Is it too early to start a 2016 girls 11+ W/SW London thread?

[orangina]

What do we think? DD is sitting 11+ for various consortium schools in January 2016 and I am slightly desperate for a thread to compare notes, pat each others shoulders etc..... I lurked on last years thread, but it didn't start until much later....

Just booking up open day places and filling in my registration forms now.....

MissGintyMarlow -DH and I both attended top London private schools and while it is true that the teachers were often well qualified Oxbridge graduates neither of us were that inspired by the teaching. It is easier to teach in the private sector since the kids are exclusively MC and more importantly as you don't need any teacher training qualification. More people therefore tend to fall into teaching in the private sector by default after uni who don't have any real love for the job. I also think the argument that private schools are more enriching is a bit overdone. It is true that these days private schools seem to compete to see who can provide the largest number of clubs and expensive overseas trips but in London at least any activity done at school can normally be done to a higher standard outside (hence those at school who were really good at music would go on the weekends to the top music colleges etc).

A bit off-piste for the thread, but can't help responding on value added. I went to Westminster (6th form, 1980s) and the quality and depth of teaching was really remarkable (though I doubt my teachers had a teaching qualification between them). They were passionate about their subjects and took us above and beyond the syllabus in every possible direction with a view to stretching pupils to the limit.

I had happily coasted at my previous (boarding) school, but W was a whole new world of academic intensity and in my view richly deserved due credit for the very good results its pupils achieved, notwithstanding the huge advantage it had in being able to refresh the intake with a load of keen girls at 16+. It was a culture of perfection - coasting was not an option, and if you looked too comfortable they just ramped up the stretch factor. Also, it was cool to be clever, which counts for a lot in ensuring teenagers don't hide their light under a bushel.

LarkDescending- Westminster girls -assuming you are one-do provide the school with a big advantage results wise as they are often some of the brightest girls from schools like SPGS/CLGS (or maybe Wycombe Abbey if they were boarding). They are therefore highly motivated and the sort who find lessons exciting and have the advantage of only doing A levels ie subjects they have actively chosen rather than GCSEs where most people dislike at least half their subjects i.e. Westminster girls don't need motivating by their teachers and unlike the boys they don't indulge in illegal substances etc. They would frankly do well anywhere and -while I think that W is a brilliant school in many ways-I doubt that the school makes a great difference for girls as a) they are there for less than 2 years and b) they were Oxbridge material (in some cases I know Oxbridge dead certs) when they arrived at the school.

I'm with Lark on this one. Westminster sixth form is fab for both boys and girls. Kids are encouraged to engage in all sorts of ways beyond the classroom, providing great preparation for University.

And no evidence that selection is simply poaching the best from SPGS and Wycombe. Girls come from a wide range of schools and some will have had quite a rocky time at 11+. The advantage is that selection at 16 is easier. Some kids start to shine whilst others fade during the GCSE years. So if you don't get what you want at 11 or find the school is not stretching enough there is always the chance to move at 16.

And Westminster work very hard to integrate the girls. They are there to provide a co-ed environment not just to improve the results

Needmoresleep I agree Westminster sixth form is fab and goes beyond the syllabus. However the issue is whether the results the girls achieve are much or indeed any better than they would have been had they remained at their old schools. I believe candidates for the Westminster sixth form sit an exam in the four subjects which they are likely to do for A level and have an interview; in other words its a highly competitive process and I stand by my assertion that those who get in are some of the brightest girls in the country even if they are not all from SPGS or Wycombe Abbey (although I have known quite a few who were!).

I guess in order to resolve the argument we would need to find out what percentage of boys and girls respectively get into Oxbridge..

If you think Oxbridge offers are a good measure of success. ...

I have no doubt that some girls may get better grades by staying at their original schools, but will they be better prepared for University by remaining in a known and single sex environment.

Horses for courses. Like at 11+. It's about fit rather than league tables, and the hope is that this elaborate process that others on the thread are going through helps ensure that candidates end up in the place that suits them best.

One curious statistic is that Westminster boys tend to have better average GCSE results than the incoming girls. Some girls are clearly very bright, but there again so are some of the boys.

Oxbridge offers are a good measure of success since at the best schools they tend to remain fairly constant over a long period of time. For example the Sutton Trust reported in 2008 that the average annual Oxbridge offer rate at Westminster in a 5 year period between 2002-6 was around 50%-very similar to what it was last year.

