SW London Grammar and private senior school entry 2025

[Wlondon14]

Hi! I know there are a few threads like this out there, but they seem to focus on grammar schools outside of London. I found this group really helpful a few years ago when my daughter was going through this process.

Where are you applying, how did you find the open days? Are you using Atom learning? What is your prep plan for the next month?

I have a son applying to - St Paul's, Kings, Latymer Upper, Emanuel, Ibstock, Hampton, Harrodian

Hope you had a positive letter! 🤞🤞🤞

WHS website says ‘early dec’ for the first stage results.

Last year the WHS emailed on 1 Dec (and the first round was a bit later than this year... on about 16 Nov)

Did anyone’s DD sit SPGS CEM? DD did it on Monday and said there was no timer - just a warning about a minute before the test ended. Seems unfair for a speed-based online assessment.

@DreamyDreamy Did your daughter report the same on the SPGS exam?

Good luck to Emanuel and City boys tomorrow!

Good luck to your son today too @Wlondon14

Not sure if anyone's listened to 'the heads talk' podcasts but they are useful if looking at the SW London secondaries!

Good luck to everyone sitting Emanuel today. It was extremely busy at drop off.

Yes, but nothing unusual for 11+ (this is my second round). I think the schools are usually good at putting children at ease, especially Emanuel.

DD went today, reported same, and also that some question formats were unexpected, at least when compared to Atom or Century.

CEM Select is commissioned by Cambridge CEM. It has a different format compared to Atom or Century. This is likely due to copyright restrictions. Similarly, while Atom offers GL and ISEB practice tests, the mock format doesn't resemble the real GL paper or ISEB test.

I heard they were crazy busy, DS said there were hundreds of children. I guess because co-ed is so rare? an exam that 'can't be prepared for' is a Good Thing though, once he got over the unusualness of it, he just got stuck in. Guess it won't be for everyone. We should hear about next round before Christmas.

I heard that Thomas’s was chaos and a bit odd. Slightly too far for us so didn’t apply in the end.

Emanuel exam sounds like it was very straightforward so fingers crossed for all of the DCs!

I just asked her, she said no timer but that there was a clock on the wall.

I’ve only recently started following education threads here and the most surprising thing has been to discover that most people appear to use Atom. We don’t think much of Atom at all; Exam Papers Plus / Pretest Plus seem much better. Just us?

If you follow these threads long enough, you will find parents also complain specifically about exam paper plus mock papers not resembling the actual GL paper test in terms of difficulty or format. I happened to read one English and one NVR EPP paper and will agree it does not feel like GL at all.

People also complain about pretest plus - its ISEB, CEM Select, and Consortium mock modules not looking and feeling like the real exams, especially for those with adaptive natutre pretest plus without. Therefore, I don't think one can rely on any single platform

Hi.
Does anyone on this post know when the Hampton results come out?
I believe it was 16th December in previous years but wasn’t sure about this year.
Many thanks!

They said by the evening of the 13th of December for interview invitations.

Why don’t we have a more standardized exam structure for the independent schools ?
My son just finished LU today, he will sit Dulwich and Kings this week, and he is already tired.
Most of girl schools have a common exam 😩

Oh I found it the other way round. With my son it seemed a simpler process as the first round for everywhere was ISEB.

With my daughter we’ve had to attend multiple schools just for the first round to sit their own bespoke exam. Guess it depends where you apply.

Interesting. We were really impressed with pretest plus’s CEM tests in particular, but also ISEB. I haven’t seen GL, to be fair.

Daughter here. We’ve had ISEB for two (one of which also had their own quirky ‘problem solving’ paper), CEM for one and generic English/maths for the other three.

Yes, it's a pain. We are not sitting St Paul's to avoid ISEB and dragging the process into January. All the schools we are taking test write their own tests so kind of similar, just very time consuming

Yea, agreed. Also, when my dd did the 11+ her exams were spread a week apart! My ds has so many exams close together or the day after each other. It is frustrating.