Why on earth would anyone reject SPGS??

[newsibling123]

I've been reading through many threads with mums wondering between SPGS and G&L.

While G&L is a great school, why on Earth would there be a conflict in choosing SPGS, they applied in the first place, its not like they got cold called by the school and their DD offered a place!

If we applied to SPGS, we'd put G&L as back up, but if we had two offers there's no question we'd choose SPGS. The only way I can imagine conflict is if G&L offered a scholarship, or DD really didn't want to go SPGS, even then we would try and show her what a brilliant opportunity it was.

I know one chooses the best school for the DC, etc etc, but I can't imagine any scenario, all things being equal, how G&L would be 'better'. If DD was heavily tutored and parent was worried she'd struggle at SPGS now they have offer in hand, then G&L doesn't come to mind as an alternative to that! One of the less intense GDST schools or somewhere with broader selection, less high academic like Portland or More House maybe?

Don't mean to offend anyone here, choosing school is tough, but I just don't get this at all...It's like getting a place at Oxford and choosing Durham

[quote TheAbbotOfUnreason]**@Emilyontmoor seems to have answered OP’s question “Why on earth would anyone reject SPGS??”

Best decisions we ever made was to let one DD decide to reject SPGS in favour of a school that was certainly instrumental in giving her the motivation and confidence necessary to succeed in a traditionally male dominated discipline / field

But apparently, despite OP claiming that they wouldn’t force a child to attend a school they didn’t like, that’s “an agenda”.[/quote]
@TheAbbotOfUnreason

Not only did my original post say if the DD didn't want to go, that's fine, but @Emilyontmoor then goes on to say in her post a tirade against SPGS and the usual anti -SPGS diatribe ...in other words, an agenda,

@newsibling123 I have no grudge against SPGS (not educated in London myself; don't have a DD; have got on very well with all Paulinas I've met), but your attitude is more than a little bit creepy. You don't even have a child at the school, and you seem completely obsessed! I can understand the mothers who do have DDs attending SPGS being periodically frustrated by stereotypes coming up on Mumsnet, but the level of ire in your posts is something else. Wait till your DD is admitted before getting so steamed up, is my advice.

Er...From my original OP - "The only way I can imagine conflict is if G&L offered a scholarship, or DD really didn't want to go SPGS, "

Which is exactly the reason Emilyontmoor gave you and you accused them of having an agenda

You do seem obsessed with league tables to the point where you can’t see that there’s a whole slew of schools that admit high academic performers and churn out similar exam results. Your attitude that anyone not choosing the school topping the tables for reasons that don’t suit your narrow viewpoint is frankly bonkers.

[quote Innocenta]@newsibling123 I have no grudge against SPGS (not educated in London myself; don't have a DD; have got on very well with all Paulinas I've met), but your attitude is more than a little bit creepy. You don't even have a child at the school, and you seem completely obsessed! I can understand the mothers who do have DDs attending SPGS being periodically frustrated by stereotypes coming up on Mumsnet, but the level of ire in your posts is something else. Wait till your DD is admitted before getting so steamed up, is my advice. [/quote]
You don't have a DD but feel free to post on a thread about girls schools, I do have a DD, ( primary school age) so physically not possible to have her at the school, so I shouldn't comment...Right.

Yes, @Innocenta starting one thread on mumsnet proves I'm obsessed and think nothing about nothing else except SPGS.....FFS

No, it's the 42 comments that make you seem obsessed!

I had to Google SPGS and G&L. My DDs went to/go to the local bog standard comp. DD1 came out with 4xA* and is at a top uni. Sorry for the boast. Just remember motivated and intelligent kids will do well in any decent school.

@Innocenta

No, it's the 42 comments that make you seem obsessed!

You counted every comment I've made and I'm the one obsessed???...(psst, I haven't posted half that amount) xxx

You do seem more than a tad aerated about this OP - despite "signing off" for the first time on Saturday, here you remain.

@newsibling123 I'm on the mobile app; it autodisplays how many comments the OP has made. No counting necessary.

