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.

MrsRuffdiamond - yes, there is less of a difference between state and private education in France than in England. Undoubtedly.

GroveL, Tony Little has written in New Statesman about his hoped for needs blind policy. What I can't quite understand about Eton is its adherence to CE, since that is the stumbling block. Unless there is a path I don' t know about, they still insist upon it which requires a lot of forethought and school-specific knowledge on the part of parents, just to get a child registered in time for pre testing.

MrsRuff, My understanding is that Westminster is very open to taking children from the state sector at 7+, 8+ and 11+, and that the exams do not look for learning beyond that which would normally be covered in the state system. 13+ is different. A high proportion of my son's friends went to state primaries, often until 11.

zero .

I reserve the right to comment on something I disagree with on a public forum.

If people are simply reading this thread to obtain factual information about Westminster School, then they are going to be extremely disappointed. Not all my doing. Hardly any of it, in fact!.

Sorry MrsRuff - the whole post wasn't directed at you! (Promise!) I just answered your point first before rambling....

Anyway.... I've been trying to download an admissions booklet but it's taking too long on my phone. So I'm copying and pasting this from Eton 2012-13 admissions:

" There is also some flexibility over the number of subjects to be offered by boys who are not at a UK preparatory school, but there is a compulsory core of English, Maths, Science and one of French, German, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. Eton normally expects higher level papers to be taken in Mathematics. Individual cases should be discussed with the Tutor for Admissions.
Boys coming to Eton from the maintained (state) sector are not required to take Common Entrance, but will sit exams in the summer
term of Year 8 based on the national curriculum in English, Maths and Science. They will also be interviewed."

Bonkerssometimes

You miss the point! Im not saying that everyone can get a place. Our school give away a couple of 100% places and the standard bursaries are dependant on parents income and will vary. I don't know how many (its not an important subject at dd's school! We tend to get on with it instead of worrying about what other families finances are) I only know of four families in dd's year that receive support but obviously they can't give them to everyone, they need money to operate they are a business at the end of the day!

Im just saying there is the opportunity to apply and that the prejudice does not lie within the school but is built on wrong perceptions and ideas from those outside of the system.

Bonkers Many of the top private schools have their bursary schemes hardwired into their founding ethos, and they are absolutely committed to them, charitable status or no. Indeed many were formerly direct grant grammar schools (not Westminster) and have been trying to recover something like that cApability to offer means blind admissions ever since. I can't think of one that is not appealing for more funds for bursaries. At my DDs school they run all sorts of schemes to share their resource and opportunity and reach out to bright pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and encourage and enable them to apply. The staff give a lot of their own time to these schemes, one runs a Classics Club that she runs every night after school in one state school or another. The need to tutor for years to get your child into this schools is an arms race and a fallacy of the desperate anxious competitive middle classes, the admissions procedure is looking for ability not cramming.

At the end of the day they are businesses but to suggest that they are anything but committed to try and spread the benefit of what they offer beyond the wealthy and privileged is complete rubbish.

In Westminster's case this

www.harriswestminstersixthform.org.uk/

Shooting Every time I want to say something I find you have said it 100 times better....

"It's not fair!"

A good flock of Lycee CDG students apply to Westminster each year

The sign of elite education in France is to have an international dimension to apply for international careers - to spend a year in schools/unis in Germany, UK or US. That might explain why flocks are applying. Plenty of non privileged French children go for 3-6 months on school exchanges to Germany.

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.
To enter elite selective universities in France, there is a system of state funded Classes Preparatoires. The reason some parents opt for A levels is probably because their DC failed admission into those Classes, or that they need to avoid a tricky subject by taking 3 A levels instead of broader and more balanced curriculum of those Classes.

Shooting,

I take your word for they are trying.

So how many of those estimated 10,000 children are private schools prepared to fund for free. Could you clarify?

As BabyBarrister has pointed out, the intake of top public schools in London (and actually outside London as well) is pretty diverse

I'm sorry, this is delusional.

Most bursaries & scholarships do not make the schools remotely affordable for anyone non-rich. Yes somewhere like Eton might give the occasional 100% scholarship (do they?) but the additional costs are outside the league of many 'normal' families. And a common entrance exam or school's-equivalent is not one anyone can just stroll into. For starters the age of changing schools doesn't even match.

It is far far easier for a bright poor child to access a highly selective grammar than a top tier public school - and that's something that is by no means easy, particularly for those from challenging social backgrounds

I looked into bursary schemes etc for top public schools when I was looking for ds2, there was nothing affordable for us - and we are relatively well off tbh. Most scholarships/bursaries give 10-30% off. You might be able to add a few together but it is very rare to be able to get say 50% off - and even 50% off is not remotely affordable for many people.

Yes the schools want to protect their charitable status but I saw no evidence that they were at all committed to widening participation.

DC in France don't look to the UK for HE because they have failed to gain admission to prepa. University in the UK is preferred to prepa by many of those who have the luxury of choice because of the international exposure but also, all importantly, because it is a quicker route to the same graduate jobs at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs etc.