As regards average GCSE results, by coincidence if you look at the 2015 GCSE results (see Sunday Times etc) the only two girls schools in the country with better GCSEs than Westminster's were..SPGS and Wycombe Abbey. Clearly the Westminster girls from other schools are dragging the average down!

A pertinent article on the 11 plus madness from the head of WHS:

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/11933970/The-horror-of-11-plus-exam-season-has-to-change.html

yes but she doesn't give any bloody solutions - just apply to 3! However when the goalposts keep shifting it is impossible for many to know which 3.

i think bringing in pre-tests is the answer. a first round screening rather than pushing kids through the stress of full on exam days.

and VR and non VR can't be coached? Is she serious? This is the exact reason why Tiffin has moved away from it to maths & english. Because too many were coming in with perfect VR and non VR scores and their ability esp in English just didn't match.

How would you bring in pre-tests for an 11+ entry?

More exams in the same year? Or sitting even younger?

Most schools which pre-test are 13+ entry, who have introduced an extra exam at 11+. This making the 11+ year the key one for even more schools.

Well I think that article from the head of WHS is spot on.
We maybe naively only applied to 2 schools, and my daughter got into the one she really wants to go to.
She's no genius and we didn't tutor her at all. But maybe the fact that when asked by both schools which others she had applied for, and they heard it was only two schools in total, accounted for something. After all, that meant that if they offered her a place there was a 50% chance she'd accept, versus a 20% chance if she'd applied for 5.----

I'm sorry you and your dh's teachers were so unimpressive neurotic, but that absolutely wasn't my experience. Equally, you can be sceptical about added-value but again, having been able to compare the two systems, one of my private schools in particular was in a different league to the comp.it wasn't about offering activities so much as the level to which we were stretched and encouraged to think laterally and broaden our intellectual horizons. I said I am pretty would have achieved the same grades in either system, but the private system offered a far more rewarding all-round experience.

That is my personal observation and if private schools have since declined so much (and the state system improved) to the point that they're a waste of money I would be delighted.

Teddtess it is expensive to make reasoning tests unpredictable, and with 1000s sitting them The Tiffins simply could not afford it. The tutors could therefore tutor the types of questions that come up, with stories of them waiting at the gates for feedback each year so they could tailor the next years prep. It was a complete racket with absolutely no educational value. It was and is also a first past the post system so all that mattered was the score, it had to be transparent and objective to meet the legal requirements, they could not make a subjective judgement based on other "soft" evidence such as interviews and references. Though the new exams, English at least, must have introduced room for subjectivity.

One of the measures of the effectiveness of the tests used by businesses and private schools is that individuals can't improve the score beyond doing a few tests (not more than 10) for familiarisation with the general format etc. But that is expensive as the Ed and Occupational Psychologists keep developing new questions that test the same things in different ways. I have heard stories of those pupils extensively prepped for Tiffin being thrown by the reasoning papers they sat at WHS and KGS. And some of the reasoning questions eg on the LEH General paper are really there as part of the process of gathering all the evidence they can about a candidate. In the more selective schools some of the harder maths questions are in fact more tests of reasoning, having to apply their knowledge in an unfamiliar way.

I was told at LEH for instance that "the interviews can tell us such a lot about a candidate" , all part of building up a picture, in what is not a first past the post system but a way of using all the evidence to determine whether the candidate will fit with the school. Inevitably that is subjective to some extent. I assume that with upwards of 1000 applicants the coeds are not going to have the luxury of such a labour intensive process, the rumour last year was that the new KGS head had moved their process nearer to the first past the post system he was familiar with in his state grammar Headship. The process is not transparent though and that is part of the source of parental neurosis, a process they can't know or control......

And I have to say that if the interviews are there mainly to spot behavioural issues then none of the private schools I have known pupils in have cracked how to do that. I haven't discerned any difference in the success in the selection tests at 11 for those girls who had behavioural problems. They appear in every school. Their success by 18 is another matter.....

I don't disagree with the article's sentiments, but I wholeheartedly agree with Teddtess that 3 schools would be fine if the goalposts stayed the same, Last year, KGS would have been our "banker" choice but both dc's were rejected without interview (as were a good few others we knew who thought it was their banker too). Surbiton was the back up choice for DD many years ago but increasingly they seem to turn away a lot of girls.

