As the Tiffin results day looms, a second 2019 SW London grammars and indies thread

[FlumePlume]

A new thread to avoid the doomsday scenario of running out of posts as envelopes are opened on Friday, waiting lists move (or don’t) and e-mails are opened on 1 March.

Not long till 5pm! Good luck!

Fulham Prep Senior has been open a while for boys and girls. Think they are having a few problems sorting out their permanent site at the moment.

Away - Fulham Prep is a quite established school. At present they have the pre-prep (4-7) in one building neat Putney Bridge, then the prep is 7-13, in Fulham. Both building need a refurb tbh. They prepare pupils for 11 plus or CE at 13 which is unusual as most preps only do one or the other. They have purchased new premises in Parsons Green which need refurbishing and will probably be up and running Sept 2020. Also they say they will open a sixth form in that area. I think they saw an obvious gap in the market. But I think at 11 plus, you might need to move into the prep building for years 7&8 and then transfer?

Good much to all on the PHS and WHS WLs!
And G&L if it shifts.

Good Luck to All.

We are going to choose between G&L and TGS.
We have declined FHSS, Queensgate.
I am about to email PHS and WHS to decline their offers.

For those who are interested (most likely parents who will soon go through this poorly designed and rather awful process), I shall briefly describe how our little one found the exams:

Consortium: straightforward with time to check. She thought most people would not be able to do the last maths qn (whatever that means). She was offered places at the 3 schools we applied for: G&L, FHSS, Queensgate. Atv FHSS she received a scholarship.

LU: she managed to finish the English. On the Maths, she skipped 3 half questions. She got to the interview but did not receive an offer.

SPGS: she was ill the day before, but found the Maths ok: she finished Section A, did most of B and did 5 out of 7 questions on Section C. The English and the General Comprehension were ok according to her, but something must have gone amiss, since she did not get an interview.

PHS: She skipped 2 part questions on the English Comprehension. On the Maths, she had time to spare. She was offered a place.

WHS: She finished the VR and NVR tests and found the assessment day fun. She was offered a place.

Wandsworth Test: She finished the NVR and VR and scored over 260

TGS, Round 1: she finished the English paper and left around 8 qns on Maths, Round 2: English was fine and she left some questions on the Maths. She received an offer.

Our DD is from a state school, but we did prepare her in depth, starting in Feb of Year 4. She is pretty good at Maths, getting through to the Bonus Round of the PMC this year and in Year 5 she got through to the Kangaroo Round of the JMC. When it comes to English, she can lose the plot a little with some of the comprehension questions and produce answers which are useful mainly for their comic value. Her creative writing is strong.

I hope this information is of some use to those who have to go through this in future years.

CanadaUK that is really helpful of you, thank you. When you say you prepped from Feb in Y4, can I ask how much work you did on a daily/weekly basis and whether there was school homework to manage too? I ask because we haven’t done nearly as well and I have a Y3 coming up next

DD got an offer from Tiffin. Now the confusion begins: TGS vs WHS. Up until 17.00 we were ready to accept WHS.... Now we have to think.

We still don’t have the email and the admissions website won’t load. Did you manage to log into the website Sweetnhappy?

Geogra yes I logged in to the eadmissions site just after 5. Good luck!

Geogra

In Year 4, she did around 4 hours a week, but less during periods when she had project work to do for school and not so much during vacations and not much at all between Yr 4 and Yr 5 (the Summer). Her school homework was very little.

In Year 5, she did the same, but with more work during the Summer holidays between Year 5 and Year 6. She did quite a bit of VR and NVR and in the two weeks before Tiffin Round 1, she did lots of maths and MCQ English under timed conditions. For Tiffin Round 2, we focused on English because 60% of the marks are for that paper and her Maths was in excellent shape.

Over Christmas of Year 6, she worked 2 to 2.5 hours a day and spent the mornings skiing. I made sure she could do all the sample questions for LU and SPGS. For WHS, I knew she would be fine after her strong score on the Wandsworth test. For PHS, I assumed the prior prep for Tiffin and additional prep for SPGS and LU would help. For the Consortium, she did around 1 hour of prep on CEM style questions. She was already pretty good at those so we didn't do more of that. SPGS did not work out, but it helped with the rest.

It's important to be aware of your child's natural inclinations. Our DD picks up Maths very quickly and scores well on VR and NVR. She does not like comprehensions that much and her handwriting could do with
some improvement. I was not able to change her inherent tastes and aptitudes, but I was able to help her get to a reasonable level with Comprehension.

We have rejected Tiffin straight away.

CanadaUK That’s interesting - we did a lot less, but almost the opposite content because dd finds English easy. So we had to focus on speeding up her maths, teaching her the stuff school hadn’t, and on NVR. I think it probably added up to an hour or two a week in Y5 (almost entirely on maths), then NVR in the summer holidays (timings were very random, depended on what we were doing), ramping up in the two weeks before Tiffin exams and stage 1s at the start of Y6 to about 45 minutes on weekdays, with a couple of hours at the weekends. And a little bit of SPGS past paper prep in the New Year (just enough time to do the past papers on their website and talk through them).

Sweet Congrats on the Tiffin offer! We got one, too, but have made the decision already to go with SPGS.

Canada, thanks. That’s an impressive amount of time spent from Y4. We did 1-2 hours a week at that age but certainly covered 2 hrs a day over the Christmas holidays before the exams.

Did your DC so much sport/extra curricular during the week? Where/how did you fit it in? We struggle with other DC and having after school/week end sports 4 days a week.

We have Tiffin too but will see if the waiting lists for independents move on Monday.

We did not get Tiffin but got Nonsuch, and of course have already accepted WHS. In a way I’m glad she didn’t get it so I don’t have to forever wonder if we did the right thing, DD was momentarily disappointed, but she has quickly got over it.

Congratulations Jimjam. Are you not taking Nonsuch? Their grounds look incredible

We did not get Tiffin either but also got Nonsuch. Have accepted but will see if we get a wait list place from tiffin. I’m pretty keen on nonsuch though so even if we did I’m not sure if we’d take it. Although Dd wanted tiffin she seemed over the moon with nonsuch and v excited to imagine life there.

Glad the wait is over!

DD did like Nonsuch but I just can’t countenance two trains and a walk either side.

WHS is ????

Wimbledon High School

Hi @1ndig0 and @CanadaUk you are the only 2 posters I’ve managed to click who have got DDs with an offer from G & L. Can you tell me when the acceptance deadline is for G & L? Trying to work out when the WL might move (it hasn’t yet....). Congratulations on your impressive results obviously bright cookies who prepared well and worked hard!

clock not click....

Yes we payed deposit for KGS as we were concerned about exploding offers and rightly so as our Radnor house scholarship offer was retracted before their deadline.

@Lexi20 how do you know PHS waitlist is moving. They told me yesterday and teacher today that they wouldn’t even look at waitlist until Monday. Thanks :-)