Is Westminster School the best school on Earth?

[statesmom]

Just looking at their website and they have 97 places for their students at Oxford and Cambridge this year?!

We have an 8 year old son and want to focus on getting him into this place, just next to the Palace of Westminster. It looks amazing! Any thought on parents with children at the school very welcome indeed, especially any thoughts on the application process. Thank you for someone new to London.

Of course the problem is not that 'there aren't clever and hard working kids there' , but that outstanding teaching and teaching techniques and curriculum is not being transferred from top schools down the chain.

Or maybe the edge that requires A* is not actually in the teachable knowledge, but in packaging and exam technique?

shooting - did the same thing with my very bright DD, those alpha girls are so scary. She is at a middling private school where there is no alpha girl bitch group...that's way more important than exams as far as I'm concerned, what is the point of strings of good results if you have no self confidence and are excluded from friendship groups???

I know a Westminster old boy - he said he was lonely and unhappy there as the pastoral care was rubbish. He does have good exam results though... I suppose all schools only suit a certain type of person.

Interestingly I once asked a friend who has a DD and a DS at exclusive single sex London private schools about the rumours of self harming and lack of pastoral care at said establishments and he replied "well to be honest, the ones who come out with mental problems already had them when they went". Not the best recommendation.

It's not about 3* better, it's about having the resources to devote attention to each child. My children are privately educated with 15 in a class and on top of that they get one-to-one attention to their weaker areas.

My son when he started at private was a long way behind, we were told by the state school that he was doing fine no concerns at all, but the private school said 'he's miles behind, we might have to keep him behind a year'. In the end he was fine, and now he is on track for really high-grade academic excellence. Now it's of course possible that he would have eventually made it at state school, but for the time he was there, at a 'Good' state school, he wasn't even on their radar.

I was in the top set at a posh state comp, we had 30 in the class and I found it quite unstimulating. I've been round some top rank private schools and there is no comparison whatsoever, and the opportunities for bright children to be stretched is simply incomparable.

No you don't just turn money into results, you use money to buy more teachers, more clubs, more books, more extension materials, more learning support for those who perhaps wouldn't be on the radar in a less-well-resourced school.

And it certainly is substantive knowledge, my DS is 11 and the substantive knowledge in many subject areas is far more, er, substantial, than what I had at his age.

It's ignorant bollocks to suggest that companies want to recruit 'one of their own'. Oxbridge degrees will help, certainly. Many companies go to recruit directly from Oxbridge, because if you're running a biotech firm, or a hedge fund, then you want to employ geniuses, because they will make you money, and you are far more likely to find these people at Oxford than Oxford Brookes, say.

What the parents' money and connections can certainly do is help find 'Tim-nice-but-dim' an undemanding job somewhere, if all else fails, but that's not what you are setting out do by buying a private education.

Rather, what you are looking to do is to ensure that your child gets good exam results, and is a good employment prospect (there are plenty of young people who don't have basic skills such as presenting themselves properly, turning up on time, having a conversation with the interviewer). In addition, concerns such as funding for university and any work training also evaporate.

These are huge advantages, but the goal is still education rather than nepotism/cronyism.

Wordfactory

But in grammar schools the ethic is also scholarly, however career outcomes are less impressive. Being stretched all the time is great. But how does it work in practice - teaching A level stuff at GCSEs, and university stuff at A levels?

Or is it all in the rhetoric - instilling an unassailable sense of self confidence and inflated sense of self worth, so people believe everything they touch is 'the best on Earth'.

Bonkers I agree that super selective grammar schools are scholarly environments.

The normal top 25% ones, not so much, but Colyton, Tiffin et al, definitely.

But they only have so much money. These schools are by nature oversubscribed and bursting at the seams. Resources can be stretched.

Schools like W can spend what they like really. Bring anyone in they like. Offer any subject they like. Offer any activity they like. There are a lot of one to one tutorials (much like Oxbridge). Lots of speakers coming in yadda yadda.

And yes, this type of environment does give great confidence. As does wealth of course. Never underestimate the impact of cold hard cash on our DC's future.

Word Factory No, they just didn't have a good Maths teacher which our outstanding local state schools clearly do, and enabled at least one girl to get to Cambridge to read Maths, something that my DDs top 10 selective hasn't achieved in the time my DDs were there.

miggsie yes the origins of those girls behaviour and their stays in the Priory for anorexia, self harm, depression and eating disorders was definitely in their home background, some horrendous back stories of parental self indulgence, including vicarious ambition.

The access at private schools is fantastic. Eton will teach any instrument that two pupils want to learn. That got them a didgeridoo teacher.

When they invite politicians and captains of industry to their school clubs, they turn up, perhaps just to meet half-a-dozen spotty schoolboys. But it's Eton, so they go.

I think one difference between grammar schools and private is that the admissions has to be mechanical and objective for grammar schools, and therefore coaching becomes ridiculously important, whereas the top private schools can use their own judgement.

Bonkers As I said upthread I am quite convinced that those superselective grammar schools do not get comparable results to the selective private schools because they are no longer selecting the most able. I have had a lot of experience of using VR and non VR tests in selection (for jobs) and they are a good indicator of ability but only if they are not predictable ( and best used along with other indicators) but it is expensive to maintain that unpredictable. The tutoring industry and all the threads on her by people who claim that months even years of repeatedly practising these tests can increase a child's score is proof of that. With properly maintained tests no one should be able to improve their score beyond practising a handful of tests. So they become a test of who is willing to put their child through the drudgery and educationally nullifying experience of practising hundreds of these tests around the kitchen table of some tutoring factory. That is why the top sets in the outstanding comprehensives that surround our local superselectives equal it's results.

