Part 2: SW London Girl's Indies 11+ Pandemic Panic!

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www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3962084-Upcoming-girls-independent-SW-London-schools-11-exams?pg=40

Hello all, this thread continues from the previous "Upcoming Girl's Independent SW London Schools 11+ Exams" thread set up by @Oceane11Plus.

@PatoPato cleverly noticed, message slots were running low for the epic long thread as above, so all chat now continues here...

[Post edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

Congratulations @Stircrazyschoolmum and @MarshaBradyo on the Alleyns offers - great news.

I have everything crossed that the WLs will move quickly. I also wonder if some schools might be more sympathetic re. deposits given the unusual situation this year? I also wonder where this is going re. ISEB in future years given we need to do this all over again for DD2 in a few years!

Has anyone heard from Ibstock?

Just passing through. Congratulations everybody! For those waiting for WL, they will move, although may be just a little bit for the super super selective schools.

@Pkompel Well done for getting Habs, SHHS and G&L. But Habs & G&L are on the opposite sides of the London. Where do you live? No judgement here - we had NLCS, CLSG, G&L, LU and SHHS once upon a time.

Congratulations to all who have had more offers today. Well done to your DDs.
@Tr0ubled yes, similar situations in that the school we now realise is really our first choice is the one we are WL for. Time will tell. Definitely ISEB effect for us too. What’s more frustrating is that 1 paper let DD down it seems ( was average), she did extremely well in the other 3. She got the maximum scholarship from woldingham based on ISEB, but obviously not as selective as others and maybe they didn’t look at that 1 paper so much, who knows???. I got feedback from the non-ISEB schools and she did very well on that subject in those exams. Her teacher was quite surprised, because it is her strongest subject too. But unfortunately we are not at a prep school, so no one to put in a good word for us, so we wait and hope.
I want to say this thread has been ( and still is) a life line and very comforting. I thought I’d be upset coming back on here, but honestly it’s been lovely to read about how everyone is getting on and to see the offers as well as the fact that we are not alone. I hope everyone will continue to post as they deliberate offers and thought processes. I have been known to live vicariously through others’ good news

@Summertime2 IPS came with the post today

@Addmelater3, Thank you. We currently live in Harrow, planning to move closer to relevant tube line once we decide. My work place is near Regent's street (post COVID) , so either line would work. Any thoughts/feedback on pastoral care or personality fit between Habs & G&L? My daughter loves maths, science, drama but not one to comply readily!

@Tr0ubled we are in the same boat too and impacted by the ISEB assessment with one subject score being the culprit .
What I’m worried now is about people holding onto 6 offers from other ISEB schools while waiting for a super super selective ISEB school waitlist to clear . Like waiting for a G&L waitlist to clear and holding onto all other SW ISEB schools and I have already seen instances of that . That would mean an excruciating wait with no predictions until the deadline :(

@pkompel a friend of mine has a DD in year 7 at G&L and she says the pastoral care has been fantastic. Her DD has really struggled with homeschool and the school have been super supportive, understanding and flexible with her. My friend says they’ve surpassed her expectations

@Flossietea Thank you for sharing. That is really useful to know.

[quote Trialsat11]@Tr0ubled we are in the same boat too and impacted by the ISEB assessment with one subject score being the culprit .
What I’m worried now is about people holding onto 6 offers from other ISEB schools while waiting for a super super selective ISEB school waitlist to clear . Like waiting for a G&L waitlist to clear and holding onto all other SW ISEB schools and I have already seen instances of that . That would mean an excruciating wait with no predictions until the deadline :([/quote]
@Trialsat11 why are they doing that? Surely they should only hold onto their first choice offer while waiting for the outcome of their waitlist option. Holding on to all of them doesn't make sense unless they are truly undecided and are still figuring it out which I suppose is fair enough.

@pkompel Like what @Flossietea said, G&L has indeed excellent pastoral care. I will PM you in a bit.

Everything will change on national offer day. Many will hold offers until grammar results are out. We have already let one offer go and just holding one independent and waiting on grammar. I hope others will not be selfish and will release offers so WL move. @Trialsat11 and @Tr0ubled which offers are you holding? I’m sure it will all work out and your existing offers are probably amazing schools anyway?

@Corblimbea we have KGS , Surbiton and Epsom and will be releasing two of them in the half term .
@SouthLondonMommy most of the ones which have held on to more than 4/5 have the excuse that they rather release all of them at the same time then do it as and when they make a decision . It is ignorance of the fact that every offer released actually has a downstream impact on more than 1 person as it is a chain effect !

