Opinions: Portland Place School, central London

[EmbroideryQueen]

I'm thinking of sending my DC to Portland Place school, central London. Please give me your experiences and opinions on it?

I've heard conflicting reports - someone told me good pastoral care & reasonable academics, somebody else told me about good pastoral care but rubbish academics (some students not getting 5 A-C) and some shocking stories about terrible pupil behaviour both in lessons and on school trips, which sounds very worrying!

I've been told that academics have improved a lot recently and seen that the school have added a Year 4 and will be adding Year 3 from 2017, which does give me hope.

Tell me more???

Bumping

I know several children there presently and I'm not impressed at all.

Pastoral care seems abysmal IMO and academically it is unimpressive. They tend to take children who may struggle to get places elsewhere and then do relatively little with them. I'd go for a state option if that was my only (independent) choice. There's some good state options in that catchment.

Thanks for the info. Can you expand on the terrible pastoral care & poor academics? I've been told by others pastoral is good & ive seen academics improve, so am interested to read opinions to the contrary.

I'm not living in the right area for those state catchment options unfortunately.

I have a lad there who is very happy. The class sizes are very small. It's getting harder and harder to get into this school.

During the open day I got the impression that historically there has been quite a lot of transient pupils joining/leaving as international parents move in and out of London across the small year groups. I also go the impression that the staff were not suited to larger higher performing schools and were more comfortable with this small, less results focussed school.

That may be changing now as the demand for places at selective secondary schools increases meaning that all secondaries can be more selective.

All that said, nothing is as valuable as direct experience, so Summertimes comment should carry weight.