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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

Anyone here with daughters in these state schools (London)? Honest opinions please.

50 replies

NobodyIsHere · 09/02/2014 22:37

  • Ricards Lodge High
  • Burntwood
  • Lady Margaret
  • Fulham Cross
  • St Martin in the Fields
  • Tiffins
  • Greycoat

Thanks

OP posts:
sickandtiredofitall · 11/02/2014 08:09

Hi
she got a foundation place on distance at the time although we have moved to Surrey now and she commutes in daily, the school was too good for us to change and the school are happy to keep her

lupinasco · 11/02/2014 09:22

My dd started in Ricards Lodge in September along with 5 of her primary school friends. So far she is extremely happy and so all her friends. She seems to be doing very well. There is a lot of homework but she is coping and thriving.
Is still early days but as a family we are happy with it. It is also conveniently located which is a bonus as she can take the bus to school.
I have heard that Ricards used to not have the best reputation but it is improved considerably as the results are there to prove.

Original poster
NobodyIsHere · 11/02/2014 11:48

Yes GoldenBeagle all of these schools are in the Good School Guide and I am a regular church attender.

OP posts:
Original poster
NobodyIsHere · 11/02/2014 11:53

Willemdefoeismine Thanks for your input. Yep Greycoat is very far from us and dd probably doesn't have what it takes for tiffin.

Glad to know that RL is good as we are in the catchment. I have a friend who went there years ago and she hated, but I am glad the school is better now.

I have no problems with the pupils being from any kind of background. What I am looking for is good teaching and pastoral care.

OP posts:
Original poster
NobodyIsHere · 11/02/2014 11:57

sickandtired sorry for the dumb question but she got a foundation place on distance at the time, means that your address was close or far from the school? LMS is not on our door step but very reachable and close if using tube or bus. We are CofE goers.

Thanks lupinasco glad to hear this.

OP posts:
GoldenBeagle · 11/02/2014 15:08

Are you sure you wnat a girls only school, and / or faith school?

Where do you live (roughly) and what are your nearest schools?

Reincarnatedpig · 11/02/2014 15:26

I would avoid Tiffin Girls - speak from personal experience! I know several girls at Lady Margaret and they seem happy enough. Greycoats too - parents I know are very happy. Fulham Cross is apparently doing really well now, a friend of a friend is very happy with it for her DD. No knowledge of the others.

If you are CofE it comes down to the church attendance etc and then distance - you need to be fairly near to be in with a chance. Personally I would choose the nearest or the easiest journey - I don't think any of the schools are worth a long journey.

sickandtiredofitall · 12/02/2014 10:45

Hi
we lived very close to the school at the time, I know people that lived a few streets further that didn't get in... the only kids I know that live out of Fulham were church places

MrsSteptoe · 12/02/2014 10:48

I think I'm probably repeating what's above to some extent, but having just gone through the process of faith school applications with a DS, you do need to do the hard work of looking at the admissions criteria for each individual faith school as they do vary.

To illustrate using boys' schools, Cardinal Vaughan literally don't look at distance, only at faith criteria - I don't know if any girls' schools may do likewise, but you'll only know from reading their website. Others, e.g. Wimbledon College, it's a combination of faith and distance e.g. those with a baptism certificate and priest's reference who live in catchment come first. Specific out of catchment deaneries may get a couple of places allocated for those fulfilling faith criteria - who will leapfrog unbaptised in-catchment children. It's always on the school website, but if you are currently in a faith primary, your head should be able to give you information, and you may even find your parish priest can also help, if he's asked to do priest's references every single year, as ours is.

Original poster
NobodyIsHere · 12/02/2014 17:33

Ok. At the momentI am leaning towards LMS. From the website I can see that we have a chance for foundation place. I can even look at moving a bit closer if distance will be a big problem. For what I can see on TFL, going by tube is quick and easy but dd can also get 1 bus and walk. I still have a few years to plan however I was fairly relaxed for primary but secondary is a different matter and getting the 'right' school is much more important in my opinion. Apparently the schools in my area are good enough but I think that an all girls school will be best. I am in the Wandsworth borough.

OP posts:
GoldenBeagle · 12/02/2014 18:19

Good luck, OP.

I would strongly advise visiting the schools when your DD is in Yr 5 and then again in Yr 6 and not making any decisions until you have visited.
And don't rely on the Good Schools Guide. It is not an objective evidenced measure of a school, some material is out of date and it leaves out many excellent state schools.

Study the schools' profiles on the Dept of Education website. (Look under performance tables). It tells you how a school actually serves it's pupils in 3 attainment bands. Its stats are very detailed.

Journeytolight · 13/02/2014 07:53

Tiffins has a great reputation and has one if the best results in the country, apparently is an amazing which people would pay loads to get in to.

Burntwood isn't very good, neither is ricards lodge as exam as exam results are pretty much in line with average so no that great.

