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.

This is amusing, every school will claim their educational ethos to be critical thinking....

Perhaps other schools would do well to use those kinds of questions at interview.

How do you know how many had which questions though. They must have interviewed at least a couple of hundred girls and you must surely only know a handful? All the interviewers and interviews will be different.
I honestly don't think you can read anything into it- I remember DD coming out of an interview at the same time as a good friend. One teacher super friendly dropping her off, full of praise and kind words to the parent, kid very happy and enthusiastic about the interview, saying very easy etc. the other child very glum, unfriendly teacher, monosyllabic about the interview etc. First one didn't get an offer and the second one did.

Depends how wired is it, DD didn't find questions in SPGS wired and do had other school have similar type of questions.

But without more details there is not way to compared to the questions PP they reported got asked this year.

However, I don't think there are questions that are "tutor proof", and I don't think you can see through much of the natural ability within 15 mins on any questions.

I believe the interview questions my daughter had were definitely tutor-proof. We couldn’t have anticipated those questions.

@lolo99 we are waiting for Reed’s too. My DS loves the school but he knows it’ll be a tough one. We got our first offer today for Claremont Fan which was a big relief. Good luck to your DS tomorrow. 🤞🏻

DD spoke to her class teacher about the interview questions. The teacher told DD how surreal the questions were. DD’s teacher asked her if the questions phased her.

Good luck to all those waiting for Reeds! Hoping this week passes quickly

My pov on the spgs interview and “weird” questions, for what it’s worth, is that it’s a brilliant way for them to assess a child’s ability for independent thinking and for spgs that does seem to be a trait/ability that they value in particular. They don’t need the interview to persuade them on academic ability because the very thorough entrance exams have done that job. My daughter had maths questions (but not English) in her spgs interview two years ago and on reflection, I think that is probably because she’s weaker in that vs her English and that was likely apparent in her entrance exam papers.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Did you receive feedbacks from the school regarding her performance? I’m considering calling the admissions office to inquire about this information.

DD is interviewing at SPGS this year, and I didn't found the questions out of extraordinary, as she had faced similar ones at other schools. We did some practice on these type of questions in advance, not on the content but on the format and logical steps to respond to the question.

I wouldn't ask for any feedback unless you get a 'no' next week. Zero point asking now.

Perhaps my DD was one of the few lucky ones to receive some unusual questions.

@MeimeiApril , the admissions depts are working flat out to finalise lists of offers, WL, declines that have to be signed off before the correspondence can be processed (plus all the bursary options). Next week is their busiest of the year, there is no way they will give you any feedback.

I suspect your dd did well in the exams but they want to know how she thinks and how she adapts to situations hence the questioning, they are looking for more than correct answers in the exam (but I'm guessing this).

When my DD sat the 11plus - not SPGS- some of the questions asked were things like
What is a third of love?
Is a room bigger or smaller if you open
the window?
The usual ' what is this' and being shown a picture of a completely random thing they couldn't possibly know
It must be more interesting than 'what do you like to do in your spare time' although most ask this sort of thing to warm them up a bit.

I wonder if the school can let us know if a child on the borderline. Even if a child is accepted, she may feel stressed studying with highly intelligent and competitive girls.

@itsnearlyfebruary I think these are standard kind of open questions asked by many schools, no right or wrong but definitely not feeling wired to me. If you have done some basic preparation for interview you will know how to handle it in a way.

@MeimeiApril a friend of mine asked this for Hampton. Her DS had been offered a place and she wanted to know where he placed as she was worried about him being bottom of the pack. They didn’t give results or any marks but reassured her he had done well, not scraped. So if you have an offer then I imagine the school is more likely to give you reassuring feedback. If no offer or waitlist, I wouldn’t even bother asking for feedback until March.

And yes, even if your DD gets a place she may well feel stressed keeping up with an extremely academic cohort. My DD is at one of these schools and they do put pressure on (whilst also offering lots of guidance and support) so I guess its up to you to assess whether your DD is robust enough for an environment like that.

thanks for sharing this. Very useful to know. Good luck to all those waiting for the results

I know- pretty standard but some might consider them unusual questions. Just pointing out that they're not really. Schools ask this sort of thing all the time- no point in asking academic questions.

I honestly don't think the image of St Paul's as a place stuffed with madly competitive girls where they will flog you within an inch of your life to get top grades is at all accurate. DD has experienced it as a very nurturing, inclusive, friendly environment. The teachers are kind and reasonable. Her friends all help each other and collaborate on academic things. The only pressure I have seen has come from within or occasionally from people's parents. The school is very much at pains to stop them doing too much from what we have experienced (with the obvious caveat that if you have a bunch of conscientious and slightly perfectionist high achievers who really want to do their best, this is sometimes quite hard whatever school you are in).

We tried to ask another school (not SPGS), but get a no answer, just reassure DD would be absolutely fine provided she study there. So I guess there is no harm to try an ask if you get an offer?

I do think it is important to also get a feeling of the prospective parents cohorts. I can't imagine if a sizable number of parents are pushy to get their DCs to a particular school for many years they will suddenly stop doing that for the next 5-7 years. The competitiveness feeling from some top ranking schools maybe inherited from the culture of the competitive parenting.

Thank you @PreplexJ and @BonjourCrisette for these very wise pieces of advice

Agree @PreplexJ ! I was watching my DD play sport at school on Saturday and a random dad struck up a conversation about the game. By half time I knew his DDs GCSE options, her rowing prowess, her tennis aptitude and how she was nobly making a guest appearance for the C team (my DDs team) but is usually in the As.
He didn’t even ask my name or who my DD was 🙄. So yes, there can be a certain type of parents at these schools (although many are absolutely lovely) and you just don’t know until you get there!