Colyton grammar

[movingtodevon1]

Hi
We are in the process of relocating to Devon due to my partners work and are looking at areas within 40 mins commute of Exeter with good schools. My daughter currently y5 is very keep on Colyton but with no grammars in our current location we are clueless of wether she would make the cut with 11 plus etc.
She is bright, vey good with creative writing and grammar, her maths is slightly above average for her age but not her strongest skill. We wouldn't want to go down a tutor route so basically what Im asking is will an academically able but non tutored/hothoused child stand a chance or do I need to steer her away from this idea?

I think Exmouth suffers from overcrowding and so there are huge classes

Our experience of Uffculme was good and Colyton not so great.

Suprised to hear about a not so great experience with Colyton. We had a terrible experience with Uffculme personally and I know a lot of people who felt the same so I would strongly advise against it.

@ladyfromslough yes ours is the exact opposite. Uffculme absolutely brilliant, Colyton soul destroying. (Nb both produced good grades I’m talking about pastoral care) and how much fun it was to actually be there.

No experience with colyton yet, dd starts in Sept. But from what I've seen so far the pastoral bits wasn't too dissimilar to some of the Exeter schools. Ask me again in 2-3 years and might have a different opinion.

@Okshacky Our experience was that Uffculme produced decent grades but the pastoral care and bullying was horrific.

As I said not my experience at all. I found Uffculme quick to react if I called with concerns and sensible. It’s a lovely school as far as we were concerned and honestly I’m surprised to hear otherwise.

In my experience if you dared to report bullying at Uffculme the staff were rude to you and the bullying got worse. They often accused me and my DC of lying about bullying. I think it's a horrid school, this was all recent. The behavior in lessons was terrible from what I can gather having walked around there before. Maybe it's a school that's gone downhill lately. My DC was removed and had a far better time at a requires improvement school with a poor reputation. Many of my friends did the same.

Reminds me of when my DS came home one day very irritated as a teacher called him an 'annoying little cretin' in a lesson. I met with this teacher and he admitted to saying this but he didn't apologise. He said it was a 'joke'. That alone says it all about Uffculme School

I'm following this thread with interest. Without my own first-hand experience, I appreciate you all sharing your thoughts on school reputations beyond the limitations of me simply looking at Ofsted inspections and academic results...

Ultimately, we all want the best for our children, and hope they are lucky enough to develop good friendships, enjoy their experience of school, seize opportunities, and reach their full potential - wherever the "magical computer algorithm" may allocate them a place!

Realistically, yes, I appreciate that certain schools may be better suited to different individuals - depending on the schools' focus on academic, creative, sporting, non-curricular, and pastoral provision. I guess that's where stating our school preferences comes in.

But there are so many unknowns that will influence their time at school, and we'll never know what challenges they might (or might not) face until something may (or may not) happen... Understanding how schools have previously responded to these challenges is definitely useful in decision making! All whilst appreciating that no two experiences will ever be the same, and everything is a bit of a roll of the dice anyway.

If I had to select my top concern, it would probably be student behaviour... How much of this is down to luck (individual students / tutor groups / year groups) and how much is school culture? My naive assumption is that behaviour should generally be better at a grammar school?

Not coming from a grammar school background ourselves, and feeling slightly ignorant of the whole process, we'll probably still have an attempt at the 11+ route all the same. But very aware that we'll also need to consider alternatives...

In hindsight I wouldn’t have engaged with grammar school at all as I think my child would have got the same academic outcome and a much better school experience elsewhere. We should have moved schools.

I know someone who visited Clyst Vale years ago and they were not impressed at all. I think it may have improved now however

I wouldn't write off the idea of grammar school for your DD just yet. If you move somewhere to the west of Exeter, you'd have the option of Colyton and the Torquay grammars. If she is generally above average, she probably wouldn't need a lot of additional support to get in- probably some time spent practising with the test papers, etc would be useful.

If you're against the idea of a grammar in general, then fair enough, but why is the idea of doing some prep work so bad? There's no other exam you'd sit completely blind, having not practised the format of the paper or timings, so why would 11+ be any different?

Otherwise, my understanding is most of the "good" schools around Exeter are oversubscribed, so choose your catchment area carefully!

I'd move to Ottery personally. If your DC gets into Colyton then it's not far, if your DC doesn't get into a grammar school then you can get into The King's School.

Viewing two houses in Ottery this week! It seems unanimous that Kings is the stand out secondary in the area.
The Jury is out on trying for Colyton, academically I believe after talking to teachers at her current school she should make the cut but Pastoral care is important to us due to her anxiety and by all accounts it sounds like its slightly lacking!
Torquay Girls sounded fab but I feel is too far from Ottery to make it viable.
Thank you all so much for taking the time to offer knowledge and advice its been invaluable!

That was my advice at the start of the thread - good plan.

Pastoral care is most definitely not lacking at Colyton - it's excellent.

Bit late to the discussion but my son got a place at colyton and didn’t do very much prep at all tho I know people that did. He did I think 2 x practice tests. He’s very happy at colyton in his friendship group. And I think that’s down to colyton carefully selecting tutor groups and keeping everyone together so friendships have chance to establish. He’s been heartbroken over art and sport by his reports and the teachers have been quite blunt about his abilities. They seem to expect high levels even tho you could be appalling at both these subjects as you aren’t tested on them to get in. The art teacher said ‘oh I’m sure he worked very hard to get a place’. As if he’d been extensively tutored. She seemed better after I’d explained he was fine at everything else but art wasn’t his strong point. So there definitely seems a brutal edge which maybe if your kid is great at everything you’d never see. Also they were weird weren’t they about the kids leaving day this year and it was in the local press how they’d locked everyone in a classroom!

When I did the test many moons ago, they had some practice ones we did to prepare. Could you see how she feels with those? Then decide after? I was torn between kings school and Colyton in the day :)

Interesting that Muck Up Day has now been firmly put to bed. Here is the student video from 2012 (one of my DC was in this year). The students all used to go in at dawn to set up the school site. Pretty harmless stuff and you can see the Ho6 and Assistant Head have a really good rapport with the students, not that you'd guess this from the comments under the article in the local paper referred to above. Fair to say there were a couple of incidents in the succeeding few years which could have ended badly. Seems a shame that those year groups have affected the latitude the school used to give the students - the latter used to really enjoy MUD.

Warning - the video is twelve mins long....

Anyhow, as you can see, the students look pretty relaxed - I simply don't recognise the comments in the local paper.

For info, 'Timepiece' is the club in Exeter that lots of the students went to.

I've found pastoral care excellent at Colyton, and we have really needed it for one of my children. I had my children at three different schools when a relative died, I emailed all three schools to inform them children would be off for funeral. All emailed back to say ok, only Colyton asked if any additional support was needed during this time. One of my children was really struggling during lockdown, Colyton got her back into school everyday, this helped her enormously. My other children, also at Colyton, weren't struggling with lockdown, didn't go in and weren't given the option to, only the child who needed it. Colyton also kept right on top of the academic work, much better than the other secondary some of my children attended.

How did it go? :) ottery is lovely

It's difficult as we will be compromising on house to move to Ottery, you seem to get much more for your money almost anywhere else in Devon! we are currently detached for instance with a large floor space but for the same money we are looking at having to go much smaller and semi/terraced. We did like a couple of properties but are now waiting on our buyers securing a sale before we can proceed.
Just wish Uffculme school was thought of better as suddenly we open up some really nice properties.

Have you wandered around ottery and got to know the local areas? I didn't mind being in a smaller property for my ideal location. My brother is in cullompton? I think my nephews go to the primary in willand and will go to uffculme next.