Any experience of Kings Maths School vs LAE for 6th form?

[JusteanBiscuits]

My son has applied to KCLMS for 6th form and also to LAE Stratford.

He wants to study Maths at University, and truly loves the subject. His heart is set on KCLMS, but as that is entirely maths / physics, I wonder if going to LAE (his second choice) would be better for the all round experience? Meeting a wider variety of people, a much wider selection of extra curricular clubs etc. I worry the excitement at 16 of being immersed in maths might wear off, and being somewhere with a wider curriculum might be better?

Any experience would be appreciated. Thanks

I wouldn't dismiss The Student Room out of hand. There are quite a few past and present students at the maths schools who have given their own unique insights including the pros and cons.

@Needmoresleep Very interesting insight. Thanks. And I'm hoping the student from Korea sent to the crammer managed to sneak out on a couple of nights and go to some parties! Poor guy!

But even with bursaries, out of reach for the vast majority of people. Someone I know teaches there, and even with staff discount can't even consider sending their son!

Got an email back from the teacher that provided the reference for LAE - and they did, as suspected, use his year 7 predicted grades. Obviously, being a current year 11, they didn't sit their SAT's so I'm not sure what this is even based on!

But his predicted provided were 8's and 7's. Not 9's. Which answers that.

Son is totally chill about it. I rant on here so I don't rant in front of him!

That is just not true.

Teacher discount is different from bursary. The latter will be means tested and the very brilliant student could get 100%.

IME teachers did not send their children to Westminster because they thought it was the wrong school. It is not a fun place if you are bumping along the bottom. But then I suspect that Kings Maths School would not be much fun if you are having to work three times as hard as anyone else just to keep up, and that teachers there may make the same decision for their children.

I enquired to a number of private schools a year ago when my son was asking to go private and Westminster was one. They told me a 100% bursary was very unusual and only went to those living in poverty. With two parents working they said we would be looking at around a 20% bursary.

Kings Maths school you sit an entrance exam - Few even pass that to get to interview stage. (I think this year around 2500 sat the exam and 145 passed and made it to interview). No one who is able to pass the exam would end up floundering around the bottom because you have to be pretty exceptional to get to that stage.

It's at interview stage they then add / deduct points for widening participation which is a very big factor there.

It seems totally illogical that your son's school used predicted grades from year 7 in a reference.

Surely schools would not take any notice of predictions from over three years ago?

I don't know about the reference per se, but my son was asked to bring a physical copy of his most recent school report to the interview with Kings. He took two, one had predicted grades from the end of year 10 and one was a progress report from November in year 11.

I know. I live round the corner and know people whose children went there.

Yes bursaries to private schools are means tested. Some of DCs friends really were not well off at all and made real sacrifices for their children to go there. But then so did we, even though our DC did not get a bursary.

Some will struggle, either because they were over tutored, or because they hit a ceiling. A level maths is different from GSCE and Kings Maths School will go at a stonking pace.

@sixthformmaths the impact of tutoring in London schools is interesting., If anything I think the problem is worse in state and grammar schools in more affluent areas. You often see the advice on MN to send your DC to a state school and then supplement with tutoring. Another factor is the US and Russian concept of class placement. Ivy league Universities factor in your class placement and your grade point average so it becomes very important that a child is top of their game and top of the class in every subject through secondary school, and if they start falling back the tutors come in.

Maths is a particular problem. The impact in the classroom can be sitting alongside a kid who struggles to understand concepts and asks lots of questions, but then submits perfect homework and gets good exam scores. At both GCSE and A level tutoring and reinforcing classroom teaching can get you a long way. STEP is much harder to tutor for, though it helps to have some guidance in how to approach questions. The other impact is that untutored kids start to believe they are not very good at maths when they really do have potential because they only come half way up the class. One teacher suggested to me that they knew who was picking things up quickly and who struggled but that the kids themselves usually had a very different idea of who was the brightest. Both mine did far better at University, and indeed it was a common experience for their untutored friends. Thinking about it later they never had an issue understanding concepts, but were not putting is as much effort as those whose teaching was supplemented by external support so did not shine at school.

Yes, son took his to interview too. He took the most recent one the school had sent to me which had his mock results on, not predicted grade!
Also, his maths teacher did his Kings reference, but form tutor his LAE one!

I realise you "made a sacrifice". But Westminster, for a year, is 50% of mine and husbands combined income. Even sacrificing the kids hobbies, visits to family and selling the car we wouldn't actually be able to pay mortgage or feed our family!!

OP, respectfully, the idea of private school is a distraction. Some can afford it - most can't. It's not an option - for most of us on this thread I'm sure) - and that's it. It strikes me you've done a lot to support your DC. You helped him apply for various state sixth forms. You enquired at private schools to rule them out. You posted on MN to gather some more ideas.
The one additional thing you could consider doing now is to investigate how to correct the wrong predicted grades you've discovered and see if this makes a difference to your DC's offer status. If it were me, I would do this.

There are currently only eight maths schools in England with plans for a maximum of 11 by 2026 which will eventually cater for about 1200 students a year. There's even a first UK 11-18 maths school planning to open in 2026 in North London with a generous bursary programme.

