Feeling Disheartened With Private School Visits: Very Unpersonalised & Felt Like Cattle Markets

[roses2]

We're in London and have spent the past few weekends visiting private schools. We are huge state school supporters but willing to pay for the right private school.

We've visited four private so far, all well known in London.

1. School 1 - Great tour - we'll apply for this one
2. School 2 - "self guided"; didn't reply to my email query I sent regarding common entrance exam; bell rang at end to signify "please leave"
3. School 3 - "self guided" again
4. School 4 - had a student guide but they seemed unmotivated; couldn't help with half the questions

2; 3 and 4 all felt a bit like cattle markets. And all charge ~£25k/year. This is our first venture into looking at private but I expected something a bit more personalised especially if this is the sales part where they should be selling the school to me. I'm thinking of scrapping half of them from the list.

Is this what visits to popular private schools are like? Where you are just a number? Does it get better once you are in??

@PreplexJ the data above includes all schools with a DFE number (that’s what the site says), and on the other page you can see it includes independent and free schools.

For most London indies at this stage of admission cycle, wooing is impractical. There are 5 to 10 times more parents willing to part with £25K x 7 than they have places.

Once you have an offer, all will do much better than a weekend open day when the school dragged unenthusiastic year 8s and 9s from their bed to show a gaggle of super-eager prospective parents the school.

I've worked in a very popular, highly competitive independent school, and one which had spaces available in every year group. In the first school it was literally an open morning - the school was open to anyone/everyone, and parents wandered round looking at whatever they wanted to. In the second school (actively recruiting) there were highly personalised tours, lead by staff or prefects who had been carefully matched to the family.

Would you rather send your child to a school where you're grateful for having been offered a place, or would you rather a school that was grateful to receive your child. No right answer, pros and cons to both.

Eta: both these schools were lovely places to work, children were largely happy, and achieved well. I genuinely wouldn't rank either school as objectively "better" than the other. Horses for courses and all that.

Personally I don’t enjoy being anywhere where I’m expected to be grateful just to be allowed in. Yuck.

If you check more details on the other page, you will find for independence school most of the information is blank in theil DfE dataset. Yes I checked these data and that is what I know.

ok @PreplexJ i think we have a different reading of it. I googled the independent schools average gcse taken and can see that in 2017 it was 9.7 and in 2019 it was 9.4 where the report states that it’s going down due to more schools only taking 9. Can’t find anything beyond that but at this point I just know from the schools we visited (for three different children) that the idea “all schools do 10” is just not true

Agree, we had similar experience too when doing the 11plus school rounds in London two years ago. We visited about 10 London indies and 'most do 10' wasn't true then.

It's good to know there are further days if you're lucky enough to get in where the experience will hopefully better.

I'm more of a humble and humility type person and just worry that these schools breed arrogance and superiority in their students which are traits I really dislike in a person.

Going to be honest, op, you’re not coming across as terribly “humble and humility” on this thread 😂

The children will learn manners and attitudes at home far more than from school

I'm surprised most seem to do only 9 x GCSEs - assuming they all do maths, 2 x English and 3 x science that only leaves 3 options to cover all the arts, languages, humanities and social sciences. I know that nobody needs to do more than 8 or 9 but surely there's more to education than that. It seems a shame to narrow the curriculum so drastically (and close some HE doors) when presumably the DC are very able.

Arrogance/humility is instilled at home. Some kids at a super selective school look down on those who didn't make the cut, and don't think they need to make any further effort. Others worked very hard to earn their place, and they continue to work hard to make the most of the opportunity. Same with very expensive schools - some believe they're intrinsically better than other people for being able to afford it, others are grateful for the opportunity.

Don't forget - Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy both went to the same school.... 😉😉

I agree on the recent downward trends for the average number of GCSE subjects taken, especially for private schools.

People who interested in reading the percentage of GCSE grades achieve, should notice some very "top" independent schools has gradually relax the requirement on 10 GCSEs, while some other schools still stick to minimum 10. I do think some of the motivation are league table comparison driven, focus less subjects (say 9 or 8) for some students can surely provide with a better chance to boost the school exam result from statistics point of view.

I like to look at email techniques to judge prospective schools. I researched/corresponded with more than a dozen schools before finalising my shortlist (London and outer London, so quite a few options) and the approach to open days, registration, etc are so vastly different!

