Westminster too pushy compared to boarding schools?

[cherie32]

My DS has completed his ISEB and is about to go through further assessments and interviews.

While we have a few back-up schools, our favourites are Eton, Winchester and Westminster.

I’d personally prefer Westminster as DS can stay with the family and won’t have to board, but he’s very keen on boarding.

Through speaking to various parents and reading up on personal experiences I get the sense that Westminster’s more pushy, overly competitive and stressful and so, less of a happy environment compared to Eton or Winchester.

Any thoughts or experiences?

BTW we’re considering these schools for 13+ entry in 2022

I think some of it comes down to how pushy you plan to be. At day school, pushy parents who maintain their ability to control what their boys do past puberty (and note that most don’t!) have the ability to do so. It is a lot harder at boarding school. My experience of eton is that one is kept very distant from what is going on (by the school that is) and that there is more individual focus on the child at W but am also aware that one’s experience is a school is through the lens of a particular child, which could make everyone’s experience very different.

Michaelahpurple, interesting. Your W in the last sentence, is that Westminster or Winchester? Thanks 😊

I agree that 'pushy' is more about the parents. Your picture of Westminster is nothing like our experience.

DC went through Westminster fairly oblivious to any pressure, doing enough to escape intervention from teachers, but never aiming to be top of the class. They really enjoyed the 'education is cool' vibe and having interesting, engaged friends. DD is quite dyslexic, and the school provided great support and encouragement, even though her exam results were never likely to be stellar.

It is perhaps only in retrospect that they have realised that some peers were under real pressure. Not kids from their friendship groups, but some clearly had very ambitious parents who laid on the tutoring, and expected results. Most difficult were those aiming for US Universities where achievement had to include sports, music and leadership as well as academics.

Our experience was that Westminster had good pastoral care and did its best to provide a calm protective environment, especiallyfor some very talented young people. DDs sports team rather modest achievements seemed to gain more kudos than girls selected for international maths Olympiads or playing music at concert level.

Westminster seems to have provided them
with a great foundation for tertiary education, with its emphasis on independent study and on education rather than grades. The ones who seem to have done less well on leaving school are those who had very directed childhoods with lots of expectation and tutoring. It was a near perfect educational experience for my quite different DC.

IME of Winchester and boarding it comes down to the individual child and the parents. My DS’s say that we were considered by both their friends and teachers to be the most unpushy parents in the universe. DS2 who went to Winchester kept his feet firmly planted on the desk through most of his time there to such an extent that even I got slightly twitchy. He said he didn’t feel under any pressure at all. But I have spoken to both boys and parents of boys who were at Winchester at the same time who tell a different story they felt that the environment was very pressurised.
Over the many years my DS’s have boarded I’ve met some mind bogglingly pushy parents, I’ve seen spread sheets tracking currents marks and predicting grades at yr 13, I’ve listened to parents who analyse every word of a school report, fret for ages and nag about their child’s position in the class/year, push to have their child moved up to the “top set”, have apoplexy at even the suggestion of moving them down, spend 30+ minutes talking to subject teachers at parents teacher meetings discussing why Henry was given 60% for a history essay 7 weeks ago when they should have been given 90% and obviously tutoring the nuts of their children at exeats/holidays the moment a grade slipped by a couple of %.
On top of that let’s be realistic here what ever schools say grades are important and their pupils know this.
Therefore some children with this level of shall we call it expectation from both school and parents will inevitably feel that they are in a very pushy environment and that they under significant pressure to perform and this makes them stressed and miserable.
So I guess you need to look at yourself; be honest with yourself are you a pushy parent? How do you compare to other parents? When my DS’s first went to prep school I used to be at a loss for words listening to the behaviours of some parents but as time went by I began to realise it was me that was different one here. Also your DS, or ask a friend what do they honestly think?
You should also consider your DS how resilient or you could say resistant is he to pushing. IMO it’s easier for a serious non conformist to ignore being pushed by both their parents and the school.
I work with children last week I listened to a child who was in tears she is at a poorly performing local state school but tell me she feels under huge pressure from both the school and her parents to do well and how stressed this making her feel and it’s affecting sadly her physical health. So it’s not just high performing schools that are pushy or have pushy parents.