Agree with TedTess and Alwaysfrank. Nice sentiment but no real solution. 3 years ago KGS was the safety school. Then it was Ibstock, er, not any more. Which school is it now? Probably not even Emmanuel or Radnor or the one by the M4 slip road or Harrodian as they are way over subscribed. So do new schools have to keep springing up every couple of years?

And yes totally agree of course nvr and vr can be tutored for. They are probably the easiest thing to (over) prepare for.

i mean, really, the head of WHS acknowledging the stress girls are under, great, but her only solution is "don't apply to too many, just 3"

what tosh. has put me right off WHS. What would her response to stress in girls at her school be?

Yes, three years ago our DCs prep head said only apply to 3 schools, and there was a very clear pecking order in everyone's minds of stretch and banker. We asked the prep about doing a 4th and were told not to, and I think others were similarly dissuaded. But last year - so two years later -when DD was doing it the prep school's form had space for 4 choices and we were encouraged to apply to 4. I know some people did 6, and presumably the head co operated with a reference for all 6. What I think was also happening was that people were applying in a more scattergun approach and a lot across the same "range" of schools. It was almost like deferring the decision making until you got to the point of offers rather than at the point of application. That I think is one of the big changes.

As a corollary, the "new normal" seems to have more use of waiting lists, as there is a gentle settling down of people and places: since people have applied to 4 or 5 of the "same" schools, then often one child will get 4 or 5 offers but only when the unwanted ones are released can the real situation be seen.

I am a fan of the consortium approach as used by North London independent girls schools, and would welcome this being extended to (or copied by) coed, boys and/or South London schools:

• fewer test days ie less stress and absences
• easier to familiarise DC if fewer formats
• looking at the consortium members can help especially newbie parents like I was discover other schools that may be relevant and frankly perhaps a better fit for their DC than the prestgious/famous extremely selective ones that are easy to spot/want but very hard to get into
• DC who get no offers by mid Feb but who sat the relevant consortium test can perhaps try an urgent late application to other consortium schools on the back of trusted test scores (hopefully above the required cutoff) eg a reject from eg City or G&L might find a belated fit with a lovely school lower down the academic/"brand" pecking order.

Many schools not part of a consortium (coed, perhaps boys, S London) seem to use NVR and/or VR, and this could perhaps be included in the test format, whether it is a new "Group 3" or a separate new consortium. Or the schools that want to look for something that is not included in the common test format can include such questions in the interview, if they wish.

This way sitting for 5+ schools could be a lot less stressful. There are a lot of good schools within a reasonable commute in London, and it is sometimes really difficult to know upfront how realistic it is for your particular DC to get in (and also how well you/DC like the school!), perhaps especially coming from a state school - we got zero advice from our primary, but some impetus when one teacher begged us to not send DD to the local comp...

makes total sense NWgirls!

MissGintyMarlow -I'm only saying that purely from an A level /uni point of view in my experience there is not much difference in achievement between MC children of similar intelligence and (just as important) family background who attend state and private schools. The fame and success of a few super selective private schools like Westminster/SPGS/Eton etc tends to mask the fact that IMO most private schools produce little added value for their increasingly vast fees.

However, I agree that the state sector has some way to go to match the sort of intellectual stretching of pupils which as you say takes place in the best private schools. I personally think that there is an issue here with mixed ability teaching in comps and would not be happy for my DD to be in a mixed ability class.

I agree that the Consortium approach is the way to go - the only downside is that many of the individual schools ask you to do their own assessment morning /day alongside this. For instance, at St James Girls, they spend the most part of a day before the Consortuium Group 2 exam at the school doing VR tests and "fun" activities. Some girls find all this just as stressful and tiring as the exam!

I agree on the consortium although it does mean you have to be on form on that day and a lot rests on 1 exam. And yes individual schools then add things like the VR at St James, francis holland is a a morning... So all adds up. Trouble is that there are not really any bankers now... Kew house is as oversubscribed as many now so there will still be lots of disappointed children on the day of results and much more waiting on wait lists...which is what I expect for my DD.

Genuine question: why would any school accept a late registration when it already has far more applicants than places, especially as schools aren't needing to use their waiting lists much?

Also, are there really schools that are not happy with the calibre of their intake based on their on-time applicants?