St Mary Magdalene Academy

[hibbledibble]

I'm seriously thinking about this school for my eldest daughter. It would probably be the most realistic option for her, given she is extremely clever, but not motivated enough to do enough work to stand a chance at 11+ entry to grammar schools, and private schools are out of reach financially.

Any recent opinions on the school? Everything I read and here sounds good, but it's difficult to find much recent information, and what is available is limited given it's still a relatively new secondary.

Any information on how hard it is to gain entry via the exam route, and the style of the exam?

Thank you

I don’t have insider knowledge, but the school remains very popular and well thought-of locally.

Here’s the information that was published about the style of the most recent test:

smma.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/document/Governors-Aptitude-Test-Information.pdf?t=1611708378

Have loads of friends with DC there and all of them really rate it. They are very well organised and many different kinds of kids thrive there. At the moment, in lockdown they are having more or less a full day of live streamed lessons from what I hear. The mandarin programme is excellent.

Don't underestimate the difficulty of getting a governor's aptitude place though even if your DD is bright. She'll need to do practice papers at the very least. This year the exam was VR and english as I recall. But I know some quite heavily tutored kids who didn't get guaranteed places, though they probably will on the wait list, which usually goes quite far down. Went down to around 100 on the list last year as I recall but I'm not 100% sure about that, someone who knows more will no doubt be along...

Great to hear, thank you, I'm feeling reassured. We may well get a place based on distance, so I'm not overly worried about the governor's test.

I'm bumping this in case there is anyone else with info/opinions to share.

I think the catchment area has been shrinking as I think the school has a sibling policy (ie siblings of children who get in through the exam then automatically get a place).

Great school. The catchment has become very small as a result. I think that they publish the cut off distance each year so maybe check this to see if you are comfortably in.

There have been questionable actions by the leadership of this school that have not been in the best interest of the children. It is a popular choice because it is one of the better local state schools on paper. I stress on paper. The lockdown provisions were poor. One could give the school a break on the first lockdown, but they still didn't have it together by the second. And, if you have a child with any issues socially or educationally they will push to off-roll your child which actually isn't legal. I know someone there who has been extremely let down and I'm not impressed with the actions of the school at all.

I’d be interested to know why this school is so oversubscribed and popular amongst parents but gets a “good” Ofsted rating?

@thesunday I think it's a mixture of being in an area with not great provision for secondary as well as seeming to offer more than an average state school through the Mandarin excellence programme, although I think that is only for the exam children? I have a friend whose daughter did the exam but they ended up putting it lower on the CAF as their local schools got better results.

The last Ofsted Inspection was a short inspection in 2017 which included the primary school in its remit. It identified two areas for improvement - one related to the primary school and the other was ensuring that the attainment of boys was as high as that of girls. I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on Good versus Outstanding Ofsted in this instance.

The Mandarin Excellence programme starts in Year 7.

Personally, we feel that our children are receiving an outstanding education at SMMA. One of them has transformed from a reluctant learner to enjoying learning, engaging happily and achieving good marks. We would certainly recommend the school.