exam results are good. DS1 acheived far more at GCSE than i had dared hope for.
They have this fab thing called enrichment on wed afternoon where the kids get to pick something off the curriculum and do it - like japenese, needlework, unusual sports and still finish in time for the school bus.
Have a friend who is a bus driver and does a joint HGS/rossett run and he says the HGS pupils are much politer and better behaved.

If you were to stand outside each school at arrival/home time you would see quite a difference. The Grammar school students would look very smart with correct uniform etc and probably the Head would be out there watching that everyone and everything is ok. The Rossett students look somewhat more casual, uniform not so strict. I think that says a lot about what goes on inside the schools.

There will always be the odd niggle but on the whole the teachers at the Grammar are excellent and the whole environment and ethos seems very healthy and positive. Results are great and the Head is very ambitious for it to be one of the best state schools in the country.

New students seem to settle very quickly and a great effort is made to achieve this. There is lots to do, although thay have just become an Academy and we are just beginning to see a few extra requests for money to do certain things e.g. payment is now required to do after school sports. The idea of every child having(compulsory) to have an ipad is being discussed which would cost a certain amount per month. We have been very happy with it and moved to be in the catchment.

Anything else?

Thanks, this all sounds good as I am all for polite kids! I like the sound of all of the above but just wondered whether it was a really academic school or balanced ( i suppose I am saying I obviously want them to be educated but also to be kids and enjoy sport, social time and not be over loaded with pressure)

I have a boy and a girl..

I wouldn't worry. They are actively encouraged to take part in extra stuff and I would say its very well balanced. If you don't want to go down the church school route you will not find better locally.

Any issues are quickly attended to, but there have been very few. High standards of behaviour are expected, not at all like Educating Essex, but probably very different catchment.

It does have a reputation for being academic, but they are encouraged to do well. They do their gcse exams in year 11 too largely, rather than splitting them across year 10 and 11 which I believe Rossett do in an attempt to bolster the grades. Universities like to see exams being done in one go so the Grammar wins on this also.

Was Rossett formerly I believe it has improved enormously.

A word was eaten! Was Rossett formerly Wheatlands?

Dh has lived here all his life and cannot remember it being called anything other than Rossett. But you are correct in thinking it has improved over recent years. New head, different rules about intake mean they no longer bus children in from north Leeds, all they kids are local now. It has just never had as much money and investment as the Grammar school and frankly it shows. I know someone who has recently looked around both for September 2012 intake and said the staff at the Grammar were much more positive,welcoming and professional. He lives exactly half way between both and said there was no contest.

I'm probably confused, as I'm thinking back to early 1970s when there was a Wheatlands Secondary Modern, and no Rossett.

Parents from Leeds were delighted to get places at Rossett, because even though it was weak by Harrogate standards it knocked the spots off many Leeds schools. And it outperforms our locals comprehensives. It may be 3rd or 4th by Harrogate standards, but by national ones it's good.

It's St Aidans which use to be Wheatlands. I'm a former Grammar school pupil and response to the message about saying grammar school pupils seem less rowdy coming out of school, this is because there's about 6 exits spread out around the grounds so obviously there's going to be less chaos however you go into the school and it's chao between classes and at break times, you'd be luckily getting to the next class without being pushed down the stairs or shoved by boys wearing stupidly big backpacks, then if you manged to avoid this you have annoyingly posh bratty girls who walk hand in hand really slowly taking up all of the corridoor so you can't get past.
Also about the uniform, it's a strict dress code so strict then when I was there pupils would get suspended if their top button was undone - that doesn't seem reasonable does it?

I would only say send your kid to Grammar if your income is more than £100k cas of the amount of uniform you need to buy, trips they go on and if they don't go or you don't buy the expensive type of school trousers then s/he will be the odd one out, s/he excels in rugby and cricket (boys) or netball and Hockey (girls), s/he is a straight A student.
So for me being an average B/C student, with an average background and not sporty at all, I felt like they didn't really give a s*, I remember going to the head of maths because they were going to put me in an intermediate maths exams where the top mark is a B, I've always been good at maths and was in set 2 but because most of my class were at intermediate level and because I was an average student in my other subjects, he wouldn't put me forward for the higher exam - so instead of pushing me to achieve better, he wanted for me to do what he thought I was capable of!!

Have to say my brother who is now in his second year of uni, seem to enjoy school a lot more but he was an A* student and was voted top 10% of the most gifted children in Britain, plus he won lots of awards etc but he's the sort of person who goes to the pub a night before his exam, do his exam with a hangover and still come out with more than 95% so ideal criteria to be a HGS pupil.

Plus I can't think of one single person in my year who has a sucessful career, apart from those who work for daddy. In fact I know one lad who is on good money bt he hated school too and left at 16. Most people ended up going to sixth form then uni then just doss around afterwards, can't think of a single person who is doing an graduate apprenticeship etc.

I'm 23 so it's been a good 7 years since I was there so hopefully things might have changed. Sorry about ranting on but if I had to choose over grammar or rossett, it would have to be rossett...... better still St Aidans! it's the best school in Harrogate and the league table proves this xxx

never read such a load of tosh ever Rebecca,
this Also about the uniform, it's a strict dress code so strict then when I was there pupils would get suspended if their top button was undone - that doesn't seem reasonable does it?

not true, has never been true, or anywhere near true

yes the corridors are small for the number of students at school but they are well policed and one way systems are in operation on some staircases for safety.

