peter symonds winchester views?

[lorimeed]

Looking at Peter Symonds for my daughters sixth form but have heard varied things! She's very academic and currently at private school on a academic scholarship with Oxbridge aspirations but I've heard many people struggle making the transition from private to a large college? Views and general opinions please :)

There are some selective 6th form colleges, where minimum entry grades are higher, and interviews count - but none in Hants.

Bay House, which is the highest performing state sixth form in Hampshire, although attached to a school so technically not a college I suppose, requires a minimum of of B at GCSE.

Not much gap between Bay House and PSC though
www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=LA&superview=p16&view=aat&set=1&tab=151&no=850&sort=ks5_14.ptgradeaab2_alev&ord=desc

No, but there tends to be an assumpton that PS is the best performing state sixth form in Hants. Which it isn't.

True, but Bay House is a school - admittedly now a very big one - but 1/8 the size of Symonds and it does not offer Vocational courses as PSC does.

True, TP. They are certainly very different environments.

Nah

but the mention of Bay House has raised a certain amount of amusement in this house for historic reasons.

thing is that DH sees so many schools, it makes us aware of how decent the options we have been able to use are

but the mention of Bay House has raised a certain amount of amusement in this house for historic reasons.

Why so?

DH worked there for a while back in the Stone age.

dh went to Bay House - pre-stone age. When he went it was a swing-your-pants comp in the true style of the just converted. But it did retain a great many of the grammar school teachers in spite of the cohort. Dh says that 99% of the -ahem - middle-class pupils went from primary school to the Portsmouth private schools and others. Dh was actually badly bullied for being "posh" and a swot. He even remembers one particular young teacher joining in mimicking his accent to try to curry favour with the disruptive kids in the class.

In recent times, however, Bay House has acquired a new-found kudos and in Gosport it's all about "Bay House catchment".

Yes. When I told someone who used to live here which primary school the dcs went to - which now has a waiting list as long as a gibbon's arm - they were somewhat sniffy and asked, "Isn't it for the kids from X estate?"

It was built for those children - in 1967! That estate is now largely populated by pensioners.

Likewise Thornden gets some curled lips from older people who remember it as an anagram of North End, an Eastleigh school on the fire station site.