Some are absolutely chaotic with no information on the open days ("look at the website and register there") and some actively send you information and keep in touch even when there are thousands of prospective parents interested. Some send me newsletters after the open day with regular updates, or personal emails asking how I felt, while others just ignore you, even after making an offer. I found observing these techniques hugely valuable in comparison with the actual open day itself.

@PreplexJ agree, the boys and coed schools seem do 10+ GCSE whilst some schools do 9 just to get higher ranks. The need for 10+ GCSEs for some US universities don’t need SATs/ACT scores…UCLA, Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton,Yale. They need to see what you have at GCSEs, due to offers made before A levels results.
@TypsTrycks agree to your informative comments.

I'm more of a humble and humility type person and just worry that these schools breed arrogance and superiority in their students which are traits I really dislike in a person.

That's difficult to assess on an open day where it's a question of herding round numbers and you'll maybe meet a small number of pupils on which to base it.

I chose our school as I thought the boys were modest and aware of their privilege but you won't necessarily get an accurate impression from an open day which is a (much as I hate this word) curated snapshot. I exclude Habs where the old headmaster opened his speech with "Let me tell you why we're the top school in the country". A brave start...

I watch a lot of school sports matches and the more arrogant pupils (and parents) aren't necessarily at the highest profile schools. At the risk of causing offence, we've seen some truly awful behaviour from UCS and Reid's parents and pupils (in rugby which may attract a higher proportion) and found Harrow, Eton and Charterhouse the opposite.

(I'm surprised about the GCSEs, our local selective private schools do 10).

Neither of my children particularly like doing tours- some prospective parents can be really rude and ask ridiculous questions that are impossible for them to answer! But it can make a difference to your view of a school unfortunately although it shouldn't really.

I looked round many of the 'big name' London schools and none of the boys or girls who we came across were remotely arrogant or entitled but some of the other parents looking around most definitely were and did put me off more than one school.. Some of those touring were outgoing, some really were terrified and hardly spoke- there will be all types in a school. ideally you'd tour a school more than once but thats getting harder i think due to sheer numbers.

On the GCSEs- one of my DCs did 9 and the other will do 10. Nothing to do with where the school want to be in the League Tables, just an acknowledgement that it really isn't necessary to do 10. Meant there was time to do other things like community work, bespoke courses etc.

The state school I work at offers individual family tours by the head as it's less intimidating to ask a question when it's just your family rather than a bunch of strangers.

I would have thought this would be standard practice if you're paying £25k.

Is this an oversubscribed state school in London? Is so, the head must have better way to spend the time.

I was at my DCs open day a couple of weeks ago. There were over 2000 families visiting apparently and it wasn't the only open day. It would be impossible for the head to do all the tours- they'd never be able to work. If you get an offer you do then get a small group tour with the head.
The head was also available to talk to after the tours and the talks, along with parents volunteers, admissions , SEN staff etc.

Yes it is a bit off OP. But I think I'd assume that open days are not worth the school investing in due to the number of applicants.

Is this an oversubscribed state school in London? Is so, the head must have better way to spend the time.

Often the more popular schools don't have to pull out all the stops for open days because they can fill their places several times over.

That doesn't mean they won't provide an individual experience and support for your child once they're at the school, it's more that they choose to focus their energies on their pupils.

You think head teachers should do 1000+ individual tours a year? Even if they did nothing but tours and didn’t actually run the school at all, there wouldn’t be time.

Some of the posts on this thread are good examples of why people call private school parents entitled. There seems to be an attitude of “I’ve got £25k and therefore I deserve special treatment”- from OP complaining about not being “wooed”, people expecting individual tours from the head etc etc. It’s much better just to approach it from the view of whether the school’s a good fit for your child rather than getting cross because they haven’t rolled out the red carpet for you.

This.

Last year when DD was in year 7, she and her friends were excited by the idea of showing their school. This year, there is absolutely no enthusiasm and quite some moaning about waking up early on a Saturday.

The parents sometime ask ridiculously hard questions about school policies that are impossible for the children to answer. DD and her friend (another year 8) for example were repeatedly asked about A level subject choices and related areas by one parent even after they told him (twice) they were both in year 8.

When doing the tours few years back myself, I was sometime shocked by how entitled some of the visiting parents sounded and consciously didn't apply to one school to avoid parents like that (complete overreaction, I know l, but was really appalled at the time).

I'm surprised at the self guiding tours. We looked at almost (what felt like) every bloody school in south West London, state and private, and I can only think of one private and one state that had self guided tours- both Co-Ed.