DAO or St Michael's

[AutumnAmber]

My daughter is in the fortunate position that she scored sufficiently highly in the DAO and St Michael's Test that we can chose between the two. There are no siblings and travel wise both journeys are one direct bus. I was interested to hear the opinions of others as we keep swinging between the two. I would especially appreciate the views of current parents on strengths and weaknesses. Many thanks.

Those are two very different schools.
Well done to your DD! It really depends what you want as in St Michael’s is a catholic all girls school and DAO is obviously a mixed nondenominational school. My DD was in the same position and we chose St Michael’s, she is now in year 11 and I have no regrets.

I wanted her to be in an all girls school and it was important to me that she attend a catholic school.

She has friends at DAO and they are happy too. I would say on balance that there are more extracurricular opportunities and sporting opportunities available at DAO. I would say that St Michael’s is probably a more academic school because you have a narrower range of abilities. St Michael’s is far more ethnically diverse if that is important to you, it was to me. And perhaps here is where I will be biased as I do think the girls at Saint Michael’s are particularly lovely and the friendships are very deep in a way are you only get at an all girls school in my opinion. But of course some girls really miss having boys around.

Both fantastic schools and you are truly support for choice For us the distance was also a factor as we felt Potters Bar was just a little bit too far. Good luck with it all.

Thank you Lulu. We have put St Michael's first in our CAF form.