The Elliot - any experience?

[wheresthebeach]

Hi
The Elliot is our local state comp. I hear the 6th Form is excellent and the new head seems to be making a big difference. Locally it has a very bad rep and everyone avoids going there, scrambling for fees or moving to avoid it. I can't help thinking that it's 'now on the up' and might actually be a good school for DD to go to (we've a few years' yet so we can wait and see). Anyway I was wondering if anyone had experience of the school or the new head?

I would re-post this into the specific area thread if I were you - much more likely to be looked at.

thanks!

It is to become Putney Ark Academy from September this year. It should make a world of difference...my daughter is starting secondary this year and if I'm honest, this was one I was trying to avoid. Maybe by the time you are looking, Ark will have turned it around.

One of my TA colleagues has a son at Eliot. He has moderate learning difficulties and is being mercilessly bullied. The school have been pretty hopeless and his mum is considering pulling him out (he is in year 10). Another of my TA colleagues has a daughter who was allocated Eliot an she moved hell and high water to get her in somewhere else. I agree that it looks like the school is improving results wise but the reputation is very very poor.

We also had some campaigners outside our school on Friday handing out leaflets about plans to sell off Eliot school fields?

That sounds so awful for your friend. It worries me so much for my daughter. I knew that Elliott would be offered to me if I didn't put down another realistic choice, because of where I live. I got lucky and got another school. If you don't mind me asking, where did your friend get a place for her daughter?

Ah, I wondered if it was changing status or something - there are lots of posters up in the library saying "Save Elliot School" etc,

I would absolutely love it to be a good school as we are right in catchment. I really cannot understand why Putney cannot, given its demography, come up with a decent state secondary school. It is a complete mystery - not everyone can get in to Tiffin or the Oratory.

You will find that so many choose to go private - my daughter is one of 5 going to state secondary out of her class of 29 in Putney! If the families of Putney had a school they could put their faith in I'm sure it would be one of the top schools in London!

Elliott has been reinvented more times than I have had hot dinners in the last 30 years. It has never lived up to the promises of its many brave new dawns. This time may be different - only time will tell.

Unfortunately, Putney is a tale of two cities and those who can't afford fees but who are well educated - London's policemen, nurses, teachers, etc., tend to move out rather than risk the education of their children.

The cofe school in neighbouring Southfields has also failed to live up to the early promises made for it.

Wandsworth has some brilliant primary schools - it has failed miserably to deliver at secondary level. When we looked for dd a few years ago, there was not a single secondary that offered three separate sciences and two languages in year 7 with the exception of Graveney which is a very long haul from Putney and which only offers those options for the those in the top selective band which is very close to Tiffin.

One4theroad - yes, I know from one of my friends who was at one of the local state schools that the numbers going on to private/state at 11 was pretty much as you described (ie 24 out of 29 to private). When I went and looked round both Emanuel and Kingston Grammar I would say that was a large part of the demographic, and at one of them the head specifically gave us a breakdown of where the feeder schools were and it was v much local state schools.

Marriedinwhite - I completely agree. I know people were hoping St Cecilia's was going to do that but I'm not sure that that is the way it is heading. It is unbelievable that there is not a state secondary which is equivalent to OLV/St Mary's, eg. I wonder how many people who burnished up their Catholicism to get children in to OLV send them to the local Catholic secondary - John Paul II (genuine question as i would love to know, but I'm guessing its not very many).

We got pinched at primary level in that if you do not have a deep and demonstrable faith, you are in a very tight struggle for places at the other good schools. We paid rather than me rediscovering my Catholic roots but if we couldn't have afforded to I'd have been stright down on my knees, I suspect!