which north london girls secondaries have happy children?

[parietal]

please tell me about north london girls secondaries. I know the league table results & fancy websites & entry criteria. But those don't tell me which schools have nice staff and happy well supported children.

I'm particularly keen to hear about

• South Hampstead
• City of London Girls
• Francis Holland
• North London Collegiate
• Habs

but any other would be good too.

Thank you

Every school on that list of 5 has all those things - happy supported children so I would just enter them for all of them and see if they manage to get into one but if they are not that bright then pick the next tier down.

I do think you can succeed very well by not being in the most competitive schools. Whether we like it or not, someone is always in the bottom 10% academically. However, what you want to see are many areas where a child can succeed to maintain self esteem. It might be Art, sport, music, drama, organising a house competition, public speaking, DofE - anything that’s available from dance to debating to cooking. If academics is the sole focus, being “less academic” is a strain if there is nothing else to give confidence and success.

I have never found a selective independent school that cannot educate bright children and get the best exam results for them, if everyone works together. The phenomenally gifted are different and their needs are more difficult to meet in most schools.

Farewelltoarms I was merely adding some color to your post. It's also a fact that they treated the families who already had girls at the school differently to the families who did not. People can interpret this fact how they like.

Good point user. And very sensible of the school - I can't imagine how furious parents of an existing pupil would be if the sibling's offer was rescinded!

And good point made by previous posters that ultimately it's not necessarily a case that you get to choose the school. We found the process of applying and taking the exams useful. The one we choose wasn't a frontrunner initially but they were very kind throughout with a super helpful admissions team.

Yes exams can be fun and good practice for the rest of your schooling years too. In fact I put the twins in for a series of music theory exams one per term from quite little just so they could get experience of going into a hall, sitting down, working to time, doing answers, getting results and so they could see exams are not a scary nasty thing at all and can be quite fun.

@louroo that would have been so much more convincing had you not posted 3 identical comments on 3 dormant threads 

@louroo posting the same message on 3 x threads that are no longer active, praising just one school makes it look like you're only on here to promote that school, unfortunately

Bumping this thread.

I heard Channing did not do exploding offers this year.
How are the academics there? How is the new headmistress?

Is it worth a 40 minute commute and cost?