SW London Girls' Private & Grammar - applying for year 7 in 2023

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i myself have been looking for this thread and have been unsuccessful. Saw a couple people mention it over the past day or so on the 2022 one.

so here we go, albeit a bit late.

has everyone visited all the schools on their lists?

how many schools are everyone applying to?

what schools are you applying to?

how is the preparation going?

i know some exams have taken place, how did they go?

wishing all the whirls good luck with preparation and exams, hope we all find the right schools for our daughters.

@onemomentintime Hysteria is exactly right. I think so many people lose sight of how privileged our DDs are to spend the next seven years at any of these schools!

I agree. I think I said a few posts ago that calling any of these schools less academic feels very wrong, they at all excellent.

The 11+ is a crazy arms race. My closest friend spent £35k on tutoring, another friend just told me about someone who spent around £60k. I agree this isn’t necessary by any means but it sure helps, as these people all got the schools they wanted, and by their own admission would not have had a chance otherwise.

I sometimes wonder if these schools are actually screening for this kind of behaviour in the sense that these families are highly likely to continue the tutoring throughout secondary school, making the job of the school that much easier. Who knows.

I think I’ll leave this thread now, I’m being a real Debbie downer and don’t want our troubles or my cynicism to dampen the mood - good luck to everyone!

Don't leave the thread!
I know some children at these schools. Yes, there are some batshit parents around but it really is not the norm to spend £35k plus on tutors! I literally don't see how that is possible! When DD was sitting 11plus I met a woman who told me that it was vitally important that we got an educational psychologist to help us with it all and that 'everyone' in N London had one to help them decide where to apply. She was beside herself when I said we were at a State school and we're applying to x, y, z school and that neither I or a single person I knew had a psychologist ( except for SEN etc). Maybe it was a N London thing?
Some people do tutor all through school but it doesn't do their children any favours.

Have been through it all twice- don't believe all the hype and good luck to all! ( we had to do it in Early January so it loomed over us all over Christmas as well!)

@Justonecat don't feel for a moment that you are too cynical or dampening the mood. We are all (a bit / rather) cynical and hoping that the path chosen works out. Sometimes a community like this exposes people to different views / environments - we are at an indie prep, not tutoring and don't know anyone with specialist tutors. Hopefully those cases you mention are far and in between and I think, imho, that do their children more harm than good in the long run.
it would be lovely if you stay and share your journey with us. In any case, best of luck

@Justonecat I agree with the others - don't leave! Hopefully this thread will provide moral (virtual) support through this crazy journey. And whilst I'm sure there are a few mad parents spending silly money on tutoring, I doubt many are (certainly not to that level), and who instead trust that their child will find the right school for them. Our Head says it every year: every child finds a school, and every parent ends up being happy with that school.

@Justonecat We went through the 11+ process with our eldest last year, bracing myself to do it again next year with our middle kid (hence being on here). Just wanted to say quickly that you should hang in there. It will be OK. Please try to ignore all the noise about tutoring etc. Like many others our eldest and all his friends came from a primary school background. On the whole none of them were tutored and they’ve all ended up in schools they are very happy with (including plenty of the Hammersmith schools, Hampton, LEH, PHS etc). Sometimes they didn’t get their first choice, sometimes there was a stressful wait for a waiting list place and then a reshuffle but it really does all work out in the end and they are all happy with their choices. Sounds like your daughter is naturally bright despite a recent bump in the road so sure it will work out for her too. Good luck with it all.

@travelturtle thanks for your post and the perspective that having gone through the system brings. You are right that we all need to help each other to keep perspective, especially as I think that some of the school gates conversations (for us) and the playground conversations (for the DDs) can be a bit fraught and add to the stress.
@LondonMum20222 , I completely agree with your previous posts. All this talk about 'back ups' loses sight of the fact that most (all?) the schools being considered are good and that the key thing is where kids will be happy. I think that ambition and snobbery get in they way of things - Our favourite schools are not the most competitive or so-called-desirable, but I will send my daughter there like a shot ahead of others that most people seems to consider more desirable. As you say (and our head, like yours, also says): there is a school for every child and they all end up in the right place

I genuinely think the most important thing is to find the right school for our children. They will very likely do better in a slightly less academic school that they are happy at and which suits them than one they have to be tutored heavily to get into and then to stay at. There are thousands of schools in the country - the vast majority of indies in SouthWest and West London are excellent schools whether they are top 30, top 100 or whatever.

