CLSG vs NLCS vs Latymer grammar school

[ayahcip]

We’re so blessed with amazing 11+ offers from the following schools:

• NLCS (with xx% fees reduction scholarship)
• City of London School for Girls (with £xK per annum scholarship)
• Habs Girls (with xx% fees reduction scholarship)
• STAHS (with xx% fees reduction scholarship)

We also very likely will get a place at the Latymer School (grammar school in Edmonton) as DD ranked within Top 40 from the Jan-25 third rank, we live in school catchment and we put Latymer as our top choice on our CAF.

Financially, we should be able to afford private school fees (we have only one child), but those money can also be used elsewhere (e.g. DD's university fees, or retirement funds, etc).

We narrowed our choices down to: NLCS, CLSG, and Latymer.

No preferences in terms of co-ed V single-sex schools, or private V grammar. Commuting time, Latymer is closest (15 mins by bus), CLSG (30 mins by overground train), and NLCS (50 mins by coach).

DC strengths are in maths and sciences subjects, and does okay in language subjects.

DC is quite academic and musical. Not sporty, and quite shy sometimes.

Wondering out of the 3 schools (NLCS, CLSG, and Latymer grammar), which one will provide DD with biggest academic opportunity and support girls confidence? Latymer has been our top choice, but now feeling swayed by NLCS and CLSG offers.

Grateful for your thoughts please 🙏🏻

We have a similar choice but a slightly different list of schools!

From your list:

50 min NCLS commute sounds tough. When I went to see it I imagined DD in the rain carrying her school books, instrument and PE kit walking to the station and then sitting on the tube. We didn't apply. Maybe you are close to a coach / bus service? But it still seems long.

CLSG is known to be good for confident girls. DD was also lucky enough to receive an offer and we are seriously considering it. She is v confident but I do worry how she'll hold her own.

Like you, we also (are likely to) have a great state option. I'm leaning towards this for ease of life, walkable commute, friendship proximity and frankly because I think DD will enjoy being a big fish at school with time to explore her creative and athletic pursuits outside school.

It's a hard decision though (albeit a nice dilemma to have!)

If no preference between private vs grammar and girls vs co-ed, then my vote would go easily to CLSG. Much richer offering and better teaching than Latymer and shorter commute than (equally strong) NLCS. Latymer is a great grammar school but the experience will be much more enriching at CLSG.

Did you get your scholarship offers in email or letter from Habs And NLCS? Still waiting for post.

For a science/maths girl I wld go with co-ed as teaching likely to be better than a girls school especially in 6th form where larger numbers will be guaranteed and can attract better teachers. (Sorry to say but science teachers are difficult to recruit and co-ed/boys schools seem to be more attractive.)

Commute time is v important.

You can always arrange/provide additional extra-curricular yourselves outside school. A lot of what schools claim to offer is often driven by the pupils parents anyway…..

Surprised to see NLCS offering academic scholarships again. They stopped doing that for a while so if they are offering meaningful scholarships it might indicate that they’re finding it harder to recruit top students. Is the VAT having an impact, or just proximity of grammar schools??

Be aware that down the line, when it comes to applying for work experience/internships/insight days/uni taster days etc, being a private school student often excludes you. There is an assumption that private school pupils will have their own personal network to tap into and already have enough advantages. Think very carefully about going the private route if your family don’t have this.

@househelp12345 - thanksnf

@househelp12345 thanks for sharing your perspectives. It is very hard indeed to decide. The Latymer School (grammar) has (and still is) our DD’s first option as a few of her best friends from school will likely go there too, so she wants to be with her friends… But friendships change, so I’m not sure “to follow friends” is a good reason / big enough reason for selecting a school 🙈

@JoeDoe - CLSG is an amazing school, while it’s not as close as Latymer grammar, but commuting is still manageable. Some friends of mine raised that as CLSG draw pupils from many places across/around London, DD may not have “local friends” and this may be inconvenient for weekends meet up with friends especially when DD become a teenager…

I haven’t thought much so far about importance of having local friends. Do you think how important this aspect is when it comes to secondary school selection? So far we only focus on academic provisions and commuting distance, is local friendship group an important factor too? DD is our first and only child, so we have no experience raising and dealing with teenager years 😔

Hi @Croc963 -

NLCS = scholarship offer was mentioned in the offer email which came at 5.15am on 14th Feb. In the email it said: “…It also gives me great pleasure to tell you that [DD’s name] has been awarded a Handel Music Scholarship with a XX% fee remission. A letter from the Director of Music Scholarship will follow in due course.”

Habs Girls = offer email which came at 8.37am on 14 Feb only mentioned about offer of a place but details will follow by snail mail, so I emailed the admission team to query about scholarship results, which they very promptly responded by email confirming that DD was awarded xx% scholarship. We then received Habs letters at noon on the same day and the offer letters include details of the scholarship offer (and also hand written scholarship congrats postcards from Head of Middle School, and Director of Music). If you haven’t received the letter yet, maybe email the admission team to query?

Hope this helps.

@north51 thanks so much for sharing your perspectives. This is super helpful.

