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.

Dromedary You're trying to be clever with words but failing miserably. Your use of an "anecdote" was highly offensive and inapropriate. If i were to peddle offensive posts about children i know that had been to comps and try to weedle my way out by saying "ah! I wasn't generalising, it was just the odd boy i met!" would that be acceptable?

Apart from the fact your anecdote is complete hogwash! Someone who went to Christ's hosputal but hadn't been in a normal canteen? And a teacher at a "top public school" telling the boys "you can't get pregnant by being raped". Please give it a rest.

What about all those men at state comps raping and shooting and getting involved with gun crime?

There are plenty of maladjusted men around, and casual misogyny at every level of society is pretty well-documented. You might get a different sort of maladjusted man from Eton as compared to the Harris Academy, Peckham, but it's ludicrous to suggest that these are primarily educational factors.

But why are they choosing? Is the formal dinner more expensive, so few can afford it every day?

St John's, the richest Oxford College has a 2013 intake consisting of 65.6% from state schools.

AGA Oh no! Lets not talk about them, nor the percentage of prisoners that went to comps (because of course i know one boy who went to a comp once who believed in bashing women about and went to prison) because that would be unthinkable. lets focus on the one pratt that dromeday had an intimate conversation with who believes in legalising rape, because all those boys are odd aliens from another world we do not understand, taught by strange men. The sheer desperation of some people!

No. You have to book by lunchtime so you might be busy then or busy in the evening. But actually, students are mostly regular kids and are happy making pasta in the tiny kitchens. Formal dinner is about 3.50 as it is heavily subsidised (this information is on their website) but a special guest dinner might be more and maybe this is what Dromedary is thinking of.

Really, they are doing pretty much the same things as kids in any other university and quite a few if the buildings are as ugly as you will find anywhere.

The thing is - quite a lot of the people posting here have, or have had, access, for themselves or their children, to all the best that this country has to offer in education.

What worries me is that, of the thousands of people who will read this thread, many will be much less familiar with independent schools and/or Oxford and Cambridge. Dromedary you've said that after interview you were offered grades you could achieve despite the difficulties at school. But your "anecdotes" here will only serve to put off potential applicants or their parents, long before they get to interviews.

As BabyBarrister has pointed out, the intake of top public schools in London (and actually outside London as well) is pretty diverse. The families are not all rich! As I keep on pointing out - poorer families of talented children are far more likely to join extremely wealthy schools because those school have the most money for widening access.

I've been on threads where the parents of clever children are afraid to apply for, or worse consider turning down bursaries because they are afraid their friends will cry "snob".

Why perpetuate this?

I wasn't talking hogwash - I was truthfully relating what those 2 men had told me. And the 2nd one went to a boys' public school, not a top public school. Is it so difficult to believe that a teacher in an all male school could have given out inaccurate and sexist information about women and sex?
I don't see anything wrong with a factually accurate anecdote. I was on close terms with very few young men who had been at single sex public schools, so based on my very small sample what they said to me was actually pretty worrying and would have put me off sending a son to somewhere similar. Is it so outrageous to wonder about the efficacy of single sex sex education, and boys growing up with very little contact with girls (those with no sisters and who boarded in a single sex school)? As for the canteen thing, I think that if you are brought up in beautiful and clean places, with a great deal done for you (even if we don't mention the wearing of yellow stockings and so on by the boys which must have made them stick out from the crowd), it is more of a shock to the system if you end up cleaning up vomit in a hospital in Wolverhampton. That particular young man was an "aesthete" (may have spelt that wrong).

'So the only barrier is that poor parents are 'afraid their friends will cry "snob"'. 'poorer families of talented children are far more likely to join extremely wealthy schools '

Great! So all poor parents have to do is to apply. Talented kids from council estates are guaranteed acceptance!

Not to say you should turn a bursary down, but the intake of these schools is largely successful middle class up to fabulously wealthy.

According to the Westminster accounts, total bursary funding in 2012 was 4.5% of total fee income. That is not a recipe for diversity. Other, less famous/wealthy schools, will typically have even smaller percentages.

And whereas if you are fabulously wealthy the fees are nothing to you, bursary applications are likely to want to ensure you are in relative penury before handing out the cash.

