Best Place to Relocate for Grammar School.

[npnp05]

Hello all,

My elder daughter is getting into her Year-3 this September. We live in Bristol and are willing to relocate to an area which gives her the best chance to get into a Grammar School. She's bright, motivated and with a bit of luck, I am sure she will do well in her exams.

We are planning to buy a property a year after moving to the new area since we would like to give our children and us a chance to get used to the new place of living. We are planning to relocate at the end of this year or earlier if everything goes well.

There are no state-funded grammar schools in Bristol (pardon me if I am wrong) hence the decision to relocate.

Both my husband and I work from home so relocating anywhere in and around the South England wouldn't hurt our career too. Nevertheless, if given a chance, we would prefer a not-so-hyper-busy place to live.

Kindly guide me through this humongous process of finding good places to give our girls a chance to access grammar school education.

Thanks in advance!
Natie.

Thank you all for your guidance!

Some of you have asked what if my daughter doesn't get into a grammar school. Our children wouldn't know we are moving to prep them for a grammar school. As a matter of fact, we do not intend to spend money in private tutoring or pressurise them for better results.

We only want to give them a good start, we do not have any control over the outcome of their entrance exams or education but we do have a certain level of freedom in choosing a place to live. And I am greedily making use of this freedom to move to a place where they are exposed to such competitive exams naturally and if our children are interested, let them pick it up on their own. If not, a good state school will be our obvious choice.

Thank you again!

True Sassh. I think I should make it a point to look at 'schools' rather than grammar schools :) Thank you.

Poole Grammar is a "Requires Improvement" school, which does not support the progress of it's high ability pupils.

OP: hopefully this thread has given you an overview of the pitfalls and things to look out for. Especially the effect that in a fully selective county those children, and therefore the academic options tailored to academic children, can be missing from the other schools.

Huge numbers of children are tutored for the 11+, though that can mean a term or two of relaxed sessions with you using the various test material available.

Yes missyB1 Gloucestershire does seem to be a viable option. Thank you.

Yes BroomstickOfLove you are right. I was under the assumption that an area filled with grammar schools would have good comp schools too. Should change my approach :) Thank you.

No FastWindow - I haven't spoken to BGS yet. Will talk to them and see where it takes us. Thank you for the pointer.

True that NonnoMum - thank you for getting me out of my utopian land haha.

Makes sense PossomInAPearTree Thanks.

I would echo looking at Tunbridge Wells/Tonbridge and Lyme Regis (The Woodroffe is an excellent backup comp) - also Cheltenham (Balcarras as a backup comp). You don't need to pay for tutoring but you will need to do some work with your child for the 11+ - just as you wouldn't send her off to a music exam without any extra practice at home.

Npnp, I think there's a problem in your reasoning. If your child doesn't get into grammar often the comprehensive schools left (secondary moderns) leave a lot to be desired. The "top" are creamed off. So you could move "for education" and end up in a less than desirable school.

I live in a grammar area. I taught in a grammar. I love the local grammar school. As a parent I'm genuinely anxious as I don't like the other schools.

If we had money/ability to move we'd move to an area with genuinely good comprehensives as not to do the whole cramming for gr a meal thing. Winchester has a brilliant school system (but out of our league price wise). I think Dorchester and Christchurch have better comprehensives.

We live in Bucks and I honestly think the whole system is crazy. We are lucky enough to be able to afford to opt out and my boys go to private schools. The pressure the kids are put under at 10 years old to pass these exams are absolutely appalling.

Ps, you can't 'not tutor' for 11+ because every body who can afford tutors, tutors to the max meaning the poorer kids don't stand a chance if their parents can't afford a grand or so a term for tuition. You can't protect the kids from the inevitable pass or failure system because their peers will talk about it even if you don't. It's a totally unfair system.

What about Rugby? While the town itself isn't great, the outer villages can be nice, and from what friends in the area have said, Rugby High (girls grammar) is still decent.

Not to mention the higher cost of living and extortionate house prices to live in this area!!

It's crazy land

Nonsense that if you haven't started formal music lessons by year 3 your child isn't musical. My middle one is extremely sporty and showed little interest in music until year 5, we are not a musical family and lessons were not a priority.

She asked us for music lessons at the start of year 6 and is taking her grade 3 less than a year later. She has also discovered she can sing and has blown the music teacher away with her voice and is now singing the main solo in her year 6 show. I'd say she's pretty musical, Just formal lessons weren't a priority until she asked for them

OP, I'm afraid you sound a bit naive. I can only speak for SW Herts, but round here the pass marks for the semi selectives are very high. The verbal reasoning tests are unlike anything your DC is likely to have done at school. The maths test includes Y5 curriculum content but the children take the test at the start of Y5 (in September). You are competing against children who have practiced the VR tests for a year or more and who have been taught (by parents or a tutor) Y5 maths. And they are ALL "bright and motivated" too.

Then if you don't get into the consortium school you don't get into "a good state school" as the others are significantly worse for results (although I take the point of a past poster that some are good schools, just with a far less academic cohort). Compare the results of Bushey Meads, Bushey Academy and Francis Combe (the non selectives near me) with Parmiters, Watford Boys, Watford Girls and Clement Danes (some of the semi selectives).