NEW Where have I started on a tirade about SPGS!? I have no issue with the school where it is the right choice for a girl based on all it has to offer, I just don't think it has everything to offer every girl, even if they are offered a place. Indeed I am a total Sarah Fletcher fangirl. I think she is a fantastic educator and I totally agree with her progressive and controversial views, especially on the benefits for all in catering for different learning styles. I wish our politicians had listened to her. I do wonder how her strategies go down at SPGS, especially with the parent body. However there are equally impressive Heads at other schools and you do realise she came via KGS and CLBS? Do you think she was any less effective in those schools? In fact arguably she was more effective at KGS since she followed someone well past their use by date and had more scope to transform the school. Do you think the KGS pupils were any less inspired to achieve in all areas of academia, sport, the arts by her leadership simply because the school is slightly less selective ?

My stories were extreme examples of the obsession some parents have with SPGS as the "top school", as you put it "all being equal", as if the academic horse race that are league tables are the only measure of a school's success, and the only possible reason someone would not send their child there is if they didn't want to go. An obsession that is implicit in your posts. "Why on earth" could there be any other reason? I was simply highlighting that it is an obsession that has caused a lot of issues for my DDs peer group. As many have already pointed out from experience all things are not equal. In fact the only thing that is equal is that all these schools enable clever pupils to get to top universities. My issue is not with SPGS, it is with that parental obsession with SPGS. I am sure Sarah Fletcher shares our views.

Take your askance at netball being a decider. Well lots of pupils do choose LEH over SPGS for sports including netball because of their superior on site space and facilities. In netball their close links to Whitton Netball Club and into the county and national talent programmes have definitely been deciders for some pupils. Even more so the rowing facilities and programme.

I assume that Sarah Fletcher will have addressed this now but in the past if you had a very clever child with SpLDs then LU and Westminster were streets ahead of other schools in recognising those pupils might with the right facilities achieve great things, putting the best facilities in place and proactively valuing those pupils.

You really shouldn't be dismissing all the posters who have views born of experience that counter yours, when you still to encounter the process, as having an anti SPGS agenda. I just hope that as you reach the stage of actually stepping inside these schools and experience all the differences and similarities which influence your instinct with what feels right for your child that you go with those instincts and not this fixation on one school and the brand it has with other parents.

I think this thread is actually a wind up.

So, OP you think SPGS's league table position is entirely down to the teaching / environment and that if you put those girls in another top school, they wouldn't do as well (despite those schools having girl that do as well as girls in SPGS)?

I'm not saying all schools across the country have equal quality of teaching but among the top indie schools the relatively small percentages that separate their results makes it very clear its the cohort's innate ability.

I wonder how OP feels about Sarah Fletchers ideas about moving away from exams and by implication league tables as a measure of pupil’s achievement? www.tes.com/magazine/archive/why-we-must-scrap-gcses-4-ways-form-better-system?amp

I suspect it will provoke some cognitive dissonance….

In any thread about such schools, it’s always people who don’t have anything to do with the schools that weigh in. Invariably they will be talking about the good old “friend’s daughter” . Yes, that reliable source! The “friend’s daughter” is always used to push some thinly-veiled agenda or prejudice relating to the schools and /or the perceived “type” of people who use them.

Anyway, absolutely none if this matters and who cares?

@weighthefood the whole thread is about the people who don’t have anything to do with the schools. WHY do people reject - by definition it’s about the non attenders

weigh and Miss If you have daughters who have gone through both the admissions process and are out of the end of school and they have peers who attended all these schools, and a few more elsewhere, in every sector, including St Pauls', then surely you have some feedback to offer? Especially to an OP who clearly does not have experience of the process and asked, I hope, a genuine question and got genuine answers from people who had been there, done that. Surely that is the point of these threads, to gain the benefit of other people's experience. Frankly from my experience you actually couldn't make up some of the behaviour I have encountered.

Not sure why you would want to close that down Anyway as you were, I will go back to fangirling Sarah Fletcher who truly should be Education Secretary. We can only dream.....