From what I've heard, and read on here, it is much harder to get into Oxbridge now. In fact, it is probably very hard. Decades ago, it was very easy for me to get in - I applied off the cuff with no help from the school and no preparation, didn't need to sit an exam (interviews only) and was offered two E's. Because of the timing, I didn't even need to apply to any other universities. Tuition was free and there were maintenance grants for the less well off. Accommodation and food was very good value. I saved a lot of money while at university. Everything is so much harder now, and there is a lot more differentiation between those who are supported by parents and those who are not.
However, Oxbridge, and particularly courses such as science and medicine, are very good value as against what you get for £9K on more standard courses elsewhere. If the Tories stay in power I suspect that Oxbridge will be allowed to raise their fees considerably, so now is the time to go there! The colleges vary considerably, and many of them are not snobby and are easier to get into too.

So Dromedary, you were a beneficiary of the Matriculation or Hertford scheme (because that College started it) to try to get get clever maintained-school,children into Oxford without the stress of entrance exams or ALevels to pass. That is an achievement. Why so negative now?

I accept, zero, that not all families with children at public schools are 'rich', but it's all relative, isn't it? I would hazard a guess that there will have been enough money, albeit by scrimping and saving, to send children to private primaries or pay for tutoring.

I just can't believe that many state educated, non-tutored children, however bright, would sail through the public school entrance exams. It's bad enough trying to plug the gaps for state school children taking the 11+ for my local state Grammar!

Year5/6 state school pupils will simply not have been taught to the same level as their private school/tutored counterparts.

Bursaries are never going to benefit the children that really need them. The 'poor, but bright' children that should qualify have already been effectively precluded, because their state schools will not have covered the stuff they need to know to pass the entrance exams for the top public schools.

The perception of private schools is completely wrong! DD's school is made up of mostly wealthy international students that make some middle class families look poor! But there is bursary families from all different walks of life and with different circumstances.

However all the children get along together and have the same worries about friendships, exams and whats on you tube, no matter what house they go home too! I can also tell you that they all queue up at a school canteen the same as any school!!
We are a hard working family and my daughter knows she was not born with a silver spoon in her month like other children so if she wants something she has to work hard.
Most children at dd's school are completely accepting of my daughter and her background , in fact its not even a topic of conversation! It just doesn't matter, she just slots in and gets along. Some children she likes others she stays clear of same as any school.
I am honest with other parents at the school and most parents accept and respect us as a family. We all share the same concerns as parents and our background is irrelevant, like me daughter it doesn't really come up in conversation!

Its a shame that the children at my dd's local youth centre don't have the same respect and that dd who went there for a few weeks and got on with everyone, yet as soon as she let on she was from a boarding school got branded a snob. Its a shame they don't share the same understanding!
Ive also had parents stop being friendly towards me because they realise dd doesn't go to the local school and Ive had awkward comments like. 'Why do you choose to send her there?' and 'whats wrong with our school?'. How would they feel if I ask them the same questions?
Its okay for them to call dd a snob and pick fun because she's at a fee paying school but it would be completely unacceptable for dd to make fun of the local comp!

Private schools are not closed door societies that are in there own world. We are all parents and students the same as any school I think the barriers need to be come down as from my experience its parents with no experience of these schools that have the prejudice against them.

I was at a (not very good and going through a bad patch) private school, which the Oxbridge people were obviously aware of, so maybe not that. Who knows?
I'm not at all negative about the university I attended. The academics to students ratio was incredible, masses of teaching (by on the whole very nice people), lovely learning and living environment, loads of culture and stuff to get involved in, and an incredibly can do atmosphere. I would strongly recommend it to many people (may not suit all who could get in, some of the courses are (or at least were) rather traditional, and you do have to be reasonably bright, though the courses vary a lot in difficulty and workload).

MrsRuffdiamond - exactly, and that is a very good argument for requiring all schools, whether state or private, to adhere to a national curriculum (as the French do).

I think the idea that W is some alien place where the boys never face the outside world is, although understandable, quite wrong.

It's mostly a day school.

The boys come in the morning on the tube/bus etc and go home the same way at night. There are lift shares between families as there are in all schools.

The food is normal school fare. Not fois gras served on silver platers.

In sixth form there are girls and everyone hangs out together in the common rooms and houses. I think sixth form generally go out and about at lunch time (probably to Nandos, McDonalds and Boots for the meal deals) like every other teen in the land.

