All schools rejected at 11+. What now?

[lirik]

Apologies for the wall of text and a clickbaity title. One school, The Leys in Cambridge, put our daughter on waiting list with final answer due March 8th, and 10 others rejected.

We are based overseas, planning to move to UK this summer. Daughter is currently at NLCS (Singapore).

We have hired education consultants to help navigate UK schooling landscape, aid with school selection, applications, etc. We have also engaged tutors to help prep for 11+ over past year or so.

Now that most schools rejected, consultants are proposing to consider Fulham till 13+ and try again after two years, or just stay at Fulham senior till sixth form.
Another option is to try apply to few schools that haven't done their tests yet. Namely we currently have on our radar Eaton Square Senior School and Radnor House.
A good friend recommends to settle in area with good and outstanding schools only and hire tutors aiming for 13+ or sixth-form.
Locationwise we'd prefer London but can entertain outside London commutable to city. In a pinch if need be can consider pretty much anywhere in UK. I recon I can reach an agreement with the employer.

Highly recommend boarding! At least until you are UK residents :) then she can just be a day student.

This is how my parents navigated moving back to the UK with kids. (However we ended up in state schools in the end as my parents divorced)

Boarding temporarily was fun though. Like an adventure.

In your shoes I'd think about where you want to live (maybe north London based on your list) and get on the phone straight after half term to talk about the possibility of a place in all the potential schools. So if you pick N London, call Mill Hill, King Alfreds etc

Look on www.locrating.com/schoolsmap.aspx to track down all the schools you'd consider (indies are in blue).

Once you've got a place secured somewhere, then you can think about registering for occasional places, state places etc at other schools you fancy. But before that, you need to get something in the bag.

This will only take half a day. If no luck in N London, think about the next area on your list, and so on. (If you have a Fulham offer, I'd grab it with both hands.)

Your consultants don't sound great.

@lirik , you have already been rejected from the Stephen Perse Foundation which rules out the other academics schools. The Leys has boarding and a more affluent cohort.

But yes if you have recently visited the city and are keen on the location then a prep school for 2 years would be an option.

I think at this stage, not having an address in the U.K. and not being here physically might be having an impact on the chances of getting into a school.
You could look at schools further down the list for the ones that don’t have the academic achievements but have good pastoral care and you feel happy with when you look around.

What you have to realise when you see schools which have amazing GCSE and A level results and who have an entrance exam. It maybe not that the school is amazing at teaching but more to do with the fact that’s only took brilliant pupils to begin with.
And those pupils have private tutors on top of the private school fees.

it sounds like the educational consultants did not do their job properly. it must be hugely damaging for a young child to have that many assessments and be rejected by every one. a good consultancy would put in the effort to ensure that the schools applied for included at least 2 "certain" schools which would definitely offer a place, as well as a small number of "aspirational" schools where it was less certain.

to be honest in your situation I would not bother with applying for state schools. admissions are done on the basis of how close you live to the school so people coming in from overseas only get places at the worst schools, that no one else wants. there are special arrangements for the children of parents who are in the military forces or diplomatic service overseas to allow them to be treated as local, but you won't be able to access those.

I don't know the schools of London well enough to make a recommendation but goodschoolsguide.co.uk allows you to do an advanced search for schools and I did a search for independent schools that are not academically selective and got a long list of possibilities, so I suggest starting there, and sending some emails to see which of them are still able to consider candidates for the coming September's intake.

for a lot of these schools, they will know that they are the "backup" option which parents apply for just in case their child doesn't perform well in the academic assessments, so they will have made offers in the knowledge that a lot will be declined and they may have space - like the school you mentioned in your op - after the deadline they gave to successful applicants to accept or decline their offer has elapsed.

We have hired education consultants to help navigate UK schooling landscape, aid with school selection, applications, etc. We have also engaged tutors to help prep for 11+ over past year or so.

Hmmmmmm... but from the rest of your post I'm not sure you entirely understand the "UK schooling landscape".

You haven't mentioned if your child has actually taken the 11+ exam , had it marked, and "passed". Or failed.

Or were you referring to education at age 11 plus?

Are you considering only private feepaying schools?
There are excellent (free) state schools, some of which are academically selective (11+ exam) and others not.

Interested in the comment:

"NLCS London is out of question. We did apply, mostly because daughter wanted to try and we wanted to encourage her will to take up the challenge. Predictably got rejected. Very few manage to move from NLCS (something) to NLCS London."