The private schools use a much more thorough and robust selection procedure.

Robert Peston set up an organisation to try to get speakers in state schools.

He said he was always being asked to speak at public schools and offered nice payment for it too. But hardly any state schools asked him, even though he would have done it for free.

So he set up an organisation and rounded up people who would volunteer to speak at state schools. I don't know if it's still going.

www.speakers4schools.org/

I think people should beware of generalising about any type of school based only on their own experience of one or possibly two examples of the type.

Being told what all state/private/top/boarding/British/American schools are like by someone who went to one or had children go to one or two is irritating.

Of course money buys more teachers, more clubs and more individual support. You can buy all those via private tutoring and extra curricular activities, as many do. Somehow that doesn't add up to the same as being at Westminster.

I think looking at the state of leadership in industry (look at the banks...) and government, being on top rarely correlates to me with being a genius...

There are qualities apart from intelligence that make an good leader. Not least is the ability to persuade others to follow. Still, most of the ones whose names appear in the business pages are pretty smart.

Lots of speakers coming in yadda yadda.

Well yes, Max Hastings for one, as the OP pointed out

Yes baby barrister. Westminster does have a different intake to that of a super selective grammar.

Politics isn't a top career. There are lots of very bright people working in banks, and they do genuinely make lots of money. A large chunk of UK taxation comes from them. The mess of 2007+ was more to do with stupid politicians than anything else.

It's not entirely possible to buy tutors, clubs and support, because part of knowing what to buy is context. Top schools have bright, striving people all around, whereas if you are in a second-rate comp, it's hard to get any idea of what you should even be aiming at. There is no shopping list.

You buy a package, and it's a complex package, but things like the fact that your son's friend is more likely to be a successful entrepeneur is all part of the mesh.

Bonkers I have worked facilitating CEOs and their boards in a variety of British businesses, not the financial sector, because they think they don't need sound management and business practises, but I am very familiar indeed with that arrogance as well.

CEO s are rarely the most able on paper but they do have a particular talent for thinking holistically and strategically, for seeing the wood for the trees. Some are barely literate, those with SpLDs who did not do well in traditional education including top schools, are over represented in the top management of business. A uni education helps with that process of thinking laterally and holistically but sometimes it is innate and you can find it in someone who left school at 16 as well as a Westminster /Oxbridge graduate. Business Schools would love to be able to can a way of teaching it and spend a lot of time researching it but in the end would concede it is illusive.

Just to be clear, the likes of Tiffin is mathematically much more selective than Westminster or Eton.

But the selection mechanism is different.

baby people always say that W I taking lots of overseas students but I'm always a little puzzled. Hardly anyone termly boards and of the weekly boarders (under a third) everyone leaves on Saturday.

So where are all these overseas pupils living?

DS has mates who are from abroad but they and their parents are currently living in the UK. But most boys are still British and from London and its environs, I think.

aga you are about to slip into statemom statistical method. In theory Tiffin selects the top 3% on ability, but that only works if they are using unpredictable tests of reasoning that reliably select the top 3% given an acceptable statistical margin of error. They manifestly aren't, so they have become tests of ability and tutoring. The private schools are much better at eliminating the tutor effect.

Has statesmom got the message and flounced off?

Shootingatpigeons, yes, as I said in my previous post:

"I think one difference between grammar schools and private is that the admissions has to be mechanical and objective for grammar schools, and therefore coaching becomes ridiculously important, whereas the top private schools can use their own judgement."

Trying to work out what % is selected is very difficult.

Both Tiffin and Westminster will exclude many less able kids from consideration by simple fact of the selection procedure, but Westminster have more barriers to entering the selection procedure (application fee, etc.), so the average ability level of the whole pool at Westminster is probably higher.

On the flip side, the raw chance of selection is higher at Westminster, but then again the Westminster selection procedure is more costly per pupil (since the cost is met by the application fee, not the school), and should be more effective.

It's possible that the top 100 pupils out of Tiffin's admission's pool are actually more able than the top 100 at Westminster, but also reasonable to believe that Westminster does a better job of actually selecting many of those top 100, because it is not constrained by accountability and published testing techniques.

It would be risky to conclude that Westminster has a better intake than Tiffin, or the reverse.

You are spot on Shootingpigeons. The magic ingredient is elusive, but it is not necessarily Westminster schooling.

The discourse that that Westminster selects the best is not credible, because the basis for selection is money to start with. If the intake was so much brighter indeed, they would sent 100% to Oxbridge and all alumni would be founders of new industries like Bill Gates, or Nobel laureates. There is no evidence of that. This is just the fulfilling profecy.

As Aga says, if 'your son's friend is more likely to be a successful entrepeneur is all part of the mesh' and if every week there is 'captain of industry' coming to talk to your that you they the best thing, it is difficult to grow up believing somebody not from this circle is worthy of anything.

I think Westminster is social, not academic phenomena. Money buys privilege. There is no need to trash state schools and pupils to assert that.