I agree, however, that three A-levels is the "easy option" versus the bac S!

......Can't believe I'm having to link to the Torygraph:

but it's the most recent article.

Incidentally I tutored someone who was applying for an music scholarship for Eton. Lovely boy, he got it & it meant that he could afford to go to the school. However, although he may have been not particularly well off by Eton standards (I have a lot of old Etonian friends to compare) he was definitely rich by any normal standards. He was a cathedral prep school for starters - so was able to transfer at 13.

I'm not sure it would be good for a 'poor' child to attend somewhere like Eton tbh. Talk about having to adjust between 2 backgrounds

Although I have noted that drama scholarship available in the 6th form - it may actually be easier for state sector kids to transfer at 6th form rather than at 13.

Vintage, I do get your point. Your DD got lucky to have a bursary and you feel accepted in the elite circle. Why do you need to mention this?

I don't know how relevant is the concern for prejudice amongst the poor for applying to public schools is, if only a handful of bursaries are available for a pool of 10,000 very bright kids.

zero

as far as Eton is concerned

Agree with you Bonsoir. I was replying to the comment that A levels are preferred for entry into French universities, which is peculiar.

Bonkers, completely off-topic, but though the two countries started off in different places as far as their educational systems are concerned they face many of the same problems.

Getting through to a good French University from a small northern mining town is as difficult in France as it is in the UK. A lot seems to be about the aspirations, both of parents and, as importantly, of the school. Lots of quite ordinary French parents, concerned about discipline and achievement have started considering Private education (which is also much cheaper) for their children. (The friend's child I am thinking of is really suffering with a key teacher off sick more often than in school and the school itself apparently not bothered. And an attitude that the parents are getting above their station for raising concerns.)

I also do not think it is fair to say that A levels are "easier" than the French science bac. The workload of Lycee kids certainly appears much higher, as they carry more subjects and appear to have to do a lot more role learning. The sort of strong student who will get the UMS scores required for Cambridge or medical school, should achieve well in either and I doubt there is much evidence to suggest that the French approach provides a better preparation for tertiary study.

Does anyone teach the interpretation of statistics at Westminster at all?

A child is not a coin that you toss up in the air and which might equally come down heads or tails. And even with a coin you need a massively large sample for the 50% thing to work out. If you just toss your coin 50 times you can't predict the result with any accuracy: the first 49 may come up heads and only one tails. And that's with tossing the same coin, or a coin of exactly the same weight and measurements.

But with a child, there are so many factors to take into consideration. It is not the case of the same child, or a clone of that child, applying again and again.

Dd attends a college which has a very good reputation for training students for the performing arts and sending them on to HE in this field. The year before last 55% of the students who tried for a well regarded HE school in said subject got in. Looks promising for the students of the next cohort, doesn't it? That year nobody got in. So what do I think of dd's chances? Well, that depends on her, not on the performance of the people around her. It is not a question that can be decided by statistics.

Children are individuals. Apart from giftedness/developments in puberty/attitude/ability to work hard (which is often impossible to predict), the biggest factor that decides whether your child turns out to be that child or not is whether they are the type that will enjoy this particular school and feel at home there.

I had a friend who went to one of the top public schools in the country. Very gifted lad, but hated it so much he spent the rest of his life trying to sabotage his father's educational ambitions by bumming around. Otoh my BIL who went to a poor comprehensive hated that so much that he developed a negative attitude towards education. Dh and I both had school experiences good enough to want to carry on with HE; he went to a private school, I to a comprehensive. It's about finding the right fit, not about statistics.

I think that people can have a different interpretation of "poor". To give you another anecdote (sorry if it offends) a friend with children at private (not public, just medium level private day) was commenting on how there were all sorts at her school, including poor children. It turned out that she was defining poor children as those whose parents couldn't afford expensive overseas holidays. At my DC's state primary there are plenty of families on benefits, for whom their child needing new school shoes is a real headache. If they have an annual holiday, it's a few days in a caravan at Bognor Regis or whatever. It's those kinds of families that Cameron and co perhaps have the hardest time identifying with? How many of them are on 100% bursaries at public school? It's sad that where we are, with a very good grammar some distance away, families have to turn down the chance due to not being able to afford the bus fare. I can't see them managing Eton unless they received a well over 100% bursary.

Needmoresleep - plenty of Lycée pupils play the system to their advantage and move to Westminster/Sevenoaks/other schools with significant sixth-form intake and an alternative to the French bac because they think their relative performance will be better in another system. They aren't all running away from a less challenging system to a more challenging one .

That is unlikely to be what random families who gave made that choice advertise, however.

I think the French system does a better job for the population as a whole. 80% get the Bac - i.e. A levels. vs 50% getting good GCSEs in UK. This means UK system fails most. What do the 'fashionable' UK methods buy really? I just don't see what is the value of the discourse about French being 'old fashioned', rote learning'. Their skills in the general population are better.
Give me an example of one trade, industry where the Brits outperform the French, or better, the Germans, based on education and skills?