Greycoat Hospital - what is it really like??

[tigerbear]

Hi all,
Much to our complete shock, our DD has been offered a place at GCH.
Never in a million years thought she’d get it, and like everyone else who applied, we didn’t get the opportunity to do a tour of the school or meet any of the teachers, so we have no real idea what to expect.

DD is very upset at the thought of going because of fear of the unknown, because her close friends aren’t going, because it’s quite a distance from where we live and so on.
(She’s aware that she’s incredibly lucky to have been offered a place, and feeling guilty that she’s not happy about it)

Any advice and info on what the school is REALLY like from those whose DD’s are there (or attended recently) would be massively appreciated.
Ie, where do most of the students live (I know it’s very diverse and scattered, but just wondering if a lot live very near, or the majority live on the outskirts? We’re SE London, so worried about the commuting time. Not sure if we should consider a move closer into town (but our budget wouldn’t go far)

• what are the start and finish times of the school day, length of lunchtime/breaks?
• is it very strict?
• what are the facilities like?

It all seems like such an unknown entity/mystery - any proper insight would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You applied for a school and put it as your first choice without knowing a single thing about it?

I went there but left in 2005 so a long time ago!

@Alwaystheplusone as mentioned in the OP, the reason we feel like it’s so mysterious is because we never got a chance to go inside, to see the facilities, classrooms, or teachers, as it wasn’t allowed. We do know info about it of course, from our current Head recommending it for DD (as a few girls go from DD’s primary in previous years), from generally reading about it as a great option online, from their website etc, but just looking for insight and first hand info from those who have been there.

It was never my first choice, my exH was the one who wanted to put it first. And like I say, we didn’t honestly expect a place, so it’s just been a bit of a shock.

My DD is in year 8. We dont live very far from school, so she walks or buses it - weather depending. A lot of girls come from quite a long way, many have formed friendships with girls that do the same journey. I think its pretty standard to travel for around an hour to secondary school.

The school will organise a get together either in July or September for parents and children of year 7 - BBQ usually, but ours was an afternoon tea.

My DD says the girls are really friendly, and whilst they moan about the teachers, the head of the lower school Ms Young, is liked and respected by the girls and parents LOVE her. She's proper no-nonsense - firm, but fair, and a good sense of humour in assemblies.

As a parent, I have found communication from school a bit lacking if Im honest, but then my DD started during a pandemic with lockdowns and home learning for some of it, and we only have virtual parents evenings now, nothing in person. There doesnt appear to be much in the way of catch up help for example. The kids are just given extra work to do by themselves.

There are lots of after school and lunch time clubs, all of which are free.

@MrPanks thanks so much for the info, this is exactly the kind of insight I was looking for.
Great to know that clubs are free!

Is there any sort of ‘buddy’ system of the older girls showing the Y7 girls around/induction etc?
Aside from the afternoon tea (which sounds lovely!) is there an induction week or day during the school holidays?
I’m hoping we can at least go for a tour and meet the teachers between now and when she actually starts.

My dd is in year 10. She's loved it since day 1. We are west London and she gets the tube.

She had a brilliant tutor in lower school. I liked the way they were in form groups to start with and that they did lots of stuff together to begin with, so they didn't feel like they were in a massive school.

Feel free to ask me anything you like. I know lots of girls who go there and are happy.

You should receive a letter shortly letting you know there's an admissions ceremony on the 1st July for the new year 7 girls (we got our letter today).

A friends daughter went there (she left a couple of days ago) and they were very happy with it. She is the quiet, studious type - quite academic and incredibly polite. She made good friends and got into a good uni.

Thanks for all the info everyone, this all
sounds great!

The main thing I’m concerned about it is the commute. DD is not great in the mornings, so it’s going to be tricky getting her out on time.

SE so train into Victoria? DS is nearby and there are kids coming in from all over London. They learn!

Hi
My DD has just been offered a place. We, like most people, have not had a chance to see the school.
I would be grateful if anyone can tell me more about the sports and extra-curriculum options? Also, is there a stable base when it comes to teaching staff - how much are supply teachers used/what is the teacher turnover like? Thanks!