Most people ended up going to sixth form then uni then just doss around afterwards, can't think of a single person who is doing an graduate apprenticeship etc.
again utter rubbish, most of the former students i know (and there are lots) are medics/dentists/accountants/lawyers/working for blue chip type companies
Disclaimer - I am not unbiased, am connected with the school, and still very involved, have name changed to avoid being outed in real life but could not let this piece of unbiased vitriol go uncorrected.

sbt2 I think that answers your question nicely (I used to teach in Harrogate so couldn't help be interested in this thread). There are pros and cons to both (duh, of course, you know this) one of the main ones being they will meet different types of kids.

If yours are high flyers then definitely the grammar. If they're not or they arent especially ambitious/confident, personally I would opt for Rossett. If they have a good attitude to learning they should get on fine and wont be under as much pressure. Rosset has a very different intake. Perahps some of the teacher, and certainly some of the things on offer at the grammar are better, I dont know, but they cant be compared too closely by results. They work very hard with some very difficult kids.

Ultimately, I would let your kids chose. If you are happy with both, and you seem to be, then give them a little freedom. As someone has already said, all the Harrogate secondary schools are good so dont worry.

I suspected you were still a teenager Rebecca, you sound so angry. You are somewhat out of touch about many things. Yes the corridors are cramped as classes change over but ask yourself why it is so full. It has a great reputation and parents are desperate to get their children in. It is also completely surrounded by railings now so there are not 6 ways out and the head and other senior staff are out there most if not all days supervising.

If your brother only left 18 months ago your description of him makes it fairly easy to guess who he might be, did you really intend that?

The Grammar school was a fine school 7 years ago and it still is. Not everyone had your experience and mine are very happy there. There will always be niggles and the odd poor teacher but on the whole it does a great job.

Sorry Rebecca, you're a bit off beam there. I was a 1st Year pupil at Wheatlands Secondary Modern in 1972, the school was located close to St Aidans but was not part of it. In the summer of 1973 Wheatlands closed down and moved under the new name of Rossett High School up to it's current site, where I started my 2nd Year.

If I have any advice for parents it would be to see for yourself, disregard blogs and base your decision on your own assessement of available schools and the aptitude of your children.

This is the most disrespectful response I have read on Mumsnet and Rebecca I am sorry you had to endure such intolerance. You are entitled to your opinion and our son is having a similar experience.

@Noah2020

This is the most disrespectful response I have read on Mumsnet and Rebecca I am sorry you had to endure such intolerance. You are entitled to your opinion and our son is having a similar experience.

Strange thread to hoof, nearly a decade on.

Worth bearing in mind that Rebecca was 23 years old at that time of her post, meaning that her HGS school days would have been late 90s/early 00s. I daresay that many things have changed since then, including obviously all the kids, most of the staff including heads, etc etc.

For what it's worth, I'm a former HGS pupil, a few years older than Rebecca sadly, and mostly liked my time there. In my day they had an all-subjects streaming system, which which was, honestly, pretty toxic [in terms of fostering a 'them and us' vibe, making the lower setted kids feel undervalued & ignored, etc], but my understanding is that they did away with that a good number of years ago. I suppose there may still be echoes of it in whatever setting system they use today.

It wouldn't altogether surpise me if the PTA and whatnot there are still dominated by that particular brand of smalltown snobbery [Hyacinth Bucket on industrial-strength steroids, much or most of it from the parents of kids who wouldn't have a prayer of getting into a genuine selective school] that seems laughable from a distance but, yeah, y'know, one has to have a sense of humour about these things. Little niggles like that are very much part and parcel of life at every school, they all have their own character and good/bad points.

Dear Puffy is good. Thank you for your honesty and candid response and I am sorry your stay there was what it should be. I think HGS is probably an excellent school if you 'fit the brief' but sadly if you don't there is little support and that is sadly the experience we are having with our child.

@Noah2020

Dear Puffy is good. Thank you for your honesty and candid response and I am sorry your stay there was what it should be. I think HGS is probably an excellent school if you 'fit the brief' but sadly if you don't there is little support and that is sadly the experience we are having with our child.

No, my time there was pretty OK, luckily I was always in the top streams/sets.

In my day, the lower streams had a very raw deal. A trivial example is that there was this [semi-hilarious] tradition of always putting the bottom streamed classes in these handful of basement classrooms that visitors to the school would never walk past. Related to this, any efforts at keeping behaviour & standards under control in those streams always only ever felt very token.

Some of the streaming decisions themselves were highly dubious. Even in the very top stream there were [a few] kids with the 'right kind of parents' whose exam scores compared unfavourably with some of the scores in even the very bottom stream.

But, like I said, this system was revamped a long, long time ago.

What are your specific concerns?

In my day, one obvious substantive bugbear was that the work experience offering was abysmally bad [non existent] compared to what Rossett did, the implication being that if you weren't on the A levels/university path like the top set were then you'd be better of slinging your hook.

I think also the number of timetabled hours of craft, design, tech, etc was low, which again felt like it was probably for similar reasons.

Like I said, the PTA was a bit of a joke, anyone who turned up to an event with anything halfway resembling a local accent would have been laughed out of the meeting [this in a town 150 miles north of the northenmost tip of the Home Counties].

So Noah2020 joined Mumsnet specifically to revive a decade old thread, bizarre 😳
The streaming system at HGS has long since gone, indeed in most subjects across all years there is not even any setting, and as a pp pointed out the head and essentially all of the staff have changed in the intervening 20+ years since Rebecca didn’t enjoy herself there.
If anyone is looking at either of these 2 schools then hopefully they will make decisions based on looking round, student behaviour and opportunities available amongst other things rather than comments by someone whose idea of resolving issues ( unspecified) is to revive a decade old thread.

Not sure what your point is or maybe your ingenious use of an emoji is a really clever clue, either way, you seem to have it all worked out so why don't you explain.