Are you happy with GHS?

[LatinSisters]

We’ve been happy with Guildford High until now. I’m keen to hear other opinions. Maybe lots of schools are currently dreadful not just ours?

We've been really happy but heard grumbles from other parents. To be fair, I think lots of schools are in tough situations with all this covid, isolating, bubbles etc!
What are your concerns?

We have been really happy with how they have dealt with the current circumstances. What is the issue?

Unfortunately it feels like the wheels are coming off this previously well-oiled machine. We too were happy but the 2020 A Levels were a fiasco and the pastoral care is non existent. The poor girls are being placed under so much excessive pressure and mental health is being impacted. This is probably a bit blunt for what you were looking for but we are very worried at the moment.

2020 A levels were a nightmare everywhere.

We have always found GHS extremely efficient and fun. It isn't a cosy school but it the systems were always there when needed and we liked the mix of down to earth, ambitious/confidence building and buzzy. i don't think that's gone anywhere. I guess it depends on specific year groups and specific situations. Been delighted with Covid online stuff.

It has become a very 'shiny' school. I have DC with a big age gap and remember the days it was highly academic but had really normal teenage girls, rebelling and being less than perfect in other ways without it being a huge deal/crisis or need for intervention necessarily. I think the general push on wellbeing/self care etc in all these private girls schools can unintentionally promote perfectionism and taking things too seriously. It sends a message that it is another area of life to try and excel in or flop in and fall victim to. I can see it is tough and these topics need to be talked about. Just not sure what the solution or balance is. This isn't a GHS problem.. more a general academic girls school problem.

That’s a shame to hear negative feedback about GHS as it’s one of the schools you usually never hear a bad word about. I have always been very impressed that they get such fabulous results despite the fact their intake isn’t always the cream of the crop - it represents really fantastic value add....

"despite the fact their intake isn’t always the cream of the crop"

Really? I would not agree with that at all.

@Mycatslovedreamies

That’s a shame to hear negative feedback about GHS as it’s one of the schools you usually never hear a bad word about. I have always been very impressed that they get such fabulous results despite the fact their intake isn’t always the cream of the crop - it represents really fantastic value add....

I’d have to agree with @Baaaahhhhh on this one. Whilst it’s a shame to hear criticism of any school, as they all do try their best, to say GHS don’t cream-off isn’t quite right. Their intake is bright, it always has been, completion is strong and they turn people away every year who won’t meet their academic standards... which is entirely fair enough as that’s what they ‘all about’. If you’re talking about ‘value added’, ie taking a broader spectrum of students at 11+ and affording them the opportunity to do well in their exams, at the end, then GHS isn’t really that school.

Yes they turn students down. As do the majority of local girls schools though. However, they don't have the choice of extremely extremely high standard candidates as equivalent London girls day schools yet they do get the results. It is clear from their increased marketing they don't instantly get the dream cohorts turning up on the doorstep.

Having taught nearer London in SW girls schools and had girls of my own at GHS, there is a big difference in the candidate range. Girls who apply to the likes of Putney, Godolphin etc and then down to GHS (usually living Wimbledon area) tend to get GHS but not always the other offers. It really surprised me and made me respect what GHS does to be so consistently stellar and often solidly above the aforementioned schools in terms of league tables. It really empowers this girls to achieve and believe. Really fab school. Same with some of the other Guildford area privates too.

“Not the cream of the crop” is probably not the right phrase....I was referring to the fact that they have a lot of girls that they have taken at reception or year 3 and it can be very difficult to tell who the super bright kids are at that age (and they still do very well)....we have also had middle set girls go at 11+ from my DDs prep school. The “odds” of getting into GHS at 11+ are about 1/4 compared to schools like St Paul’s Girls School where it’s 1/10 (similar to some of the super selective in the London area).The headmistress at our DDs prep school always tells us that GHS are interested in the whole girl and don’t choose them based on academic test scores alone - they are also not overly concerned with CAT scores unlike the Super selective boys schools who want a score of 130 and above....my god daughter got into GHS with an average CAT score of 110. But yes, undoubtably you have to be at a certain level of “clever” to get in there and you wouldn’t want to be bumping along the bottom. On the whole though, I think they do add some value and don’t just rely on the girls being the finished product when they arrive.