Hi all,
GCH is an amazing school - I would really recommend it. Miss Young seems quite strict, but, as already mentioned, it works well. The school holds a very strict ‘no phones’ policy, but this works, especially with the younger students. My DD often gets quite a lot of homework, but there is a homework timetable and seems to be manageable. The uniform wears well, but apparently no-one wears the uniform coat, which is quite expensive. I know this is an old thread, but I hope everything goes well for your DD.

Hi,
You asked about the sports: My DD says that there is a lot of choice, and teams you can join. The staff turnover seems to be pretty stable, and obviously there are days when they don’t have their ordinary teachers, but those aren’t too common. I hope that answers your question!

Where are you coming from? I use to travel in from north London to a school near to Graycoats, imagine your child having to do that journey in the dark freezing - winter nights, horrific weather and all the busses running late. We had the added bonus of regular bomb alerts (this was the 90s IRA hayday). I encountered many a dodgy man on the journey- honestly I would not do that to my child. We didn’t have mobiles then so your child has that in her favour at least.

I didn’t have friends from school in my area and didn’t get to meet up at out of school much until the older years when I could go to West London.

We are now out of London and very happy that the kids will be able to walk to their secondary school and maintaining friendships will be easier. It seems like a huge risk for a school you know nothing about?

@tigerbear my dd is in exactly the same place as yours was a year ago. I never expected her to get into Grey Coat due ti distance and her older sister not getting in 3 years ago! I have seen around the school twice and loved it at the time. Just wondering if your dd did end up going there and if so, how is it going? Many thanks for any info

@stclair congratulations on your DD getting a place!
My DD did indeed end up going there, and one year on, I’m still very much in the dark about the school.
I missed the induction day due to having Covid, so have never had a tour round the school or met any of the teachers apart from her form tutor. Therefore, I don’t feel any kind of connection with it yet, which May cloud my judgement of it.

Overall, my DD is happy there, yet I don’t feel it’s ‘her’ school, if you see what I mean. GCH seems very focused on the academic, high achieving, very disciplined ethos. If that suits your DD, I’d go for it.
Expectation from the school is strict adherence to rules, no allowances made, and very much focused on the girls being responsible for themselves.

There are positives and negatives to this - on one hand, DD has very much grown in confidence and independence, but on the other hand, she does struggle with keeping on top of being organised and up to date with all homework and comms from school.

Personally, I find communication with school extremely confusing - there’s a mixture of letters home / emails to parents / messages on the school app / DD has her own email messages from staff (which we didn’t know about for weeks) / plus DD receives messages from staff and other students via Teams. Keeping abreast of all of these avenues is very confusing for both DD and I.
The school office isn’t great at replying to emails / my last two emails have gone ignored and unanswered.

If you’re based near the school, it’s a great alternative to going private.
My DD has a proper commute from SE London, and this has proven problematic in getting there when there’s a train strike, and difficult in forming solid friendship groups due to distance and not being able to meet up with friends who are more central. This also has an impact on after school clubs. The number of after school clubs is good, but DD would prefer to just come straight home after a long day.

If I had to choose again, I wouldn’t go for GCH. Feel free to PM me with any questions.

@tigerbear thank you so much, this is really helpful. I will PM you

Hi! I posted this on a different thread before realising that this one is much more recent:

