Who is sending their kids to an independant school?

[Kizza2]

I want to send my son to an independant school and was wondering what the best ones around North London are, I dont want him to have to go into the city and would like somewhere with a bus service?

I looked at Latymer, but I feel he would be better supported somewhere which had a better student:teacher ratio.

Thanks for your advice

I'll get in first, shall I?
If you are considering sending your DS to an IndependEnt, I suggest that you learn how to spell it properly.

senua - If you have nothing to contribute beyond correcting someone's spelling then what are you doing here? Is your life that boring that you need to do spelling flames in order to keep yourself busy?

Kizza - you might get more relevant replies if you start a thread with 'N London independent schools' in the title - it's a busy board and you need people with specific knowledge.

Good luck.

Who is sending their kids to an independant school?
Those in the top 7% of earners who can even consider such things.

I have children in 3 different independent schools, but don't really know anything about North London ones.

I think the best thing is to have a look at what the school says about itself and then go and visit.

The very nature of independent schools is that they are all different and it is difficult to generalise what the sector is like for an individual child.

OP There are very strong feeling on MN at the moment re: state/independent ed. hopefully people will be grown up enough to just simply answer your perfectly reasonable question. Try and ignore those who post snide remarks. Unfortunately I cant make any suggestions because you are outside of my area and I only really know about boarding schools. Hopefully someone will give you good advise. Good luck.

Slaps self on wrist
but yes, a specific question is more likely to get you sane answers.

Primary, Secondary, single sex, mixed, religious, sporty,
there are SO MANY options that narrowing it down is the only way to not fry your brain reading websites that all say they are the best school since sliced bread !

PS I went to private day schools in London and would pay for it (somehow) if I lived in London. Luckily for me (and possibly London) neither is the case!

I do agree with talkinP you do need some sort of criteria to enable you to narrow down your choice. i think there was a thread about Latymer (the one in West London I have a feeling that maybe there's another one in N London?) a couple of weeks ago why don't you do a search and see what people said about it.

Try the Good Schools Guide - it may be available at the library or I believe you can subscribe online. That should give you a good idea of what is available in your area.

PooshTun If someone is going to spend thousands of pounds trying to gain an academic advantage for their DC, it would be an idea to be able to spell the name of the product they are buying. Otherwise they could end up looking a right idiot in front of the school / headteacher they were trying to persuade to take their DC. I was doing her a favour to point it out.

Remind me again, what was your contribution to the thread?

One parent at my DS's old prep on completing the registration form for Eton made the cheque payable to Eaton! Least she had enough of a sense of humour to laugh about it afterwards.

sensua - Does picking fault with
the OP's spelling make you fell better? I mean the OP may have more money than you or is more successful but hey, at least you know how to use a spell checker :o

Oh look, I accidentally typed 'fell'. Oh dear. I guess I should forget about university for my kids. eh? :o

senua there are people on this forum with dyslexia and other LDs. There are people for who English is not their first, or even second language. There are people who had a poor education themselves....

They are perfectlly at liberty to post here without someone ridiculing them!!!!

And no, a headmaster at a private school would not care a jot...

I know some people who send their son to Merchant Taylors and really like it as it is a bit more rural. It gets good results.

PooshTun - "Does picking fault with the OP's spelling make you fell better"

Not unless Senua is a tree cutter you've gotta put all that angst somewhere

:o at nokissy

Sorry. I'm with senua. Love it when parents who want to send their children private suddenly get arsey when picked up for extraordinarily basic spelling errors. Isn't that why you want your kids to go independEnt? Isn't that sort of rigour exactly what you're paying for? (And don't get me started on "grammer" schools).

I hope you get some sensible responses. I can help with SW London but know very little about North London, except that Harrow is up there and so too is Mill Hill School; both of which are reasonable but not especially academic.

I agree with senua and Clay. It isn't worth getting spelling wrong on these sorts of threads. If you know you are not good at spelling- then check.

If you expect others to put time and effort into providing you with information the least you can do is take the trouble to present your question well.

OP I think you need to be more specific about areas and your child's ability and interests to get any meaningful information.

PS is it just me that doesn't like the word kid?

Clay, there are many reasons why people choose independent schools and I imagine the specific, detailed attention to spelling and grammar as you describe may just be one of them.
I agree with you btw that it's important, but while I am meticulous at work, I am a lot less meticulous when posting on a chat board.

The 11+ Forum is a classic venue for some basic spelling/grammatical howlers. The funniest was atlist for at least. Yes, I know, I know, we should be tolerant but still it annoys. I don't think I would post in any language unless I was sure that what I'd written was linguistically correct.

It's not as if independent is a particularly difficult word either.....sure they do it as a spelling in KS2. It's a bit like getting definitely wrong [grr].

If some of you have nothing better to do than sit there correcting people's grammar and spelling than I think you need to go and get yourselves a life. Maybe I'm deluding myself but I thought the whole point of MN was to offer support particularly when the actual posting was asking for specific advise. If a posting is trying to provoke a debate and I admit the original question looked like it have been done to start another now tedious independent versus state ed debate then ok be picky but this is not the case here leave the OP alone.

This isn't pedantry (go over and look at the Pedants' Corner: quite a different sort of thread is found there).

This is picking on someone because of a mistake.

And even if you notice a mistake and form a poor impression, perhaps the more supportive assumption is that the poster wants DC to have a better education than she had?

OP: I have never come across any selective school, independent or otherwise, which selects on the basis of parental spelling. It really is a non-issue.