I will inevitably freak out again in due course but I do keep trying to tell myself that getting the right school is the most important thing!

@QuiteAJourney The motto in our family atm is "there is no best school, only the school that is best for you." If only half the parents in west London would actually believe that!

@LondonMum20222 I so agree!

Well said. Unfortunately, so many parents get very insecure about which schools their DCs attend.

Good luck everyone.

Don't look at results just for one year, particularly for NHEHS that showed very volatile results for the last few years.

If spending 35k for one year, that means 100 per calendar day. I am not sure how it is possible to spend that much.

They do this for more than a year, my friend started in year 4 and tamped it up over the years. It also included one of the tutors traveling with them during holidays at least twice that I know of. Plus some of the super tutors charge £120/hour. Add to this mock exams, courses and so on, I’m sure it can add up? But this is certainly not the norm. It was the most extreme example I had heard of until someone told me about the people who managed to spend 60k. Other people I know have told me they spent around £10-12k

*Ramped
apologies!

All schools have shown volatile results over the past few years. 2020 and 2021 aren't worth looking at as they were all teacher graded (and some schools inflated wildly). 2022 was the first vaguely reliable year since 2019, but on the whole they're still higher than pre-pandemic. It'll take a couple of years for it to settle down again. But as I've said on previous posts, the results between all these top London day schools are marginal anyway, and as many people have pointed out on Mumsnet before, a child is likely to get the same exam grades whichever of these schools they go to. Anyone choosing a school on exam grades alone is doing their child a huge disservice. The culture and the overall fit matter much more.

Sorry I meant 2022, 2019, 2018 etc., excluding 2021 and 2020.

Ah, okay! Yes, they were a little bumpy!

We spent £320 excluding cost of Atom subscription.

Agree, best to take all things into account when selecting the right schools, not just exam results.

Sunday Times groups A-level and GCSE results by multiple grades. If they reported just A* and 9's then the spread would be more noticeable. But really there's so much more to these schools to take into consideration.

Just wondering whether others have started exams and how they are going?
We are 2 exams down (Sutton and KGS) and 4 to go (including ISEB), and have also done 2 interviews, one group exercise and 2 creative writing exercises. I feel that we are roughly 1/3 through it but, my, weeks are passing slowly.

@QuiteAJourney Today you're a third of the way through, in a couple of weeks you'll be half the way through! I can only imagine how interminable it must feel at the moment though. I'm pretty sure that this time next year, I'll just be wishing the weeks away until Feb half term when it's all over and we know the outcome.
Can I ask your advice re number of exams? Everyone talks about number of schools to apply to - usually 4, or 5 max - but that could be quite a range in terms of actual exams. All those schools could have their own, bespoke, two-exam process, and your DD could end up sitting 8 or even 10 exams (assuming they got through to second round). Or you could apply to 4 Consortium schools and only sit one exam. Obviously those are two ends of the spectrum - nobody wants to put all their eggs in one basket, but equally 8 or 10 feels like a lot. I'd love to hear how your DD is finding the exam spread so far, and whether you feel you've got it about right. (On our current thinking re schools, I think we'd have a similar number of exams to you - min 5, max 7, between Sept and Jan, and never more than 3 in a month).

@LondonMum20222, very happy to share (also, feel free to DM me)

We are doing 6 distinct processes which translates into

• 3 schools with ISEB (November) and interview and/or group exercise scattered between November and January
• 1 school (Sutton) with one exam in November plus interview (actually in October)
• 2 x school with exam in November or early December and interview in January if you go through the exam filter
• 1 school (Ibstock) with 2 exams, one in late November and the other one in December
• 1 school (WHS) with exam in November and another test (not sure what it would entail as talk is of 'group exercise testing thinking and skills') in January if DD goes through the first stage

So far, DD seems fine (fingers crossed). We have a glut of activity in early November and will have another one on w/c 22nd November as we have ISEB and first stage of Ibstock ...some of our friends have that plus PHS (all in one week).

When deciding we had an indication of when some exams were going to be. Also, she is unlikely to go to second stage with all of them. And, finally, some exams and tests seem less intense than others (not only differences in intensity but also in terms of length of time and even environment, not the same to do a test with another 12 children as to go into a kind of melee with hundreds of kids in attendance).

@QuiteAJourney Huge thanks for sharing that. It's super helpful. And I will DM you too now.