I attended the Grey Coat Hospital until 2020, when my GCSEs were cancelled due to covid- I’m only 19 years old but perhaps my relatively fresh experience of the school may be useful (?!)
I’m going to be completely honest, I did not enjoy my time at that school at all. I’ve read the reviews written by students, some of whom were in my year group, and I do agree unfortunately. The strictness that the school is notorious for is actually abhorrent; in a school where so many students come from different areas of London and rely on public transport to get to school in the morning, making pupils miss half of their lunch break to do litter picking for being a few minutes late (often due to train/tube strikes) is ridiculous. I live in SE London (now at uni though) and I would often arrive a few minutes late due to issues with the trains, and would often get in trouble for this, despite it not being my fault! I found this exasperating.
The teachers are very biased and unhelpful and seemingly not trained well in dealing with more disruptive pupils at all, instead immediately resorting to putting the girls on report cards, which rather than inspiring you do behave better, just made you angrier that the teachers wouldn’t actually try to help you.
Detentions were the main form of punishment, and they would dish them out for EVERYTHING. You got no pre-warning if you, for example, forgot a reading book for English, it’s an automatic half an hour detention. The ways that really small problems would get extortionately blown up was incredible- the punishments were a bit prehistoric and entirely ineffective. In fact, I still remember my first week of year 11, when so many people got given a detention that they had to hold it in the canteen because there was no classroom big enough to fit that many girls!!
I also have my own opinions about sending young children to single sex schools for their secondary school education- I feel as though spending all of my teenage years with girls my age who were still figuring themselves out and growing into their personalities resulted in constant arguments for pretty much every girl at the school. Every teenage girl goes through a phase where they are- for lack of better words- quite bitchy (myself included!!), and it wasn’t uncommon to see people falling out with friends and being upset about coming into school because of friendship group drama.
I know a lot of mums disagree with this and think their daughters look sweet in their uniforms, but let’s be honest. They are ugly. And I know it’s probably a good thing that they don’t allow make up, but when you’re a 15-16 year old girl with acne that you can’t cover up, it does make you feel awfully self conscious. I was constantly being handed make up wipes and told to wipe off my concealer (I know this is my own fault for breaking the rules but it’s not uncommon to have confidence issues as a teenager!!) This isn’t helped by the monstrous patterned blouses and skirts triple the length of most toddlers.
The one person I cannot fault is Miss Young- she truly is one of the best women I’ve ever met and I still have nothing but the utmost respect for her. She is strict, but never harsh, and brilliant fun as well.
I ended up moving schools in sixth form, which I’d always planned on doing- I was lucky enough to go to a private school much closer to where I lived. It was a mixed school with a far different ethos, far less strict rules, and a far bigger focus on academia and the future. Seeing how the teachers had already embedded the importance of working hard into students that had been there since long before I joined was something I found inspiring, and pushed me to work harder myself, landing me in a great uni. I absolutely loved it; I almost didn’t understand how the extreme strictness that GCH demonstrates can make a child not want to work hard, as if to push back at the teachers and say ‘why should I try when you’re just mean to me?’ When you’re 11 years old, the future seems very daunting, and the last thing you need is teachers like the ones at GCH treating their pupils so unkindly.
I’d love to list some redeeming qualities, but unfortunately there is none! I really did dislike my time at GCH.

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I have submitted my secondary school application with GCH in a high position, and I have a few remaining questions if any current parents would be so kind enough to answer! We did attend the open evening at GCH, but unfortunately when we'd just sat down in the hall a fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate! We were able to reconvene, but this meant that we didn't have a lot of time for our tour and so we didn't get to see all of the school and ask all of our questions.

• What are the opportunities for participating in music and drama? Does the school put on productions and are Year 7 girls able to participate in these?
• Unforunately we didn't get to see any of the sports facilities. What are these like? My DD is very keen on football. I know that the school does have a football team, but where do they train? I couldn't see any football pitch in the grounds. Same question for tennis.
• How do friendship groups work when the School's intake comes from such a wide area? Do girls spend a lot of time at the weekend travelling to other parts of London to meet up with friends? In previous years, there's always been a decent cohort of girls from DD's primary who go onto GCH, however this year (for various reason) if DD is fortunate enough to get a place she may be the only one this year.
• Aside from the Year 7 language trip and the language exchanges, what school trips are on offer?
• What happens if there is a train strike? We're pretty cut off here if the trains don't run. The only other (much longer) way of getting into town is via a bus to the nearest tube station, but it's completely impossible to get on a bus if the trains are on strike due to the massive peak in demand. We don't have a car so there's no other option to get to school
• Similarly, what happens if there is disruption to the trains and if girls are late to school due to no fault of their own?
• One of the posters on this thread said that she had never been inside the school. Are there really no opportunities for parents to go inside the school? I completely realise that secondary school is a completely different kettle of fish to primary school, but are there no school productions etc that parents are able to watch or parents' evenings? Or are the latter all done online now?
• Does anyone know if it's possible to see the data for historic furthest distance offered for all three bands for church place applicants? The only data I have been able to find so far is for open places, not church places.
• And finally the most middle-class first-world-problem question ever...... as a keen skier DD would like to know if the school ever run ski trips?

