Where in London is the best place to live for grammar options (boys and girls) and good state school fall back options.

[TuttleTree]

Please help! We are house hunting and torn between London and Chelmsford. Ideally, we would like to stay in London for work, travel, culture, things going on. Etc etc all the usual. However fully aware that as kids are involved we have to prioritise in the right way.

We live in East London at the moment and have great grammar options but not good state options. Feel like with Chelmsford there might be some good state back ups there? But before we do anything drastic and leave the big smoke, wondering where else in London we could go that have the option of both.

Yep, this is also true. I was just responding to the point about grammar schools being a bizarre choice and why you would choose to have a child tutored in order to gain entry.

There is no such thing as a perfect school so... each to their own!

But we have another good catholic school within 38 min and one bus. And then there ia Turing House which had best results in the borough..... God! It is such a tough choice!

I'm not sure if you saw the emoji next to the comment about getting a tutor.. it was a joke!

That being said, I would TOTALLY get a tutor for my children if they needed it. I had a tutor and benefitted hugely from it (I also didn't do extra work for 2 to 3 hours each night)

I'm also not sure whether you are making a jab at my intelligence by telling me to use my degree or if you are implying I should tutor my children myself?

Araminta...the white Brit middle.class equivalent? Grammar schools in London are dominated by smart Indian kids and few from Singapore and not white Brits...

I just think if you're going to shape your whole house-buying and long-term location on school choices, and a very particular type of school choice, it pays to think about why, and interrogate your own decisions.
personally I have no interest in sending my kids to grammar school and do not think their value-added is actually that great.
I also think they get a more diverse, rounded education from non-grammar and mixing with a broader range of children. Grammars have tiny percentages of children with SEN and on free school meals.
That's my decision, you make yours, but also bear in mind that not all SEN are apparent at nursery age

@ThingsWillWorkOut - that is the whole point, the superselective grammars are full of Asian kids now (mainly Indian) with an incredible work ethic drilled into from infancy. We know - my kids all went through it. We have observed the kids getting in, we have actually lived the experience all the way.

The white British middle class equivalent in London is catchment based, or church, or go via a eg a music aptitude test. The academies are introducing all sorts of aptitude tests to attract the “right sort” of parent, all perfectly legal, of course. Irony intended.

The OP misunderstood my point - he or she is perfectly capable of tutoring her own kids and probably will understand her own kids’ weaknesses best. Many tutors just fleece for £60 plus an hour over a number of years anyway.

Verbal/non verbal reasoning is a bit like chess - it has to be drilled a little to have the right openers etc. But it can also be drilled all the way. And some of the kids in the top grammars are just that, perfectly drilled.

Must be some good tutors within the south indian, muslim and hindu community for them to dominate so much

it's the culture of working hard. There's a school near me which hires out it's grounds for stuff on Saturdays. One is tutoring, the class is full of 6 yr olds & the there are very few white dc in there. I think it's too much personally.

The point about having a culture of working hard is probably true. But some would argue that given the country we are in some cultures have little choice but to work hard/work harder than the next kid simply because they are in the minority overall.

Ah you were being sarcastic - got it now. because for a moment I was perplexed why whould you say about white Britis in the context of grammar schools.

Catholic schools are also predominantly full of foreign kids, mainly from the continent.

Well, as for Indian it is not like that. In my son's school there are few very capable Indian boys but much more Indian kids with a very relaxed attitude to the extent that he wonders sometimes if the pay attention at school at all. It seems to me that there are two opposite end of scales in that ethnic group.

Or maybe it is hard work but very little thought of parents if those schools are worth it. Just a wild goose chase for prestige. Grammar schools are notoriously underfunded, teaching is mediocre in many of them and many were downgraded by OFSTED recently.
And the hard working boys deserve scholarship in a great selective private where at least they will have good pastoral care and maybe a bursary.

@TuttleTree DD1 is very happy at Latymer - it's a great school for the right child. On some of the other points on here re Grammar schools, IME Latymer is not particularly dominated by Asian kids but is pretty mixed racially. DD1 did not have intensive tutoring, started summer term of Y5 and did an hour + a couple of past papers a week but I do know others who started in Y4. The homework is definitely not 2-3 hours a night, I was surprised by how light it really is, more like 3-4 hours a week. The kids are obviously motivated but they're encouraged to do things outside academics, art, music, drama and sport. But it is competitive. I'm not sure how it compares with Woodford/Ilford as we didn't try for those, partly because the journey is more of a pain.

