SW London Private & Grammar - applying for year 7 in 2023 (Part III)

[QuiteAJourney]

Continuation from

www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4697901-sw-london-private-grammar-applying-for-year-7-in-2023-part-ii?page=40&reply=122947087

An opportunity for parents of DC applying to private and grammar schools in SW London for entry in year 7 in 2023 to share their journeys.

I’m amazed to hear people describing a 5-10% scholarship as a token amount? I’d love one. With possible VAT on fees, or 20% increased fees over time, even 10% on these schools is £2k a year! Over 7 years that’s a £14k saving and I could overpay in the mortgage. And I’m assuming fees will increase a lot now, annually so it’ll probably equate to £20k over the years! That’s a LOT to just turn down. It would be a massive consideration for us. Really seriously it would sway a decision, even if it wasn’t a top choice, given the crazy economic climate right now, any saving of 5% could offset the increased fees that are IMHO inevitable over the next few years. Really interested in opinions on this. I think schools are not offering massive scholarships any more. I’m DDs prep last year it was all 5/10/15.

On the subject of trying to decide between schools... It might sound peculiar, but what I would recommend is just turning up at the schools at the end of the school day. Park up or just sit in a cafe opposite like a super-sleuth and watch the kids come out of the school in their various groups. This might just tell you all you need to know. Sit outside LU for 15 mins and take it all in, and then SPGS or G&L on the next day for example, and you might see a difference.

I did not do this by the way (!), but just a thought from having done pick ups for years!

I think it’s very hard and quite rare to red flag bright girls in a short interview. Most of these girls go to amazing state and private London schools, have access to a variety of resources to make them appear impressive, girls usually are extremely well behaved and are unlikely to really badly mess up a 5 minutes conversation not based on any tricky questions (4 of my friends confirmed that their DDs interviews barely lasted for 5-6 minutes and all were asked the same general questions). Does anyone have any confirmation about how many girls were actually interviewed yesterday? My calculations pointed towards a very high number.

I agree, if we got a scholarship, we would def think long and hard about what to do (if we got an offer to G&L and FHSS). Esp considering we have 3 dc, so if they all got offered scholarships then we could save a nice chunk of money! Although, can't bank on them all getting one or even one of them getting one lol.

Girls in our school who've been offered schools such as G&L, LU, SPGS have often been offered a scholarship at schools like FHSS or WHS. Years ago it was around the 25 percent mark but last year was 10 percent for one girl who ended up taking SPGS.

@bjmin you are so right. I can’t understand why anyone would hold onto loads of offers though, once they have their top choices. DD’s best friend was waiting on two waitlist places last year and both schools told her that they weren’t getting the declines in at all or until last minutes. It was torture for her. It’s so selfish to those on the waiting lists to not let a school know when you have no intention of choosing them once you have a higher preference offer come in.

We only had three schools last year, but as soon as we got our second choice back up school, we declined the third preference school. And then when we got first choice we immediately let the second choice know. It’s just, as you say, courtesy. All school will over offer surely, so can’t go to the waitlist until they get a lot of declined places. I also know of two girls from our prep who have moved schools this year - one where they didnt fit in and weren’t happy. And one case where they moved house and the journey was not workable. They had to approach schools they had turned down, but thankfully they had done this politely and promptly - as you suggest.

1forward2back - you are absolutely right and I stand corrected. All I would say is that there can be more 'unforeseen' costs in certain schools that may offset that kind of saving (annual international trips for sports tours, choir tours, debating conferences etc). It depends how much your kids do and what they do and what the school offer - eg. a certain school may give you £1k off the fees but then it's, "Your daughter is invited to attend the Mandarin trip to China." Also things like the cost of school coaches etc may offset smaller scholarship savings.

On offers, I completely agree with politely declining those you know you won’t accept promptly. I think it is worth a week or so to decide between equal first choices, if you’re lucky enough to have that option. We tried hard to balance the need to know enough about each school to want to go there, with the need to not get fixated on a favourite (in case the offer didn’t happen), and so it was only with offers in hand that we really focused in on which one we and dd preferred.

On academic scholarships, I’ve heard of ranges from 5%-50% for schools
trying to attract girls away from schools ranked higher in the league tables. Very nice to have, but they are not just money, they come with obligations.

Does anyone know the date on which G&L will be sending out offers?

Ugh so true. But even A Levels aren’t based on one test (most are a couple exams, no?) and the kids know what grades they need to aim for. And all kids take the exams at their own schools with mocks to help them know what they need to do. Also all exams same, etc. These kids are so young and the process being so 1-dimensional is nuts to me…
But it is what it is, and I think we all agree it’s not a great system. Sorry to pile on in that regard!

