Hi Miriam, my son goes to BTG. We might go to the same church as I have had exactly the same experience in terms of reaction from other parents. If your son doesn't get into the Oratory or Cardinal Vaughan, and instead gets BTG, it is seen as a sort of failure.
I was very unsure, as I couldn't put my finger on it, why people turn their noses up. BTG's results are good, I personally very much like that it is a mixed catholic school, rather than a single sex one, it's a local school (at least very much more local than the Oratory and Cardinal Vaughan), so all great - so why aren't all the parents fighting to get their kids into this school?
This might be highly controversial, but for me it has to do with class. In fact, being a foreigner and having been able to always circumnavigate the class system and exist on the vague "foreign class level", doing the whole secondary school application has been the first time that I have been forced into some class context.
In my experience, working class parents from our previous primary school are all very happy to get a place at BTG for their children, but for most middle class parents it is not seen as the desired choice of school.
With my son now being in the third term of BTG (Year 7), my experience is thoroughly positive.
He had problems with a couple of other boys, but it was very swiftly dealt with.
For the last few months he has been quite anxious (without being able to pinpoint what it is that makes him anxious) and I went to see his head of year who was brilliant. In preparation to meeting me, she had requested feedback from all his teachers, she was very re-assuring, she advised me, she immediately put procedures into place (my son now sees the pastoral officer every day before school to do breathing exercises with her) and all this is slowly paying off, and my son has gained in self confidence.
He's made some lovely new friends, very well behaved boys, with a real spark.
In terms of academic work, my son is actually in a fairly low stream, but does get a good amount of homework (of course he complains it's too much), I'm pleased that he does two languages and having met most of his teachers at the parent evening I was very impressed.
(Several of my son's friends are in the grammar stream, where they do Latin as one of their language choices.)
To be honest, I wasn't too sure about Mr Desa when I saw him at the open evening, but since then I have changed my mind somewhat about him (I actually don't have much to do with him, and my son adores him!). Main point though, Mr Desa deeply cares about the school and the pupils.
Sorry for this detailed description, but, Miriam, I think I was in exactly the same position as you, last year. I was very worried, because I thought everybody else knew something that I had overlooked or somehow missed. And based on this unknown quantity they had dismissed BTG.
While of course, the Oratory and Cardinal Vaughan are great schools, in my opinion a lot of the negativity towards BTG is pure class snobbery.
I hope this has re-assured you - in my opinion, it's a great school.