@Emilyontmoor

Well OP has had a little taste of the madness that descends on parents as the entrance exams loom. If OP thinks these anecdotes are extreme she is in for quite a ride. There was a girl we knew who had been earmarked for SPGS almost from birth by both sets of grandparents (never mind the parents) who paid for the tutoring for two years before, even though she was in a prep school that did have a track record of girls going on to SPGS. Then she didn’t get in. I just can’t imagine setting such a high and narrow bar for your child to succeed and such a huge abyss of failure. There was another girl at a school narrowly beneath SPGS in the league tables who had had more than one sister go to SPGS who used to identify her to other people as “the one who didn’t go to St Pauls”. When one of a friends daughters did get in to St Pauls that mother commented “Congratulations. Mind you it’s hard, my girls are just average there.”

I could go on but many girls’ self esteem suffered from that competitive vicarious ambition based on an over preoccupation with league tables.

And I absolutely do think that if you took a girl from SPGS and put her into Putney High or KGS or Surbiton they would enable her to achieve the same results. Indeed might actually enable her to do better. I know so many girls who went to those schools who have gone on to Oxbridge and elite universities and to do medicine etc. They are still some of the top schools in the country in terms of results, the gap parents put between those schools and the ones at the top of the table, and even more so between LEH / G&L and SPGS are largely illusions, easily explained by being more selective in the first place.

Best decisions we ever made was to let one DD decide to reject SPGS in favour of a school that was certainly instrumental in giving her the motivation and confidence necessary to succeed in a traditionally male dominated discipline / field, then to let the other DD leave that same school (who didn’t want her to go) for a less academic coed where she thrived in the less pressured more encouraging environment and almost certainly did better academically.

There is some good advice on here from people who have been through the process and seen how it turns out long term.

You raise an excellent point. The pressure and anxiety is nearly all to do with the families pressuring DC's for admissions to certain schools. The schools themselves have nothing to do with that. So it would seem that if a family is balanced and nurturing, then the DC can comfortably apply to any school without any pressure or anxiety.

Really? What is wrong with Durham? It's brilliant and perhaps it has courses and options - sport - not available at Oxford or Cambridge. Where did you go OP? Here's the thing. St Paul's suits a certain kind of girl (yes sent one there) but there are plenty of great schools which provide a brilliant education too. Wipe your brow OP check out Tiffin, Orleans Park...........

This happened this weekend, which made me think of this thread. Someone told me that their DD a couple of years ago got into a school, but turned it down for another school. However, the lower school that the DD went to discloses both offers and acceptances. Can you guess what it showed? In that particular year, the number of offers was the same as acceptances. In other words, the mother was lying, her DD never received an offer.

So in conclusion, keep in mind when somebody tells you that they turned down an offer from ANY school that in fact they may not be telling you the truth.

@Frederica852

No idea about the schools you're talking about but I got offered an Oxbridge place and chose to go to Durham. Best decision I ever made!

Similar story here, I turned down Cambridge to go to Manchester!

I have a daughter in the MIV at SPGS (and one to follow). I asked her about this weighing of food issue. She said the school does report in the canteen how much food is sent back everyday (by weight) to avoid food wastage, for the many obvs reasons. So maybe things have gotten misconstrued…hth

Is that right, Oxford benchmarks candidates on how they compare to their peers at the same school? So, Oxford admits students who are top of their class regardless of their actually academic abilities? I guess the best strategy is to find the weakest academic schools in the UK and go there, then your chances of getting into Oxford would be extremely high. It might make sense. TA

I think this is true @bjmin

Admissions tutors consider where candidates are educated when weighing their application. An A* from a comprehensive in special measures will usually mean much more than one from a superb independent.

That's interesting. Would it make sense to go to a superb independent for a few years and then switch over to the worst academic school you can find?

My brother turned down a six-figure offer to work for Google (he's in IT) because he didn't like the interview process. Sometimes people value their happiness over prestige. I would also always prefer co-ed over single sex. And it's huge pressure to compete with the SPGS girls which not everyone wants for their kids. I had a colleague whose daughter was the sole heir to her grandfather's (his FIL's) property empire. He couldn't care less about how academic her school was - he just wanted her to be happy and have a nice school experience given that she will never really struggle in life. He would reject an offer from SPGS.