There ARE good state schools in Herts (eg Sandringham, Beaumont and Verulum in St Albans), but they have tiny catchment areas, and the catchment isn't fixed (it's based on distance, and moves every year based on the actual numbers of applicants), so you have to plan very carefully where you move to, in order to get in. And house prices are accordingly eye watering near those schools.

You can't just move to Herts, do the consortium test, then go to "a good state school" if your child doesn't get in, without a whole lot of planning.

Some people suggested Birmingham as there are a lot of fantastic grammar schools here.

I would recommend Sutton Coldfield In particular as a great place to live and having excellent grammars. The local girls grammar is our choice and luckily a short walk from our home. There is also a boys grammar in Sutton Coldfield and outstanding secondary schools.

You can be a musical child of you can be a MUSICAL child...Schools that offer music scholarships usually expect children to be playing around grade 7/8 on one or two instruments by y6 to be in with a chance. Even then there is stiff competition.

*or

Slow: again, like Nonno, you are talking about private schools.

State schools are not allowed to offer scholarships based on grades or numbers of instruments. State schools that have a music scholarship intake have to base it on aptitude.

Of course, those best places to demonstrate aptitude are likely to be those with the experience of lessons and playing.

But surely you can see why state Grammar entry cannot be dependent on a child having had access to expensive music lessons!

Grammar schools on the Wirral near Liverpool too. DH is the product of one and they have an excellet reputation locally still. They have single sex grammar schools there too if that appeals.

You need to do prep for 11 plus however bright your child is in that they haven't actually learnt the bits in school by the time they do the exam. So to go in it blind you would have no chance of passing however bright your child is. My dd is only just starting to learn things now in school that she learnt sept / October with her tutor.

There seems to be a sudden influx of grammar school questions at the moment.

I know I was talking about private schools Music scholarships.

OP, whilst I admire your enthusiasm for your children's education, would it not be better to stay put and use the money you would have spent on moving towards outside tuition or extra curricular activities? I know the Bath/Bristol area does not have grammar schools, but it can't be utterly devoid of any good secondary education?

FWIW, my sister went to a Kent grammar school, whilst I went to a non-selective boarding school. We both ended up with good results. Get a good school with a decent peer group. Couple that with good home support and she will thrive. It does not need to be selective.

Right, well as long as we are clear that it has no bearing on the OP's interest in state Grammar places.

And I have a child who gets paid work for playing an instrument at 15 and had no grade exams at all until Yr 7. Because he is MUSICAL.

There are instruments you can't start before year 3 (or adult teeth, whichever is first), so I wouldn't worry that she's already behind. Stick her on a tuba, bassoon or French horn and watch the local orchestras fall over themselves to have her!

npnp,

You can see the fallacy in your argument that 'the presence of grammar schools makes all schools good' if you think carefully for a minute.

take Kent - a fully selective county. The 25% most able (or best prepared) children go to the grammar schools. Thus the other 75% (including a disproportionate number of those from deprived families, because they are much less likely to have been able to prepare, or pay tutors to prepare, for the exams, and are also more likely to live in areas served by relatively poor primary schools) are in the other schools in the area.

Without any - or very few - of the able students from the area, it is MUCH harder for the 'other' school to do really well. That's the top couple of sets in Maths, for example, or in Science or English. The problems associated with very much higher levels of deprivation also affect such schools in terms of pupil nutrition, poor housing, parents involved with education and having aspirations for their children, involvement of social services and other children's services - all these have direct effects in schools but also indirect effects on staff time and attention. Also, the 'other' schools are generally seen as lower status for staff, and may struggle to attract really good teachers, partly because they may well not have a sixth form, and many teachers who love their subjects want to teach A-level as part of their work.

Even in partially-selective counties, the presence of a grammar pulling away a percentage of the most able, least deprived children of the most involved parents will tend to have a negative effect on surrounding schools - especially as parents tend to compare absolute results, not progress, in schools and so will denigrate the other schools as 'poor' compared with the grammars because of their lower raw results.

So your 'holy grail' of the availability of relatively non-selective grammars (in order to have the greatest chance of getting your children in) and excellent alternative schools is, by definition, hard to find. I also think you are being hugely naive about the need for preparation - even very bright children need training for the exam format, in order to maintain parity with the other children who are taking the 11+ (in muy area at least, a very significant % of children who get to grammar have been to private primaries who teach to the 11+ throughout) and state primaries are in general not allowed to provide such preparation for the exam, which is very early in year 6.

Your best strategy might well be to site yourself right next door to an excellent comprehensive in a partially-selective area (and I really do mean right next door - catchment areas are always smaller than estate agents say) and then enter the 11+ as a 'nice if it happens' alternative. As said above, Gloucestershire away from Gloucester itself would fit the bill.

Ooh, sorry, that was a bit of an epic!

Another option - I'm not advocating this in any way, by the way, but am pointing out that it exists, because i researched it for another thread a while back - would be to stay put and enter your child for the Gloucestershire grammar school exam. If they pass high enough for Pates', then there is, believe it or not, a bus from Bristol daily.

There is no restriction on how far away you live when you take the Gloucestershire exam IIRC from when i looked it up, so you could take it, then move if successful.