Lady Margaret is a very good school for a comprehensive so I would have a look at that if I were you. At the open day for a lady m, girls were so nice and friendly and classrooms were good

Blu · 13/02/2014 08:46

Journey: Are there any factors that you think might be behind the different and respective exam results of Tiffins and Burntwood?

The intake of Burntwood pretty much represents an average overall, but the results are ahead of national average and LA average. It's value added score - the one that is closest to demonstrating the effectiveness of the teaching - is high.

OP, if your dd is v bright in the kind of way needed to get into super-selective Tiffin, and you and she, having visited, like the ethos and atmosphere, then great! But get familiar with all the stats in a school's profile on the Dept of Edn website, what they mean, and what they tell you.

basildonbond · 13/02/2014 10:05

Well of course Tiffin has great results - if you only select the most able children at 11 there'd be something badly wrong if you didn't get strings of A*s and As at GCSE and A-level. You could argue that given its incredibly selective intake it should actually be doing better than it is - I'm not sure that it adds much value.

We know children at Burntwood and the experience of girls in the top sets is good - it is a very large school though (10 form entry) and does have a very wide mix of children (and there are some rather troubled and difficult girls there as well)

QualityControl · 13/02/2014 13:33

Basildon I agree re Tiffin. If you take the top 1 or 2 % - and they must because they select from a wide area - you should be seeing 10 A*'s per pupil

Original poster
NobodyIsHere · 13/02/2014 13:49

MrsSteptoe thanks for that link.

Dd is not on the top 1 or 2% for Tiffins and we are far from Greycoats and not pillars of the church either so those two schools are out of the reach for us.

The Good School Guide lists all the schools regardless of quality, I think, and I used as a tool to shortlist my choices.

OP posts:
Reincarnatedpig · 13/02/2014 15:29

Can I just comment on something a couple of posters have said. Tiffin Girls get around 92 per cent A* at GCSE which is pretty much as good as it gets. If you are doing 11 or 12 subjects, suffering teenage angst , experiencing poor teaching or just having a bad day/exam nerves you are very unlikely to get more than that. They are girls not robots. My daughter goes there and while there is a range of ability, all the girls are clever.

Reincarnatedpig · 13/02/2014 15:35

Apologies it was about 62 percent A and the other 30 per cent A. So 92 per cent overall at A/A .

Blu · 13/02/2014 15:41

The Good Schools Guide doesn't review all schools - I didn't realise it listed every single school.

QualityControl · 15/02/2014 10:13

Reincarnated - does your daughter experience poor teaching at Tiffin?

Reincarnatedpig · 15/02/2014 11:14

QC, she has done in the past. I think the school has difficulty recruiting in certain subjects or getting rid of poor teachers though they do go eventually. She has been in classes where pretty much everyone hired a tutor when they found out who the teacher was. There was a group in her GCSE year who claimed to be teaching themselves a particular subject because the teaching was very poor - that definitely came through in the results for that subject. If you need that subject for A level entry or University it can obviously be a disaster.

In general the teaching is very good particularly up to GCSE and some teachers are incredibly kind and helpful. I would say though that the teachers in my daughters comp try harder. DD reported that girls who came to Sixth from other schools were a bit surprised by the lack of spoon feeding but they soon got used to it.

Harleyjosh · 20/03/2014 18:21

From a personal point of view I can say my daughter has never been happier - she has a lovely group of friends and has made excellent academic progress since joining LMS,she seems very engaged in her learning and is enthusiastic about going to school each day. Homework is marked to a very high standard and I was amazed by how well the teachers knew her at the first parents night(less than three months into the school year). Best decision we ever made accepting her place.

Londonlady48 · 21/03/2014 09:38

LMS - friends have daughters there and all are happy. One strange thing was that you had to be in the same set for English and Maths so not good if you are able at one and not at the other. You have to get at least a C in maths to go into the sixth form I believe. The usual problems of bitching and back biting that you get at any girls school. Atmosphere is a bit old fashioned and school is small so the offering for GCSEs is much smaller than you would get at larger schools. Art is very good.

Tiffins - very high pressured academic environment. I have heard about lots of problems with anorexia and anxiety amongst pupils. Obviously results good as it is super selective however some of that intelligence should be able to get the same results at any reasonably good comp so depends on whether you like the atmosphere there. I question how much value the school adds.

Burntwood and Rickards are just bog standard comps, nothing terrible, nothing outstanding. I have friends with girls there who are happy Rickards is v good for drama. Burntwood has a well respected sixth form and Rickards sixth form is only fairly recently established.

If you live in Wandsworth you should look at Ashcroft which is increasingly becoming the sought after school in the neighbourhood.

Naz2881 · 29/09/2014 14:52

My daughter is currently in year 5, just wanted to resurrect this thread as I am in the same situation and same location I think! We live just off Wimbledon Parkside and can apply to Wandsworth / Merton schools... currently about to start DD on her 11plus tuition ...

We visited Ashcroft Academy a week ago and was pleasantly surprised by the facilities and behaviour of the students, does anybody know anything about St Cecilia's

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