Sorry for the essay, but if anyone has any insight into any of my queries I'd be very grateful!

My daughter is in Year 10.

• What are the opportunities for participating in music and drama? Does the school put on productions and are Year 7 girls able to participate in these? -

Yes there are opportunites in Year 7 and they can do drama at GCSE if they want. They can participate in drama productions but the lead parts go to older girls typically. The productions are very good.

• Unforunately we didn't get to see any of the sports facilities. What are these like? My DD is very keen on football. I know that the school does have a football team, but where do they train? I couldn't see any football pitch in the grounds. Same question for tennis.

The football teams are quite good, they train at Vincent Square. I dont know about tennis. They are quite big on sports if that's your child's thing.

• How do friendship groups work when the School's intake comes from such a wide area? Do girls spend a lot of time at the weekend travelling to other parts of London to meet up with friends? In previous years, there's always been a decent cohort of girls from DD's primary who go onto GCH, however this year (for various reason) if DD is fortunate enough to get a place she may be the only one this year.

My daughter lives locally, but all her friends live in West or East London. As they get older it isnt a problem.

• Aside from the Year 7 language trip and the language exchanges, what school trips are on offer?

The trips are language based in year 7 and 9. In year 10 there is a Japan exchange and I think there is a Florence trip in 6th form for art/history A level.

• What happens if there is a train strike? We're pretty cut off here if the trains don't run. The only other (much longer) way of getting into town is via a bus to the nearest tube station, but it's completely impossible to get on a bus if the trains are on strike due to the massive peak in demand. We don't have a car so there's no other option to get to school

Sometimes if the teachers cant get in they switch to online learning, but otherwise they have to make their way to school no matter what.

• Similarly, what happens if there is disruption to the trains and if girls are late to school due to no fault of their own?
• I think there is some understanding, but if they are often late, its a detention.

• One of the posters on this thread said that she had never been inside the school. Are there really no opportunities for parents to go inside the school? I completely realise that secondary school is a completely different kettle of fish to primary school, but are there no school productions etc that parents are able to watch or parents' evenings? Or are the latter all done online now?

There are several opportunities to go into school including parents evenings which are now back to in-person. There are also events at Westminster Abbey and an International market day which is lots of fun and a chance to meet your daughter's friends parents if that is your thing.

• Does anyone know if it's possible to see the data for historic furthest distance offered for all three bands for church place applicants? The only data I have been able to find so far is for open places, not church places.

I dont know, but from memory, I think we found this online when applying.

• And finally the most middle-class first-world-problem question ever...... as a keen skier DD would like to know if the school ever run ski trips?

No, no skiing trips!

Thank you so much @MrPanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply. It's extremely informative. I have to say that I am slightly concerned about the potential impact of train strikes. If the trains aren't running there's literally no way of us to be able to get into town, bar staying in a hotel the night before (which maybe we would have to do?!). Oh well, I may well be crossing the bridge before I've come to it anwyay.

The school is amazing top to bottom! You will never find another school where the teachers care so much about their students! Used to work there in the evenings and found it hard to tell teachers to leave the building at 10pm because they wanted to finish planning lessons or mark exams/essays/homework! Very strict but that’s why you apply. You want your child to be in a safe educational environment! If you think it’s tough for your child to get in , imagine how hard it is for teachers to apply and succeed! Thats what makes it an amazing school

So many productions go on throughout the school year! Everyone has an opportunity. Year 7-11 regardless of experience. There are lower school performances also y7-9. So much work from the students and teachers always make every show, such a memorable one!

Every department offers an afterschool activity/lesson of some sort.

All staff members give absolutely everything every single day. Send your daughter to this school and she will become a champion. Promise.

Did your D get a place? Our’s did and will know no-one else there.

I’m quite nervous. It wasn’t our first or second choice so it’s very unexpected.

@HonestViewer yes she did! However she also had on offer from a local independent which on balance we decided to accept instead. We felt that the trains were too unreliable (especially with these almost constant strikes!) to rely on to get her to school every day.