Nottingham High School or Manchester Grammar School or Royal Grammar School Newcastle or King Edward's School Birmingham

[Lalagu]

My kid has received offers from these four schools for Year 7 in the upcoming year. I am wondering which school he should choose. Do you have any insightful ideas? Thanks!

you can't be certain that a 10/11 year old ' wants to be a doctor'. That sounds like your ambition as much as his.

I'm afraid I agree with @Lifeinlists. Is this what you want for your son, or is this what he wants to do? Very few children that age know what they want to do, and most change their mind when they see the reality. DD wanted to be a history teacher at that age, but when she was at secondary school she found that she excelled in the sciences. With an excellent STEM degree under her belt she now wants to do a healthcare related post grad degree.

There are other equally well regarded career paths available.

That's also true! My DC are not medics in any way shape or form. It was always slightly alarming that the medics (at RGS but probably everywhere) tended to run in families (often both parents and all siblings)... how much is that freedom of choice, I wonder?

Also, it's who you know not what you know. Daughter struggled to get medical work experience in year 13 because she was under 18, but had I been in healthcare I'm sure I would have been able to find something for her.

She ended up volunteering in a care home, but she wasn't even allowed to make the residents a cup of tea because she was under 18. It's bonkers because you get under 18s working in cafes.

Nottingham had 18 go to do medicine last year. I have the destination list in front of me.

23 if you include dentistry

yes nottingham is good....just measure the A*/A results in past 10 yrs, MGS achieved a better result and thus whatever kid wants to be doctor or other jobs, such results can provide a better choice.....

Just looking at how many students go on to do medicine isn't necessarily a useful measure of how good the school is. It may be that there are more medicine applicants in a particular cohort in one school than in another. It may be that more students wants to study engineering or law.

The only way you will find out more realistic details is to ask each school what proportion of students who apply for medicine are successful.

@Lalagu how sure are you that your son at the age of 10 is 100% certain that he wants to do medicine?

besides medicine, i also checked and take reference to the GCSE and AL results over past 10 years and who is sustainable to get a decent result

It should make sense to have a better choice with better GCSE/AL whatever want to be doctor teacher lawyer

I think actually the number of medicine applicants is often a reflection of the proportion of medical parents (v high at Nottingham)

a lot of the kids last year at Nottingham went on to do engineering and a very large number went on to do economics/law/politics/business type degrees.

A word of caution; the results can also be misleading. Some schools will ask/tell students not to take exams if they will get a poor result. I can say for a fact that RGS never does this; maybe people can comment on the others? (I know it is rife in London schools which are a whole different level of cut-throat.)

It should make sense to have a better choice with better GCSE/AL whatever want to be doctor teacher lawyer

at those type of schools they won’t be encouraging them into teaching as a career.

There was a rumour that it happens at Nottingham but it doesn’t. They do however tell parents when the academic nature of the school isn’t right for a particular child anymore and they are very strict about the average GCSE score required to be allowed to stay on in sixth form.

can check numbers of students took gcse/al in uk gov web

But that may not be conclusive. Some selective schools have a second exam centre number for those who are not such high achievers but only publicise the headline numbers. Some wheedle out lower achievers for sixth form, so are more selective for Alevel/IB. Independent schools can be selective about league tables. None of these schools are likely to fail your child in achieving his ambitions so look at other factors to influence a decision. When is your offer deadline?

As my very wise careers adviser friend pointed out to me " Many of today's children will be doing jobs which haven't been invented yet".
One of my sons has a successful career in an area which didn't exist when he was 11, so I know it's true.

Let your son develop in a fully rounded way OP before dismissing 'irrelevant' subjects.

Further to comments about medics coming from families of medics - this was my experience when teaching in a similar school. Not all, of course, but quite a high proportion. I think some of them should have followed another career path, for sure.

around end of February

yes it is true
my husband job is created in around 2000 and till now there is insufficient in his expertise

@Lalagu your son is likely to get the same results whichever of these schools he goes to. They're all good schools with hard working intakes. My children went to KEHS (dd) and one of the local grammar schools (ds) and then dd went to a grammar for sixth form. The teachers were just as good across the independent and grammar schools - dd did just as well at sixth form as she did at GCSE. The main reason people pay for KEHS/KES or any of the other schools that you're looking at is for the extra-curricular offerings (music/arts/sport) and for the resources like the drama theatre, swimming pool etc and the time they take off curriculum. So you could compare those things if you're interested in them. But there's little point comparing results because they vary year on year depending on the composition of year groups

I just read this post and am curious to know if the OP has made up her mind? Will she consider to do a school visit to each school before the new school year?