Wow @Trialsat11 you have three great offers. We just released KGS and we are holding Sutton and waiting for grammars. If your DD ends up at Epsom, KGS or Surbiton she will defo be happy as all great schools. Girls from our prep have been happy at each of them. Good luck. Really hope that this year people aren’t selfish to hold five offers!

@Corblimbea we only have 1 offer, our other 3 are all WL. We’ll hold onto it as will take it if none of the others come through.

Thank you for all your supportive messages. And so many congrats to those with the offers they want. X

Hold tight @Tr0ubled We have 3 offers now with Ibstock Place and will likely come off our waitlists. I think plenty of discussions will be taking place this week within households and people will release steadily. I agree National Offer Day will be a crucial time for a real shift.
In terms of a Prep Head having leverage, in reality they don't as much as people think. We will have our discussion with our Head next week. We will also not want to hold on to places that can go to another child.
Just keep in touch with the schools you and Dd are really interested in.

@Addmelater3 which school did you choose in the end? Which one would you recommend between CLSG and G&L?

Putney high vs Godolphin vs possibly St Paul’s Girls ? Help!!
Please be kind, don’t want to sound like I am bragging . DD has done well beyond our expectations . We are fortunate to have offers from PHS and G&L and CLGS. Done interview for SPGS, awaiting results. She is wait listed for Wimbledon High . Does not want LU as coed , so will have to say no to them. Can get to all pretty easily within 25 min on public transport except CLGS ( 45 min). Now trying to decide which to accept , in case we do get SPGS.
All advise gratefully received if you have DD in any of these schools.

Morning all- congratulations to all of the offers and good luck with deliberating! We had a car crash with ISEB it seems but thankfully still had three offers, one of which was original favourite school which is fantastic. As with four other DC in previous years, we thought the process was pretty tough going, and this year worse than others. I can really relate to those sweating a WL, as mentioned before, we went through this w DD 3 at LEH. At that time we did accept PHS and pay the deposit, then chose to switch once offer came through day after acceptances due. Hoping this year with how uneven the ISEB offers might be (some w many offers, some with waitlists) that things might move before those deadlines! Remember, if you have a WL spot you are way better off than we were as our DD 4 did not get any ISEB schools- straight nos! Thankfully (!!!!) the original fave school we are accepting had own test (not Emanuel). Anyway just to say that hoping things sort for people. I am so glad to say we are now finished w the 11 plus process in our house. Wishing everyone all the best.

Morning and happy Valentine’s!

For those trying to decide between offers, one of the things I found useful was creating a decision-making table so I could make an objective decision based on all factors, not just academics and reputation. Sometimes I think it’s possible to prefer one school with your head and another school with your heart!

Using Excel, I listed the schools in a column (i.e. equivalent of y-axis) and listed all the most important criteria in a row (i.e. equivalent of x-axis). Then I assigned a score for each of these criteria against the particular school. For some criteria I double-weighted the score to give that issue more magnitude – for instance, journey time. I also gave a school extra marks where they had a special/niche offering that was relevant to my DD, such as tuition in a particular instrument (but it could be a new science building, an onsite swimming pool, or direct access to the river for rowing, etc.).

Everyone will have their own list of essential criteria but the ones I used were: ease of travel, academics, school fees, any niche offering, local friends, size of grounds, ties with boys’ schools, and facilities.

The final ranking for each school in some cases surprised me and helped me re-appraise a school in a more rounded way. In particular I think we can become too overly-focused on league tables as that’s the main (visual) way that schools are compared against each other, when actually things like local friends and travel time will be just as significant in the life of a DC. And for many, it will be affordability as this is likely to impact the whole family.

Another thing that someone said which might be helpful for those on waitlists is to focus on the offers you have in hand. Park the waitlists for now and get excited about the actual offers, as there must have been something special about that school for you to have applied there in the first place. And then whatever happens your DC will feel good about themselves come September.

Anyway, just my two pennies’ worth! The last thing I want to do is to sound prescriptive but a few weeks ago I realized I needed to see the decision-making more through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl and not those of a middle-aged mum!! Good luck everyone

@dazedandconfused11plus Happy 💗 Day!!

Amazing advice as always. Thanks so much. Very clear, useful and constructive. Thanks for sorting my Sunday. It really is bamboozling working things out and to help release places onto WL swiftly for those waiting.

We have narrowed our 3 offers to 1 and so wanted to ask what suggestions would you make if the offer we cannot decide on is a wish list school we hoped for but really didn’t expect to get and so never fully prepared for practicalities or got to visit physically visit due to the Covid cancelled open days, so only virtual open day q&a.