I agree that stress/competitiveness at these schools depends more on the parents than on the school. I have 2 DCs (with very different personalities and academic strengths) at Westminster who are both very happy. They both have friends with parents who range from totally relaxed to mega pushy and it’s the kids with pushy parents who are the stressed ones. In my experience, the housemasters at Westminster worry more about those who are pushed too hard by their parents than those who are cruising along with their studies.

The responses are very helpful. Thank you

I know two kids, one currently at Winchester, one who went to Winchester on full scholarship (math and language scholar) and is now at Durham Uni. Both boys are rather individual, not particularly extrovert or sporty. They both loved it.
Have no experience of the other schools, but stepson went to Charterhouse and liked it very much after three weeks of homesickness!
All went at 13.

I suspect how pushy you DS finds schools like Westminster Eton and Winchester also depends on how bright they are and how much tutoring you’ve done to get them in there in the first place. Exceedingly bright children who’ve done exceedingly well in entrance exams with minimal or no outside tutoring will probably feel under less pressure to do well than those who scrapped in with lots of tutoring.. The latter are likely to be aware that they are going to have to work very hard to keep up.

I agree. Both mine had close friends who were towards the bottom of the year group. More likely because they started at 7+ rather than because they were excessively tutored, and I understand it was not a particularly happy place to be. However both got into good Universities where they thrived, with good study skills and enjoying being further up the cohort. Westminster appears to make every effort to reward non academic achievement, and makes very little fuss about academic prizes or achievement. But there is no getting away from it. These schools are very selective.

DC have had a similar experience. At University DS discovered he was really rather a good mathematician (now taking a quantitative PhD at a US top ten department), something he had never realised at school. Looking back we are better able to identify those who probably had bag fulls of tutoring both to get into the school and whilst there. (One boarder friend of DS confessed, when staying with us, that he had spent every Christmas and Easter at a tutorial college, with only Christmas day off...yes he was in a higher maths set than DS!)

Education is a long path. On average they will probably do about five years of post-school education. The important thing is that they enjoy their education, and this happens by being a good fit with the school. There are plenty of good private schools in London and I am not convinced that you get a better "outcome" for a specific child, as in something measurable like Oxbridge entry, by going to Westminster. That said, neither of mine went to Oxbridge, DD because she wanted something different so chose not to apply, yet they really enjoyed their schooling and left well prepared with the independent study skills required at University, and still genuinely appear to enjoy education.

The problem is not unique to these schools. DD is studying medicine and suspects some of her peers have been heavily tutored to gain the grades they needed. Indeed that some may have been directed towards medicine by parents or others, so struggle with the more vocational aspects. For these education remains hard work, and for some, tutoring probably continues.

That said, big name schools will attract a higher proportion of parents seeking big name schools, and if the fit is wrong there may be problems. For the quirky, bright and individual child, or a child who just enjoys school and does not need extra effort to gain a place, Westminster is fabulous.

Yes I agree, they need to feel happy at school while being sufficiently challenged to go outside their comfort zones. DS’s current prep school is outside London and does an excellent job of this. The boys are all so very happy, and get great results.

I suppose I’m drawing a similar comparison. London schools being typically pushy environments and highly pressurised, vs a school outside with massive grounds and a more happy vibe.

I know many parents send their sons to DS’s prep school as they want to get away from the highly pressured London preps.

I assume a similar dynamic will carry on into secondary school (perhaps driven by more pushy parents conglomerating in the London schools)?

I’m really surprised to hear that people tutor their kids while at these schools. Surely all the fees and amazing level of teaching should be sufficient?! 🙄🙄

Some kids will be tutored, whichever school they are in!

#insalaco Sorry, that was v ambiguous posting - W in my post meant Westminster.

And there is plenty of tutoring at Eton too, it just has to happen in the holidays....

Extra tutoring on weekends/holidays is insane, unless it is only temporary and seeks to address a structural issue (like if a subject like Latin is needed for CE, but not taught at the state school). And it's cruel too: reminds me a bit of forced child labour.

Imho weekend/holiday tutoring will inevitably lead to burnout by the age of 20 for those poor children. Why don't their parents let them to play, meet friends, enjoy life or just take some perspective instead?

Life is a marathon: peak too early and you have long struggle afterwards, in my view.