It will remain very challenging to get into one of these schools. However, the umbrella organisation which the current maths schools sit under receives millions of pounds a year in donations to run outreach and super curricular programmes from early secondary school age.

No consolation for your son, but hopefully an increasing number of bright and talented kids will have access to maths learning opportunities like these in the coming years.

This is exactly why sixth forms should not use predicted grades to make decisions about who does and doesn't get a conditional offer. All schools do grade predictions differently, so they are subjective, not objective. As mentioned up-thread, if LAE were a 11-18 school, their policy would be a breach of the admissions code. That precedent was set by this decision for Twyford school: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/twyford-church-of-england-high-school-15-july-2022

Unfortunately, LAE's policy can't be referred to the adjudicator. Instead, someone would need to lodge a formal complaint to the school. Then, if/when the school's complaint procedure is exhausted, next step would be the DfE. Their funding agreement with the DfE says the admissions policy needs to be objective, and it demonstrably isn't.

Respectfully, I am allowed to discuss options and have thoughts.

As I have said previously, I was venting on here because I didn't want to do it in front of son. It's been a pretty awful couple of weeks for us as a family, and this was the straw that broke the camels back. I do realise that it's me who let him down and me who should have been doing the research and known about such places. But I didn't. I don't read The Times. I don't look at school league tables. This sort of thing has honestly just never crossed my radar.

I was pointing out to a previous poster that private is not affordable except for those really quite well off. If they're able to scrimp and find £30-50k a year, that still makes them well off. I was trying to explain that. I consider us comfortable enough with that much as a household income!

Son is on waiting list for Kings. Unfortunately he lost a lot of points for widening participation, which is how it should be. But we will keep our fingers crossed. He is on a very good maths scheme from Oxford university that he got onto on merit (4000 applicants for 300 places), and is hoping to do an advanced maths summer school next year.

But if you don't like me venting, you are free to not respond and move on.

Yes. Apparently it's not completely unusual to use the year 7 predicted results. We do, now, have an updated set of predicted, but that was since half term and after their second round of mocks.

I remember my history teacher really disliked me and gave me a predicted U! I'm sad he wasn't there on results day when I got an A 😁

No one has said you aren’t “allowed” to do anything, OP. But as multiple people have pointed out, while venting is obviously fine (and completely understandable, especially, given the whole predicted grades thing - I would be furious about that too!), you really haven’t let him down, and he isn’t in some kind of especially bad situation, here. Please try not to let this mindset become set even in your own private thinking. It simply isn’t true. This is perhaps a disadvantage of being in London where you have (in theory) access to these high performing sixth forms… It creates the sense that if he doesn’t go to one, he is under achieving for sixth form, you have let him down, etc. Whereas in fact he is just like a lot of other very, very intelligent children doing A levels across the country. He is in a top end maths programme that is already introducing him to very advanced problems!

Just try to step back a bit and let him develop intellectually as he needs to, and will, with time. If he has the potential to be a top mathematician at university then it doesn’t matter that much which school he does his A levels at.

Have you looked at applying anywhere else? Some schools are still accepting applications as there is a trend at the grammars near us to not offer places until exam results are known.

https://www.dartfordgrammargirls.org.uk/Sixth-Form/Sixth-Form-Admissions/

https://www.csgrammar.com/sixth-form/how-to-apply-2025-entry

And this one …..

www.wcgs-sutton.co.uk/page/?title=How+to+Apply+to+our+Sixth+Form&pid=101

I put a limit on one hours travel for him. Didn't want him to lose all work / life balance as it were and have to give up the sport he really loves (he'll never be a champion, but he really loves it which is so important imo)

I obviously don’t know where you live, so I wasn’t suggesting you apply for these schools. My point is that there are plenty of selective sixth forms that haven’t even started the application process yet, so if your son is desperate to study in a high achieving environment, it might not be too late.

@JusteanBiscuits also, despite what it might say on their websites about deadlines, state funded sixth forms in 11-18 schools are not allowed to refuse late applications (see clause 2.9a of the admissions code)

Hello all!
i was looking for information about Maths schools and bumped into this very resourceful thread.
my question is slightly different - is anyone’s child going to either Imperial College London Maths School or Cambridge Maths School and do you have any information about these two schools?

We were happy with DS’s current school and wasn’t looking to apply anywhere, but DS always complained about lack of mathematical environment and then heard about the maths schools. So he decided to apply - however we just got to know about these school at the end of November and missed Kings deadline by a day and only made it to Imperial Maths School on the deadline, and then Cambridge followed. Now he has been offered conditional offers from ICLMS and CMS, however we are not familiar with these schools. We like CMS slightly better because of the efficiency in their process and that their website is slightly better structured and informative than ICLMS.
Any information about these schools will be much appreciated. Also do any of you know how many conditional offers do these schools have from OxBridge for their year 13 pupils?
Many thanks

I’d be thinking about the length of your child’s journey to school because those three schools are a long way apart.

Both schools will have plenty of Oxbridge offers I’m sure. And if your kid is bright enough, they’ll have a good chance whichever they go to.

@SpuriousM I would expect similar numbers to KCLMS so probably a third may have Oxbridge offers - remember not everyone wants Oxbridge though!