A concern is also the distance (45mins depending) whereas our two first choice schools for were familiar and closer and we had visited and know a lot more about (25 mins) but didn’t get offers for due to DD’s nightmare ISEB factors on the day.

I can’t see how the offer holder event and website etc info will necessarily help to get that physical and nitty gritty insight. Worried what is in DD’s mind is really not enough choose a school on and don’t want to go just on second hand info or based on what we know about their high profile ranking. Would be good to tick as many excel sheet boxes for what best suits DD. But how do we do that?

From the two schools we are letting go and whilst we love them, I would say they were our back up choices, both are co-ed which incidentally I wanted in the first place and one is only 10mins travel and can walk it too and the other is a coach ride from end of our road. Seems mad discounting the closer one when I think about it esp as I am slightly hesitant on the longer journey.

We also have an excellent all girls state choice which I expect we get on national offer day 1 March. Although DD is not so keen anymore for various reasons and I am still weighing it up and will have to convince her if I have to. It is a tube journey (30 or so mins).

Aargh! So very grateful to have had the offers come through, just incredibly hard finalising.

Amazing advice @dazedandconfused11plus - I agree that I’m trying to go with heart over head. Our prep head was very clear that reputation can massively cloud judgment. The advice was to go with gut feeling about what was right for our child at this specific time, rather than the ‘status’ of schools - but it is hard to go against the noise. We also took a decision to listen to DD - her choice is not the most ‘prestigious’ offer but one where she says she felt ‘at home’. I will use your advice to work between her choice and the grammars which we may get on offers day. Cost is a massive factor for us. A lot of people seem to go on results, too, but all of these schools have amazing results really and the more selective the school, the better the inevitable results! Last year, a close friend chose one of the ‘bigger reputation’ schools, almost entirely based on school gate conversations - her DD has not been at all happy and has felt quite ‘lost’ (maybe covid related) in a big cohort and is moving to a smaller school for y8 now, which was actually the girl’s first choice last year. I think we, as middle aged mums, think about the status/reputation/prestige a bit too much. I admit there is a part of me wanting a grammar place for DD just to keep up with the other mums! Even if I don’t really think it’s the best place for her now. DD seemed to make a clear choice by the ‘feel’ of a school and I honestly just want her to be happy.

@dazedandconfused11plus @Corblimbea you both make some excellent points! I have a spreadsheet but even some basic information (size of cohort, school day etc) can be really hard to extract from the websites!

I'm trying to put a weighting on having a new head in a pandemic.. is there a benefit to having someone who knows the school and staff in the first year whilst life settles back to normal.. very subjective I know!!

On this note, I'm sure I've read somewhere recently that the head of y7 at Alleyn's is moving to Emanuel.. I can't find it anymore though.. did I imagine it?!

@indimum We had a similar position two years ago - WL from WHS, SPGS offer, plus another offer on the table with a significant scholarship. And a Tiffin place. In the end, we went on a mix of gut feel and journey.

On feel, dd enjoyed the SPGS exam day, felt she’d fit in, loved what she’d heard about the music, enjoyed the food (surprisingly important!) and liked the lack of uniform. I know it’s harder this year, without the chance to see the school.

On journey, we wanted one where she would have at least one good back-up option if her primary means of transport failed. And we didn’t want her reliant on a bus service because we (rightly) thought she’d want to be going in early / late for rehearsals, and would want more flexibility than a school bus gives. We also wanted to minimise walking as we expected she’d be carrying a lot, which actually wasn’t true before lockdown (they have two lockers, for books and sports stuff) but which really helped in the autumn term when she had to carry everything back and forth each day so she’d have it at home if her bubble burst.

@dazedandconfused11plus @Corblimbea I'm reposting some excellent considerations that @Iamsodone made further up thread as they weren't ones I had necessarily thought of!

some thoughts below :

• Access to teachers: some schools share teachers email's address while others don't (like Alleyn's where everything goes through the tutor)
• reporting to parents : how many times a year, do you get reporting ?

think Alleyn's and WHS is only twice a year (November and June) while other schools send grades reports before every half-term and holidays

• size classes (think PHS is quite high)
• whether they are set for subjects (maths) from Y7 or later
• languages options/path (which ones and when do they start 2nd language)
• music (how many bands/orchestra, choir), how inclusive is it ?
• GCSE options ? how many do x3 science against 2x ?
• Sports: how inclusive sports is, are teams fluid or not.
• Week-end activities: i.e. Saturday sport or others activities
• school trips ?