I think the comment about "Shiney" hits it right on - I have a long enough memory to remember when the girls didn't look like clones and there were real rebels who thrived there.

I think it’s the case that any school which has its own Prep that feeds through into the senior part, will have a wider range of ability at Senior level than one which selects everyone from an 11+ exam.

I know that schools ‘manage out’ some of their weaker students before senior school, but there are always some that scrape into the seniors who wouldn’t have received offers through 11+. Not to say that this is necessarily a bad thing, and as others say, the fact they can squeeze (and it really is a squeeze in some cases) the amazing results they get out of some of them is a huge achievement on the part of the school.

And in the end the level of selectivity is a numbers game. Being outside London will mean applications per place will be a bit lower and so the school has less to choose from....still plenty of choice but not at the level of a London school or a state Grammar. They are bound to have some at the ‘bottom end’ who wouldn’t have made it into the schools with a bigger applicant pool.

And there’s the issue of consistently being at the top of the league tables....in some ways the only way is down. No school wants to drop and so they have to devise more and more ways to remain at the top. You can either be more and more draconian in managing out earlier and earlier, Or limiting the range of choices available to certain girls and only letting them go into the smaller range of subjects where top grades are possible for them, or you can improve teaching etc to a point, or you can increase the pressure on staff and students to achieve more. Even when some schools try to avoid adding to pressure, they still do it because stress and pressure just abounds even when unspoken in some schools. It can filter down from management to the next level who feel under pressure, who then pressure the heads of subjects who then pressure the teachers who then pressure the students.

GHS fees are certainly at the lower end for a school achieving at their level, compared to the London schools and their applicants per place is likely to be lower than London schools purely because of location, so what they achieve in terms of results is pretty amazing really. But it won’t be and can’t be easily achieved and that’s not without cost somewhere along the line.

HyperHippo it sounds as if you have had a great experience which is lovely to hear.
Of course all schools struggled - and continue to struggle - with the exam chaos and the Govt’s indecision/incompetence. That said, according to the 2020 parent grapevine, there is action being taken against GHS for its approach to the A level grading system as tens of talented girls (30+?) ended up without uni places. This suggests that GHS did not cope with the unusual circumstances as well as most other schools. Maybe this is what LatinSisters is referring to?
No school is perfect and GHS does a lot remarkably well: the dedication of most teachers cannot be faulted and indeed some astound in their willingness to go above and beyond for the girls.
The problem lies with the management which has a tendency to favour statistics and algorithms and forget that the girls are individuals.
The girls coming up from the Prep can lead to a wider ability range than you may think but let’s keep some perspective: it’s not that wide and all girls there are keen to learn. Those at the very bottom are supported well and this is where there’s value-added. If you have a very able child who’s not a superstar, they may feel a bit forgotten in the middle.
Yes MollyButton- My bright, wilful DDs were not the “shiny” ones; it’s not a place for girls who like to test boundaries. But I don’t imagine many private schools are...

Thanks SurreyGuru. I am not a sixth form parent currently so out of the loop on that. That is really sad for those girls and sounds like a lesson to be learnt for GHS.

I think this thread has a really good balanced view of it. Ultimately, it really is a fab place doing its best to keep on improving and more realistically... just keep going in the current tough times.

against GHS for its approach to the A level grading system as tens of talented girls (30+?) ended up without uni places

Wow. That just doesn't make sense though. I am assuming all girls got at least 3 x A's, based on previous performance, and therefore would have met their offers. How can that be GHS's problem? Surely that's the universities requesting deferals, or prioritising state schools?? How odd.

What happened?
Did GHS give the Centre Assessed grades (CAGs) based on the reality of what they thought students would get and then find that after the downgrading they went back to those CAAGs whereas other schools had significantly inflated their CAGs and then gained from doing it after the downgrades were reversed? That’s the only thing I can think happened - because in the end everyone got their CAG this year.

Some schools were realistic with their CAGs (although GHS’s would always have been very high even if realistic so hard to see what issue could have been) so that they wouldn’t be downgraded so much. Others still super inflated them and then did experience significant downgrading in the original grades that came out. But because the government then did a u-turn, the CAGs stood and schools who had inflated got those inflated grades. The thing was, schools could not have known this would happen.

