London grammar and private senior school entry 2025

[CruCru]

Hi all

It doesn’t look as though one of these threads has been set up yet so I thought I’d do it.

I have a daughter going into year 6 and a son going into year 8 next month - both will be moving to senior school in 2025.

My DCs schools have almost identical A level and GCSE results on all permutations- A stars, A star - A, 9-7 etc yet are about 15 places apart on the table due to about 0.5% difference on one of the criteria. There's not much between most of these schools.

That is fair. I remember an old headmaster once saying that it is almost pointless comparing schools at the top of league tables because the differences are often so minor.

I know someone who says that, really, we should only look at GCSE ranked league tables. A levels don’t give a like for like comparison - Westminster and UCS admit girls for sixth form while St Paul’s and City don’t.

I have just googled and found this: https://britannia-study.co.uk/boarding-schools/gcse-league-table/

Ranking schools' GCSE results without considering how selective the school is in the first place is not a like-for-like comparison.

In fairness, I wouldn’t know how to judge how selective a school is without already knowing something about it. I know that it is very difficult to get into Westminster / St Paul’s / City but I have no sense of whether it is difficult to get into Withington Girls’ School because it is far from where I live.

Judging a school solely on its league table position would be a bit of a weird thing to do.

Some parents in those top private schools have outside tutoring for GCSEs and A levels so hard to factor whether the school is selective and with extra top ups.

This is probably true. To be honest, I tend to assume that other people use league tables the way I do - I look out for schools near me, that I’m familiar with or where friends’ children go. The rest I just skim over because I don’t know much about them. League tables are interesting but not necessarily informative.

I am also fairly biased. If I see a school is high up in the league tables, I’ll often think “Well of course they are, they are impossible to get into!”.

We know so very little about LUS alternative route to gcse and feel uncomfortable about it. Would be grateful for any info/insight. Currently our number 1 choice because of mixed and distance.

There is a series of podcasts called 'the heads talk' where a prep school head chats to a number of heads at London day schools. The LU head talks about the GCSEs in her chat. They are quite interesting talks in general.

Sorry Can’t recall which thread. A parent was asking on Surbiton High interview. A friend’s DD sat it earlier this week. The DD said it went really well. 30mins. The interviewer was very kind, put DD at ease and asked general questions. Nothing specific - no challenging maths questions. We sit late next week.

I've been told 400 out of 800 when I called the school.

Thank you! Our daughter takes hers in early January. It’s worked out that we have nothing from 2nd December until 6th January, then three interviews in a week. Might be a struggle to get her back in the swing of things…

@SamPoodle123 Do you think St Paul’s boys will email today? Have you looked at old threads?

@Wlondon14 I hope they email today! But I’m not sure. Will see if I can find in an old thread later.

Hampton 11+ emails are out

We are waiting to hear from them as well, fingers crossed!

Re: Hampton interviews, has anyone found any great advice re: the interviews? I've looked around, but nothing really stood out. Email says it will include academic assessment for Maths & English + general discussion. Is that the format for all Hampton interviews? Or is that only if scores were mediocre? Thanks for any insights!

Good luck to all children sitting the Forest exams on Thursday.

We are now done until Christmas so are waiting to hear back from the schools. Apart from endlessly refreshing my emails, there isn’t much to do (perhaps I’ll write my Christmas cards).

Thank you, we have Forest tomorrow and then we are done too. Christmas is ON!

Putney emails now out. Anyone has any idea of how many applied / how many taken to the second stage?

@Lana1985 we are through to second round of PHS - delighted as it's a favourite. I think I saw on a prior year thread that there were about 600 applicants, of which about 300 went through, for about 70 external places. I suspect they have to offer at least double the number of places due to the number of schools they are in competition with. So perhaps the odds from round 2 are 1/2 - 2/3?

@Dallasdays well done to your daughter! A yes for us too. Thank you for the stats - useful. We're in the opposite camp mainly due to distance but I'd probably take the place if we were offered. We've got whs stage two which geographically is closer but odds not looking great either!

@Lana1985 Thanks and well done to your daughter too!

Does Latymer usually email end of day?