SW London grammar and private year 7 entry 2024.

[Hatty999]

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4907226-sw-london-grammar-and-private-year-7-entry-2024

This is the previous link. Hope it works.

@SummerDCs your DC is DS or DD?

As the prep school boys mostly do 13+ entry for some boy schools. Most state school boys will take the 11+ route. Even the selection happens at similar time with almost the same content, the competition is different down to places available at different years. So for those schools, state primary boys aren't really compete with prep school boys for the place.

For coed and girls school mostly 11+ is much straightforward.

@SummerDCs if possible find more information from Bute, Faulkner and Newton prep parents. Also, we found the all boys prep schools gave better guidance.

@SummerDCs would love to hear the same thing for my son in year 5. My son is at a coed prep school and has homework every night but it is not particularly difficult work. Ixl, schoefield and simms mental maths paper, bond paper for vr or nvr. Roughly takes about 20 minutes each night. I am not sure how much to do on top of that considering my son is busy with cricket, football, swimming etc. we have started with some atom learning and trying to get him to read more.

Just wondering if anyone has heard from Emanuel about the second stage sports scholarships yet?

On the topic of FHSS - does anyone have any insights as to weighting of exam performance vs interview and vice versa? Based on the (numerous!) rejections my DD has had through this process I’m assuming her exam performance hasn’t been stellar but it sounds like she gave a v positive interview at FHSS this week. Wondering how much that will count for or whether it does really come down just to how they do in the exam primarily.

Thanks for replies! So interestingly we have NCT links - originally SW11 area . We then moved to SW19 when DC 2 came along to get a house.

some NCT parents moved & have oldest DC at Bute, Newton Prep & Hill House as well as Thomas. Two state one at PHS. Only the PHS one tells us about work but their daughter can go straight to senior. The others are just vague hence my question here about levels of work at preps.

thank you @Ilikelists we will try to follow that. Both DH and I work full time and we just feel they does around in after school club but then to get DC to do 30-45 mins at 5pm can be a challenge. Was thinking of going 4 days a week for next 6 months.
DC also has music & sport out of school such a juggle. We are aiming day co-Ed or girls day school.

@SummerDCs , GDSTs homework is not relevant as they have senior schools. Those GDST girls that move to other schools at 11+, we have known a few and they do a lot extra creative writing camps, maths camps, group tutor, music lessons for scholarships, extra netball and hockey during the holidays for sport scholarships etc as the parents told us from year 3.
Try and find parents whose kids are not the same year as yours, they may be more honest and open. Otherwise, the competition can be unhinged at times.

My dc is also year 5 and from state. My eldest is year 7 so we have already did the 11+. She had a good experience. She is naturally bright and only started prep end of year 5 bc we did not realize until last minute that we would do the 11+ All went well for her. We started prep earlier with my ds, as we knew he would do it since his sister went through it and he wanted to. Anyway, it is tricky to figure out what is the right amount of prep, as circumstances are different for everyone. For us we have the opposite, my ds does better in 11+ math, but he is also in a bilingual school, so half his school life is taught entirely in French. Therefore, losing out on a lot of English.....so we will need to start picking up our English reading and comprehension efforts. My dd also had the same, she was better in math....but because she started prep end of year 5 her scores seemed to jump quickly.

And to answer your question for the private schools, some schools do not set much homework and parents give their dc extra homework. I know this from family member who sends their dc to a top girls private school. She said all the parents give extra hw, some sending dc to verbal reasoning workshops as young as year 1!!!! I do not think this is all necessary, but I think they want to ensure to get a spot at a top school.

As for down time, both my dc do sports 6 days a week. Dd continued this during her 11+ prep, exams etc. She did not want to drop anything. And she is the same in secondary school. But many parents drop things (from what I have seen). My dc also watch tv daily, use screens a little too much for my liking. But I did read someone mention that the dc that had a no screen rule during the week got into the grammer schools, where they ones that were allowed screens were less likely. DD did not apply to any grammers, only to Independent schools. DS will also only apply to Independent.

Even for some of the prep school mentioned above, in addition to the school input, I think one need to understand that parents would also find time to top up for additional prep effort. So keep that in mind when you see some prep have amazing feeding / streaming record to some 'top' senior schools.

On the topic of prep schedule, think the context (target schools) is very important to determine how much effort it took. I commented on the same topic two months ago in the previous thread can take a read.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4907226-sw-london-grammar-and-private-year-7-entry-2024?reply=130834112

yep. It does rather depend on what schools you are applying for. For the state grammars the competition is, frankly, insane and doing multiple hours a night from half way through year 5 is not unheard of. Ditto I suspect for the very, very top private schools. But for everyone else? Do SOME work - but pace yourself, it’s a long time between now and next Christmas, and a shattered resentful child is unlikely to do their best. We were quite gentle in our prep at first, did a bit more most days over the summer, and then ramped it up over the last 10 weeks (state primary)

Yes, exactly, it is not all the prep school. A lot of effort is made by the parents. For example, I know of booking/writing clubs organized by parents from reception to get their dc to write/read more. Verbal reasoning workshops, creative writing classes plus additional hw being set by parents.