@TheYearOfSmallThings I'm afraid youngest is at the girls school so it doesn't help you. But friends' kids are happy at other mixed schools Frederick Bremmer, Leytonstone, Woodside and Kelmscott. The latter has had a a bad rep but seems to be turning round with an ambitious new head. 10 years ago families with boys used to move out of the area for secondary but that has changed in recent years.

Ok, and that is absolutely fine... everyone has a different preference... I still think you're engaging with the wrong thread, however.

Thanks - this is really helpful!

@Araminta1003 I disagree about tutoring your own kids. It might work for some, but for others (myself included) kids respond better, listen more attentively and get less distracted when they are with someone other than a parent. My kids really respect authority and are disciplined in a school setting/place of learning. They can sometimes be at home but it very much depends on their mood!

Then I think I know the schools you are talking about and I would go Turing House all the way if you have a good chance there (we didn't live near enough or it would definitely have been on my list).

Re tutoring, there certainly are parents who are pushing their kids to do hours a night but it's not everyone or even most people from what I can tell, and that isn't what we did and it worked out well. DD did an hour once a week with nothing in the holidays for about six months and she got into the schools she wanted to get into (including Tiffin, though she didn't end up going there). The tutoring was mainly aimed at exam technique. She used to get half an hour's homework from the tutor and nothing at all from primary school.

She has never had two hours homework a night at any point in her school career - now starting A Levels and although it is more work, it's more like one to one and a half hours a night. She seems to have plenty of time to lounge around watching Netflix and doing activities that take up around 10+ hours a week (her choice).

I would not have wanted to tutor DD myself, even though like the OP I also went to Oxbridge, because I know her and I know me and we would both have ended up cross and resentful. She's an angel for any teacher so paying for tutoring was very much in the interests of having a harmonious home!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4898047-why-would-people-be-dishonest-for-11

Hear Hear! Thanks for sharing this experience.

Yes, people constantly try to claim that anyone who says they are not tutoring hours and hours for years and years is lying. It is very boring.

@BonjourCrisette yes we live in the catchment of Turing House, or at least how it was for the last two years since they moved and before too. Why would you say that you would go all the way to get there in particular?
But St Pauls and StRR have almost the same GCSE results, a differwnce of few percent and maybe children are behaving better and are raised with some values. (?!) And then there is also Orlean Park but it is slightly out of our catchment.

Out of the schools you mentioned, I liked the Turing House atmosphere and attitude the best. People I know with children at Turing House seem really happy with it. I am not, however, in favour of faith schools particularly for a number of reasons. It's obviously ridiculous to state that only children at faith schools are being raised with values. You will find at least some badly behaved children in literally any school.

I looked round pretty much every secondary, even those that were a bit too far away out of interest. If I'd sent DD to one of the borough schools I would probably have been hoping for a waiting list place at Waldegrave but that's obviously not an option for a boy. Orleans is also good but if you are too far away then it's not really an option. Christ's also has some faith places but maybe that is too far as well, though the distance will be a lot bigger for faith places than open places.

boys have a completely different system of admission. Uncomparable to girls.

I know various kids who have passed well enough to be offered places including my own. If the 116 is referring to the Redbridge exam score then in recent years the initial offer score for Ilford/Woodford has been 108-111 ish so unless you are out of area you 116 would have been enough to get in. This year change of exam boards scores may be different. Yes maybe 1100-1200 will will sit for each school but for 180 places and plenty of kids are out of area so they will never get in. And a few schools put in everyone. Plus plenty of top scorers turn down for private schools. So yes competitive but really not impossible for a bright motivated and well prepared child.

@ThingsWillWorkOut but the OP has a boy doesn't she?

She has a boy and a girl. She wrote about it.

Just to put things in the perspective - there are 1600 candidates on average year to Tiffin school and they accept also around 180...
I suspect that there is even more to Wilson ...