The kids are not other.

Bonsoir, that's interesting. Is it the case, then, that there is less prestige attaching to private education in France, than in the UK, as there is less perceived/actual advantage?

Bonsoir I don't get that point at all.

A good flock of Lycee CDG students apply to Westminster each year and though I cant speak for them, DDs friends in the French system seem to find their education less interesting or inspired than the education others get in the British private sector. Friends in France, not Paris, but "bienvenue chez les ch'tis" territory, are finding the French system complacent and unchallenged, with little aspiration to anything beyond the local colleges, and are having to accept that should their children want to study at an academic university they will probably have to spend a year in London at a tutorial college taking A levels.

The point of schools like Westminster is that they are free to teach beyond the syllabus. Leveling down is not the solution to inequality. Leveling up might be.

"Bursaries are never going to benefit the children that really need them. "

That is just not true! DD's school gives a number of bursaries that are open to all and a couple of awards to children that have to have come from the state system. This is not just based on entrance exam but also via interview and a number of other factors.

In our area not many families apply for this award because they just assume the same. When dd was applying there was only a handful of families that applied to take advantage of this which meant it was from my calculations just through being at the process and counting heads it was a 1 in 4 chance.

Not only that but as well as bursaries from the school you can apply for a grant or scholarship for various government grants and businesses.

I know a boy with mild learning difficuiles, his mother (had a council house) felt he would benefit from a boarding school system especially as she had young children and she felt he needed routine etc.
She applied for a grant (I'm unsure who it was with but know it was indent from the school), was accepted and her son is doing very well.

No I'm not saying its easy and everyone who applies will get it, Im just saying the bursary places do not exclude children because they are from a disadvantaged background.

Hmm... I wouldn't stake my life on it MrsRuff but my understanding is that public schools that really are interested in widening access are well aware of the difference in preparation and either set a different exam or make allowances for state school applicants.

I certainly don't want to pretend that bursaries are the only door through which poorer children step into the gilded enclaves. For instance, I didn't realise (and I'm not young!) how fiercely my fellow Brits hold to their nuclear family and won't let anyone else in. I don't think this is always the case for second gen (and onwards) families. So there can be more support to call on where needed.

Not would I want to suggest that the schools and universities being discussed here are the only worthwhile choices - or that educational opportunities aren't hideously unequal. But the truth of these situations is far more complex than some people are willing to acknowledge - and this isn't a private conversation. People are reading for information.

Well, Eton pay for some boys to go prep schools before going to Eton at 13 on a bursary. I assume they do this because they feel that boys (however talented) would struggle at the school without having studied the Common Entrance curriculum.

Needmoresleep - I am not arguing a case for the French NC per se. Read my post.

Some university courses in the UK are not accessible to holders of any version of the French bac and it is, indeed, necessary to spend a year doing supplementary education (probably an A-level or two) in eg Chemistry/Biology to access Vetinerary Science or Medecine. That is not a "failing" of the French bac (which is by no means perfect) versus "ideal" A-levels but merely a reflection of different education systems covering different ground at different points in the process.

DSS1 had, for example, already covered Probability and Statistics at school that his fellow first year UGs at Bristol who had done A-levels in Maths and Further Maths had not seen before. That is not a reflection on the worth of A-levels per se.

Well, I guess it depends on the entrance exam, what it is testing, and how much competition there is for places, OSV

The top public schools which have been mentioned on this thread are not likely to accept children who may indeed be very bright, but have not been taught enough to pass the entrance exam. That is usually the first hoop. If you trip up there, you're not going to get the chance to show what great potential you have.

Vintage,

You make it sound as if indeed all poor families have to do is to apply! How is that connected to reality?

The previous government bullied public schools to offer bursariesw to at least one poor local applicant in order to keep the tax free 'charity' status. So they did.

Does your DD bursary covers 100% of the fee?
How many poor children on 100% bursaries are there in the school, as percentage of the year group?
How many really bright poor children could potentially apply if equal opportunity existed?

Here is a quick estimate. Population of 60 millions. The intake should be about the brightest top 1-2% of the general population in a school year.

For simplicity let's assume 1 million children in a year.
Top 1% is 10,000.
Can they all get places at top public schools?