@PreplexJ how does your dd like the spgs so far? I am worried it will be a very stressful environment.

DD did not take up SPGS, so we couldn’t comment on the environment.

I’m sure whenever you ask this type of question on MN, you will see some mums jump in and give you euphoric personal experiences that counter every single concern you might have, albeit occasionally hear some odd negative experience thread will get shut down quickly by the same group of mums.

So perhaps do not take it with a pinch of salt, for any schools, get the offer first, then try to find out more on the offer holder day, talk to the real kids and parents that in the same situation as you and get a feel for how it is and fit. Every child is different, anecdotal information (like you concerned stressful environment in the first place) may have no ground. On the other hand, limit your view to just one or two “direct experiences” in MN is not helpful. Try to gather information from various sources to make a proper informed decision. Good luck.

Has anyone with older siblings previously managed to get into kcs or alleyns without getting DC or Emanuel?

So far DS has invite to scholarship day for whitgift which is great but a straight no from Emanuel and DC. Feeling a long shot now to get either of the others, though dd is at alleyns and was similar level to DS so trying to understand it all. I prob just need to be patient!

Phoebe35 - no siblings or past experience, but my DS has just got a regular interview at Whitgift (not scholarship), although did get through for Emanuel. It just shows that the schools are all different and looking for slightly different things. Also boys at this age can vary in performance from day to day.

he might therefore have done well enough for Alleyns or KCS despite not getting Emanuel. I’ve heard that Emanuel require consistent high scores across all the tests whereas other schools allow the profile to be a bit more “spiky” (I.e. if they ace the maths but fall slightly below in English that is ok for some schools but not Emanuel, which makes that one more tricky).

either way, having an invite to scholarship at Whitgift is great!

It's not a stressful environment at all, based on the last five years of DD being there. Please feel free to DM if you have specific questions. Unfortunately, it is difficult to answer them in the main thread without getting sidetracked.

Re prep, it is not necessary to do years of work or hours a week, based purely on our own experience. We found 6 months of preparatory work (an hour once a week with a tutor and half an hour's homework) was sufficient for DD to get offers from the schools she was interested in (one SS grammar and one private). She is by no means a genius and came from a state primary with a fairly average level of achievement so I would imagine many other children would be fine with a similar level of work.

Two quote form my previous post:

"I’m sure whenever you ask this type of question on MN, you will see some mums jump in and give you euphoric personal experiences that counter every single concern you might have"

"There are always some outlines, and outliner is more likely in MN due to selection bias, but to have a realistic chance one should look at what is the recent overall preparation effort of the students who get admitted to the target schools. In my experience, in those very top academic schools, the range of difference in preparation effort is not as big."

One dc in last years thread did not make it to interview round for Emanuel, but ended up getting into KCS.

Performances vary on the day and different types of exams / different schools focus on different things - we know of DC last year with final offers from DC but no from Emanuel, and a no from KGS but an offer from LU.

Hi @Lovemyyorkies my daughter is y8 spgs and so far not found it stressful at all - she has v manageable homework load and in y7 had no exams (just some tests here and there) vs others I know in different schools who seemed to have more frequent exams through the year and far more homework. Of course this could/will change as she moves through the school I expect but I think they prepare them for that. If you have an offer for your DD and want to talk more about spgs in the future, happy to chat directly. FYI my daughter went there from a state primary school and I was a little concerned re her “keeping up” and whilst she’s not necessarily acing it in maths at the moment she’s doing well overall and very happy and getting positive feedback from teachers etc. so our experience so far has been really good.

Thanks so much everyone for your advice, much appreciated.

Reposting this in case anyone has any insights?

On the topic of FHSS - does anyone have any insights as to weighting of exam performance vs interview and vice versa? Based on the (numerous!) rejections my DD has had through this process I’m assuming her exam performance hasn’t been stellar but it sounds like she gave a v positive interview at FHSS this week. Wondering how much that will count for or whether it does really come down just to how they do in the exam primarily.

@ItsMeHi48 About the Maths thing, DD also found Y7 a bit of a struggle mathswise but things looked up a lot in Y8 when she was in a lower set for Maths and the pace eased up a bit. She started to really enjoy Maths again and went on to take Additional Maths FSMQ by choice (and get a good grade in it). There is another SPGS parent on here who found exactly the same thing - that Y7 in Maths was a bit of a struggle at times but Y8 was much better. So I hope it is the same for your DD!

Oh that’s so interesting to hear @BonjourCrisette thank you for sharing! My DD is in lower set and definitely it’s best for her as she gets to grip with things. Sometimes she says “I’m rubbish at maths” and I try to reassure her she’s definitely not but she’s doing pretty hard maths with a bunch of very smart girls and she excels in English and other subjects so she needs to just persevere and not give up and she’ll get there ☺️The teachers are telling me they’re not concerned and she just needs to not lose confidence so I’m not worrying about it but it’s really great to hear about your experience.

😂😂