SW London Grammar and Private year 7 entry 2024

[lolo99]

Not sure if this thread has been started but if not, I would like to share experiences, tips and generally talk about schools and their pros and cons and processes to ease the anxiety and pain for us parents :)

Our most competitive schools did their exams before Christmas.

The schools we are doing in January do not fall
into super competitive bracket I don’t think. I mean selective but not the really hard ones.

The January exams are in most cases a hangover from the Covid years. Pre Covid all exams were in January and it was very intense for dc with lots of clashes. In the autumn of 2020 schools tried other options and found it worked better for their staff and the dc to spread exams out and use other types of first round testing.
I agree that schools like Epsom are overwhelmed with applications (so don't really care) and Epsom doesn't have the capacity in the senior leadership team to make fundamental changes at the moment, maybe when the new head has settled in in the future they might make a change.

The super competitive schools I am referring to are Westminster, Eton, St Paul’s Boys and Girls, City Girls, and JAGS. They all have written exams after Xmas.

JAGS doesn’t. Was all done and dusted by end of November like a lot of the girls’ schools.

Apparently Brighton College (which isn’t SW London of course but gets quite a few applicants from here) has its exam on 9 Feb! Same day as most offers! They must be very confident of their appeal.

If the candidate hasn’t found another location to take the ISEB, they have take it at JAGS next Monday.

Ah ok! Apologies I am coming from a skewed prep school perspective where they host the ISEB themselves.

Albeit ISEB isn’t a written exam. I know Alleyns is after Xmas too. Epsom, St John’s and St Dunstans too. Then of course the interviews. Feels never ending!
I do think more streamlining and better concentration is a thought if schools want to improvw The experience. I’ve not enjoyed the looming feeling over xmas
even though we’ve not done any work.

Happy new year everyone! Hope everyone had a restful break! We are also now waking up and focusing a bit more on interview prep - no more written/online exams left for the schools we are going for and waiting for responses for second stages from two schools now. I’m hoping they will come through this week as the interviews are all scheduled to happen between now and the 18/19 of January so a little bit of heads up from the school would be useful mainly to be mentally prepared!

Totally agree! Some schools are giving 2 days notice for the interviews which is hard to manage as a working parent!

@QuiteAJourney thank you, all the best x

We'd been planning on doing quite a bit of work over Christmas which hasn't happened. We've just got Alleyns left which was always a really long shot anyway. It's been hard to motivate DS to do more.

That's crazy! Sometimes I think these schools are stuck in the 1950s, and assume mothers are simply not working.
We have multiple children, including younger ones who need dropping and collecting from school, and both work FT, and this whole thing is not easy to manage.
Cherry on the cake would be if we had multiple interviews on the same day (wishful thinking, I think! ;)).

Has anyone got any experiences to share on what a subject focussed interview at KGS will be like - will it going through errors in the paper?
Also, is there likely be some general chat too or are they usually purely focussed on the subject?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Exactly the same situation here - the next two weeks will be a juggling act managing the younger kids plus new year rush at work 😫

Does anyone know when the LEH news is likely to arrive?

Do they not all offer the same week? Letters first week ish of Feb? Unless obviously people are waiting for next stage after exams.

Ah sorry I meant about the interviews!

Tube strikes look like they are going to shut down London next week. Many girls (DD included) have SPGS and CLSG second round exams on Mon and Tues, so adding even more stress about getting there on time and getting home to an already stressful couple of days. Not sure how we are going to deal with this.

Good luck with the exams - but please do consider commute when selecting a school from the offers you get. We chose a school with what we thought was a simple four stop train journey, but strikes, cancellations, swans-on-the-line have made it really quite challenging at times this term. Thankfully they are relaxed about lateness but if they weren’t it would have been quite traumatic…

We live somewhere where its a 30 min door to door commute to both the schools with 7 different tube lines within a 15 min walk from us - but none of that matters if the whole system shuts down like they are suggesting. Its more the issue of the added stress on the exam day on top of everything else. These poor kids have been working so hard and them having something like this thrown at them is so disappointing. It will be interesting to see if the schools communicate anything about it in the next couple of days.

Use Atlas car service, phone and book a day before.
Addison Lee, but they can be late so go for early and wander about area.
Prebook Gett which is Black cab app like Uber.
Tend to share car rides and cab rides if DC has any good friends going as well.
Good luck!

Anyone got any idea about G&L? The Atom exam was month ago (maybe even more for girls who did it in November). Aaargh!

Waiting anxiously for that result as well! They are back at school now so hopefully this week? I’m not sure when the first stage results came last year but maybe someone can shed some light on that! Thank you!

6th Jan last year, I think need to check the individual schools term start time

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4697901-sw-london-private-grammar-applying-for-year-7-in-2023-part-ii?page=28