Why did 30+ girls not get their uni places? Is that really the case?

As someone in education I am struggling to understand too. I wonder what level of truth vs exaggeration there is here. I know from my own school that it was all a complete nightmare in most schools.
I agree, somewhere like GHS majority would be getting A or A* predictions, which is also in line with historic data, so it is odd...

It does seem shocking that somewhere like GHS could have messed up like this. But unfortunately for those girls who suffered, it’s true. From what I understand, it’s due to misjudgements at different stages of the process, including devising and applying their own algorithm.
It’s odd that this school, normally first to put its results online, is completely silent about 2020. I’m not sure how many girls are appealing/resitting their CAGs. Obviously if they want to stop the speculation, it would be helpful to publish the results and explain what happened and how they are ensuring the same thing does not happen again.
Every school faced a pretty impossible situation but most chose to see the best in their pupils and err on the optimistic side. If you have 5 students capable of getting an A but historic results suggest 2 will not do so due to nerves on the day etc, schools generally took the view to award A to the 5 not wishing to guess who would have the wobble and thus perhaps unfairly disadvantage them.
Let’s hope the current cohort gets to sit the exams.

But all schools had to rank pupils. In the original system, the grade given wasn't the key to it all, it was the rank place. So in your example, whatever grade was given to the bottom 2 of the top 5, the gov algorithm woukd give them an A not an A. And knowing that and not wanting to be seen to be over generous, lots of schools therefore awarded their historic avargwae or slightly above in the CAGs. So using your example again, perhaps GHS gave 3 A or 4A to those girls. On results day, probably 3 got A and then when the upturn happened, whatever the CAG had been was awarded, so perhaps still 3 or possibly 4 if that's what they gave. But then there was still that 5th person....who had hoped for an A and had it as a UCAS prediction, but didn't get it, and they felt cheated by the school. Although the he reality would have been that someone, one of those 5 or possibly 2 wouldn't have got the A anyway in exams....but no-one knew which system.

It still doesn't really explain why any algorithm used by the school would deliver worse result that their historic average. So to be honest, I remain in doubt about 30% not getting uni places, especially when the Unis took so many more than usual this year because the grades in the end were significantly better than usual.

I guess if the legal action reaches a court outcome you can see the in’s and out’s. I have no reason whatsoever to exaggerate or make up stories. I am simply responding to the original post questioning GHS’s handling of the current situation.
Your understanding about higher grades than normal and more flexibility from unis applies to most schools and makes the position of the GHS girls who missed out more difficult to bear.

Okay, fair enough...I clearly don’t know the ins and outs of this situation, just that it seems so unusual. As you say, the unusualness this year would make it even more difficult.

Have a friend who has a DD who is affected. Not sure about the volume of girls involved, it’s a group, but 30 seems a lot... but my understanding is they are appealing the methodology that was used to derive the centre assessed grades. Apparently there ‘is a case’, but don’t know more than that.

hi there
we have a dd who has just heard that she is having to go through the same cag process this year with the new lockdown. can i ask, do you know exactly what happened or where i can find out. i'm keen to put the school on the spot so they dont make the same mistake again!
thanks

Surely you’ve got to pose that question to the management team there? It was a shit show by many accounts, I’m sure they’ll have learned lessons!

@Lotusmonster

Surely you’ve got to pose that question to the management team there? It was a shit show by many accounts, I’m sure they’ll have learned lessons!

Well yes of course but i'll get the party line will i not? So thought id get the parent view...

Hi @jnoj, I think you posed this somewhere else as well, but a good source of info might be some of your DS's Year 13 friends, who would've been in the year above her, and affected when it happened?

BUT, like the PP said, it was a very disappointing time for the girls - a mate of mine, his daughter is just one that took a hit on her results as a result of strange, and slightly dodgy actions by the school leadership.

Also, im sure this year there will be a more robust system in place than last, so those types of things don't happen again - also, i'm pretty sure GHS wont risk a repeat of summer 2020.

Finally, who's saying it will be a CAG system anyway? The government have just said that "exams wont go ahead in their current form", that doesn't mean they're cancelled.....