Yes, this is my thought exactly. The interview is so short, so how can they know. My dd asked them how long the interview would be and they told her about 12 minutes, so she said it was 12 mins. I am not sure why my dd asked this, as I told her previously it is just a 15 mins interview! LOL.

Feb 10th. Does anyone know if its email and/or post?

Post and email for offers. Email only for no. Not sure about wait list.

This is very interesting indeed. How do you know they are obliged to tell you? When would they disclose this information? For example, if we ask now how our dd scored on the test, would they let us know, or do you need to wait until you get or don't get an offer?

Well, the interviews have to serve some purpose or else they wouldn't do them - it's pretty labour intensive for any school, even if the interviews are only 15 min slots. So they must be assessing something...

I'm not sure that's true. I'm sure some people last year got the "thin" envelope and knew immediately that it wouldn't contain an offer.

Private schools are not obliged to tell you about test results and/or where you DC sits in the cohort. Some do after the process is over for that particular DC - i.e they may tell you if your DC was not called for second stage by how much the missed on it or, after final offers are made, whether a successful candidate sits in the cohort of offers.
Also, they are not subject to Freedom of Information requests.

Definitely not true about siblings going elsewhere etc.

100% agree, we did this with older dd when we had a choice to make post her 11+ and it helped

@mantrama interesting idea! I think we will do something like this if we need to make a quick decision. We leave near one secondary school and my dd is not a fan of the kids that come out of there (neither am I!).

@mantrama I agree that it a good idea (the equivalent of visiting the area where you are buying a house at different points in time). I think that another thing to do, if not done so previously, is to travel to the school through the means of transport that you are planning to use and at the times that DC would be travelling (ideally with DC but, if not, at least yourself).

In response to someone saying the schools don’t have to tell DC’s scores. That’s really interesting. I was told by our state school head that they are obliged to tell us scores as we’ve paid them to test our children. I know our neighbours asked last year and were told. But I realise I don’t know this for a fact and on these kinds of forums, I shouldn’t have posted anything that I don’t know for a fact. As I mentioned, I haven’t asked for our DC so don’t know for sure. Sorry!

What we were told is that unless a school puts in writing how it provides feedback (eg LU says it can only say average or below average or what not) they must inform the parents how the kids did if they are asked. But this is from a head teacher who is outside the independent school system.

Re: thin letter meaning a rejection. Obviously I don’t know every school but I know our neighbour was away last year on results day and we happened to get her post (they had a few large envelopes so the postie couldn’t fit them and handed them to us). The large envelopes were two offers and the small, thin letter was also an offer. So don’t panic if you get a small, thin envelope either!

I guess our only real lesson from this process is that schools do it their own way and we shouldn’t overthink…which to me seems really hard given the opaque nature of it.

Our head also said something I find helpful: don’t judge how good a school is based on difficulty to get in. For example, if you get offers from SPSG and FHSS and feel that it was harder to get into SPSG and it’s higher up results table, remember that taking the highest 11+ achievers probably means they’ll keep achieving. Thus it may be that the actually better teaching and learning experience may be somewhere that is ‘easier’ to get into. Every school I’ve seen mentioned on this thread has kids with top marks and top universities. Wherever the kids go, it’s what they do with the opportunities they’re given as opposed to ones they didn’t get or opted not to take. I find that really helpful as we move forward.

@SamPoodle123 , do check the uniform or entrance at end of day because other schools could be using the facilities for sport or event.

@UKUSMum I think that I am that 'someone'. My comment referred to avoiding generalisations and was based on the fact that (a) Freedom of Information requests do not apply to schools (this is a frequent misunderstanding that I have seen in other threads - not here, hence why I did not refer to your previous comment as you had not mentioned it).

As for the providing feedback on tests being an obligation, it figures nowhere in the application form or in the admissions policies that the schools publish in their websites, as at least in the case of the schools that we have applied for. You might, of course, want to check yours (as said above, I shy away from generalising).

I find rather strange that statement from your DC's HM about us paying the schools we are applying to test our children - my understanding is that we are paying them to enter an admissions process, which is rather different. In that context, worth noting that a school providing feedback is rather different to a school providing the scores on the tests.

On an anecdotal basis, I know of examples of parents that have asked for feedback and got a rather standard line on 'there were, on the whole, stronger candidates'.

@UKUSMum , agree with your comments about school fit and not difficulty of getting offer.
We know a child at grade 6 in 2 instruments in super selective school gave up all music because of feeling not good enough. Whilst ours in orchestra, choir and other musical performances and really enjoying the opportunities even though not as high a grade, but will be taking those too.