Alleyn's 11+ 2019

[Vargas]

I have seen threads for Whitgift/Trinity, Dulwich College and others but I haven't seen much about Alleyn's.

My dd sat the exam last Tuesday. She found it "not too bad" but definitely got one of the later Maths questions wrong.

Just wondering if anyone else on MN waiting to hear about interviews?

@ChnandlerBong thanks, your points are exacty what is steering us more towards boysonly and the advice we had has been the same and the opposite of what @Coffeewinecake received : coed better for girls ( they can get too competitive on too many levels) and single sex for boys ( they stay kids for longer with no pressure to be cool for the girls -or compete). Of course pro and cons in both environments.

@effemme The junior school children don't dominate at Alleyns. Out of the class of 150, about 48 come from the junior school. The new intake of circa 100 is split 50% state school and 50% prep school-- this is an open policy Alleyns have. So in your son's classes about 1/3 of the boys will be from state school, 1/3 from Alleyns junior school and 1/3rd from other preps.

Regarding someone's comment about what suits boys and girls better, statistics show that girls are much more likely to study STEAM subject in an all-girls school. The arguments for boys in co-ed is more about socialisation rather than grades. I think picking the school that has your ethos etc is probably more important though I have friends who attended the local Dulwich single sex schools that do feel they were underprepared for interactions with the opposite sex in a natural normal way. Parents can easily manage this though through activities outside of school.

Sorry my comment about coed and single sex is a personal opinion only- just as a counterpoint to what someone else had said.

And while DD has avoided the all girls school pressure I hated at her age there is no doubt she has grown up more quickly in the coed groove.

Alleyns junior school kids don’t dominate in terms of numbers no, but they are a big group. They seemed to dominate the top sports teams for most of the first year as the PE teachers knew them. No big deal. Perhaps they did at DC too and my F squad son didn’t realise!

Thanks all. I am sure they do nit domeinate the classroom, my concern, as @ChnandlerBong mention is wether they tend to get more attention/scholarshio/opportunities as gheya re well know already and ahd lots of the same opportunities within the school already. I guess it is similar at DC. I might have mentioned it already, but my son did not even call back for the second stage of the sports assessment at A - when he thought the other kids were pretty much at similar level and was not impresse - while he got a scholarship at T , where he though kids were much better , that recognised his attitude, ability and mostly potentail to become good sportman and T is a much more sporty school. So , while I was not expecting a sports scholarship at A, I was surprised he got elimintaed at the first round. I would not be surpised if the majority who got the sports scholarship are from the Jr school. So with this considered, I wonder of the same applies to the academics and if my son will end up flaoting in the middle at A.Just thoughts that might be competely wrong.

@effemme the kids at Alleyns don't dominate the scholarships. Proportionally they are slightly under represented for sports, academic, music and art scholarships compared to the new entrants. They do get them though but not beyond what you'd expect proportionally.

Scholarships at Alleyns are just very, very competitive given the numbers that apply.

Thanks for this @ConfusedaboutSchool. It is so hard to know how things really are, great to have your feedback.

They don’t dominate the academic scholarships- a think they got about half of them in dd’s year so that was with 48 kids in a year of 130 in year 7….

They did dominate the 11+ music and sports scholarships in her year though?

@ChnandlerBong I'm sure it varies a lot year by year but in my experience about 6 of the academic scholarships go to the junior school kids and there are about 36 awarded in total at 11+ now that they 13+ has bee scrapped. However, it's not fixed do its possible in some years it is very different. However, speaking to parents in the school, that seems to be the norm which makes sense as the junior school kids in general are more relaxed about the exam as they have a guaranteed place. The amount of studying external candidates do for years just isn't something any junior school parents I know would ever impose as avoiding the 11+ stress was half the point of choosing Alleyns.

As per previous poster, the number of scholarships does vary from year to year as it depends on which children take up scholarship offers. The proportion of Junior School scholarship children also varies each year.

I think last year around 6 academic scholarships went to Junior School children and this year it was just 2, so less than 10%.

There are huge numbers of applicants for relatively few non-academic scholarships so it is very competitive.