What exactly is the relationship between NLCS and its offshoots? They seem to sell themselves as part of the same family. Is there any link at all, did they support preparing for the exams, can they support working out a good fit?

OP- don't stress too much. You will find a school. In a few weeks all schools will know what their y7 intakes are looking at and there will be spaces. A friend moved late to the uk and got a place at Radnor - they had been at an international school and Radnor understood they were a bit behind- they soon caught up. Lots of families move and manage to find places.

“You haven't mentioned if your child has actually taken the 11+ exam , had it marked, and "passed". Or failed.”

By 11+, OP does not mean a grammar school 11+, she means the entrance process to a bunch of private schools at the 11+ (Year 7) entry point. There is no “mark” per se.

Some schools will set their own tests. Others use the ISEB. Etc.

This is true! At Radnor two new students joined my son's class during yr7. This was over lockdown and they started their lessons telecommuting in from Dubai and Singapore on Teams!! They should have places as like said previously, it's not one of the highly prized schools.

That’s such a random selection of schools OP in disparate geographic locations I wonder what the “educational consultants” were thinking.

If you want to be in London there’s plenty of choice here at different academic levels. Equally if you prefer boarding, there are plenty of less academic schools than Brighton College.

A London prep school that still goes to 13+ seems like the best option.

I wouldn’t personally take a boarding school option if DD is moving countries/cultures as well as schools for the moment at least.

You could try St Catherine's, Twickenham, or Canbury House, Kingston.

@lirik , not exactly in central London like the schools you originally applied to, but Northwood College for Girls and Royal Masonic School for Girls (RMS) are close to Metropolitan line stations (Northwood about 40 mins from Baker St).

We do not have DC in either of these, but visited them about two years ago, and found them very nice with some superb on campus facilities, especially RMS. Both accept a wider range of students than the more selective ones you previously applied (Nortwood is in London consortium, RMS has its own CEM based test)

Good School Guide mentions Northwood accepting students in year 8 and year 9 as well, and RMS may have places available too as it's quite large.

Hope it works out well for you, all the best!

You could also try Maida Vale School nits new, so not yet full, but a really nicely renovated building and sounds like good pastoral care.

Hi OP . It could be really nice for your daughter to go to a feeder prep school for year 7 and 8. There will be smaller year groups and a nice sense of being the oldest with a sense of responsibility in the school rather than being minnows in the pond as year 7 pupils in a larger secondary school. She will also make some friends going to secondary school with her.

We have chosen this for DS 11. There are quite a few new starters at prep schools in year 7. Good luck.

Looks like its going to be the local comprehensive school then? I don't think you can apply until you have a UK address though

“There are excellent (free) state schools, some of which are academically selective (11+ exam) and others not.”

There are, but it is not usually possible to apply without a UK address.

How about Seaford College? Academically non-selective and very good with dyslexia and specific learning difficulty support, if that's of relevance to you.

OK. If you want to go the state route, our process when coming back to the UK from abroad, wanting school places:
Land in UK in June, having finished the academic year abroad. Have an address we pay bills on (so not airbnb or hotel type stuff)
E-mail the LEA - requested contact route for our council.
Get an application form the next day. Returned within an hour.
Get a phonecall saying we could have a place for DS2, but not DS1, in our prefered school. Or places for both in next closest school. Accepted.
School rang, asked if we wanted to start on Monday. We asked for 1 week later to get uniform etc.
Kids were in school within 2 weeks of landing.

There is also likely to be Y7 places that become available in Septeber, as people who have private school places don't withdraw their state place.

@lirik has anyone mentioned St Margaret's Bushey - www.stmargarets-school.org.uk/ or Queenswood - www.queenswood.org/ ? Both just outside north London and not far from NLCS.

OP what a busy and frustrating time for you! I totally understand your love for and London, but in your situation I would look at commuter towns where senior schools are much easier to get into. I suggest you look at these which are all lively and all less competitive (particularly Sackville):

• Kings Rochester
• Hampton Court House
• Radnor House Sevenoaks campus
• Sackville School
• Lingfield College
• Sutton Valence

It’ll work out. More places usually become available in March as some parents always get offers from senior schools then decide at the last minute to move to the grammar school system after those offers come out. So some senior schools may make more offers then.

(Meant to type ‘lovely’ not ‘lively’)

@lirik I forgot to mention Royal Masonic - www.rmsforgirls.com/