Science / Maths - yes, and indeed when we checked Latymer grammar (vs NLCS / CLSG)’s university destinations (and uni course/degrees), Latymer seems to have very heavy STEM focus, with many pupils choosing to do Medicine, Engineering, Quant-heavy subjects. Only a few choose to study art/humanity subject at uni level… We were swayed by private schools’ facilities (e.g. NLCS will open IDEAS Hub this year to support STEAM learning) and their GCSE & A-level results. Looking at the latest stats:

• Latymer grammar school: GCSE A9 39%, A9/8 66.5%, AA 9/8/7 85.4% /// A-level A 30.7%, A*-A 66.8%
• CLSG: GCSE A9 55%, A9/8 83%, AA 9/8/7 95% /// A-level A 48.3%, A*-A 80.1%
• NLCS: GCSE A9 71%, A9/8 89.7%, AA 9/8/7 96.5% /// A-level A 47.2%, A*-A 85%

The difference between NLCS and CLSG is not significant, although Latymer seems to be quite behind. Do you think the exams results between Latymer and NLCS/CLSG is significant enough to sway decision?

re: Scholarship - all the scholarships we referred to are music scholarship (I realised I wasn’t clear in my original post) 🙈

Latymer, close, better chance of local friends and she wants to go there.

Use the extra money for tutors if needed, or helping her get on the housing ladder. She is still young, anything can happen with her studies but if she has a healthy deposit for a house or support at uni it opens more chances.

I have top grade A-level students having to decide on university places based on the cost of accommodation, and then graduates not being able to intern, or even take bottom rung graduate roles as they can not afford the rent in the areas where jobs are.

If you do go private, find out what the scholarship actually requires. I've seen students reject their talent when bursary demands have been onerous.

Not sure about Habs, but the CLSG scholarship (similar to NLCS) is in the form of musical tuition, which is worth up to £1.5k per year. You have to attend these music lessons (and some of them will be at the same time as other classes, so you may have to skip some lessons). It is a great opportunity if you want your daughter to thrive in musical progress. However, the scholarship amount is a tiny fraction of the total tuition fee. So, I think the choice between these schools and Latymer comes down to whether you would consider paying the fee on girls selective private scbool over the grammar Latymer school experience.

Lovely conundrum

does your DD go to a local state school or prep?

Latymer intake tends to be exclusively state. As you say it’s become a very stem leaning school.

It’s a lovely school with generally hard working children with families from different walks in life. A more real world experience. The negatives are funding is tight and it’s in a part of London that has its problems.

If your child is very musical the offering at Latymer is good but won’t compare to the other options

with a healthy scholarship the other options would be hard to turn down for me

personally I wouldnt overthink friendships and even commute to an extent if it’s in a school coach and go with the best all round option

It’s true that City has kids from all around London, as it is a very sought-after school. It’s part of its ethos and prides itself that no pupil is driven to the school. You have to like the idea that your teenage kid will spend formative years surrounded by cultural landmarks in heart of London. And forming friendships is not, in my experience, an issue at all, partly because there will be kids from your own area on the way to school and partly because a lot of socialising happens after school in the safe Barbican area. It would be different if your kid was commuting to a very ‘local” school from far away, where everyone lives close to one another.

The way you described your daughter sounds to me that she would flourish at CLSG.

Take the state school offer and get her in to a junior conservatoire to give her top quality music teaching and community. Better Oxbridge chances too.

For a science/maths girl I wld go with co-ed as teaching likely to be better than a girls school especially in 6th form where larger numbers will be guaranteed and can attract better teachers. (Sorry to say but science teachers are difficult to recruit and co-ed/boys schools seem to be more attractive.)

It's usually the opposite - girls schools push them better in STEM.

I would be very surprised if City or NLCS had difficulties in recruiting teachers.

In general better Oxbridge but not a big difference compared to the academic private schools she has the option of choosing though which still send plenty (although much less than they used to)

I think people should be careful giving advice like this. For many top universities, what matters is a pupil’s performance in GCSEs relative to their cohort. This helps top students from ordinary state comprehensive but it does not help pupils from top Grammar schools. For Oxford, the stats from a Grammar school like Latymer would be similar to top private schools. If one really wants an advantage of sorts, then comprehensive is the way to go.

Second this. Grammars are increasingly being excluded from contextual offers as seen "elitist" these days.

Sadly and surprisingly, it has been an issue across London schools, north London in particular.

I think in general the stats show that girls thrive in STEM in a single sex environment, (and are more likely to choose STEM?) I agree with you there. However, if the teaching bench is thin, this isn’t the case.

in my experience, science oriented girls are more likely to switch to co-ed in 6th form for better facilities and teaching and larger cohort. (This doesn’t mean that arts/humanities girls don’t switch too!)

I know pupils at all 3 schools and many of the other north London schools and have heard more complaints about science teaching in girls schools than anything else. That’s not to say that all of these schools aren’t overall outstanding and you will find some excellent and some not so excellent teaching in all of them.

OP re the results stats. They speak for themselves. The intake at Latymer will be wider ability and so their results are lower, they are still very very good and there will be lots of pupils with all 9s and all A stars. Have a look at the A level results by subject (and those stats shld also tell you how many there are in each subject).

It isn’t just about Oxbridge offers…..
It’s access to supra curricular experiences and work experience and even university open days. Some organisations exclude private school students completely from such opportunities.

My DC went to two of those schools and we know lots of children in all of them (except Colfe). DD also moved from girls school to co-ed, it was... an interesting change of scene.

City and NLCS are very different schools in terms of intake ability and demographics.

I wouldn't say Latymer intake is wider ability than City.

Which universities exclude private schools pupils from open days?

Sorry, Colfe was from another very similar thread.

“…City and NLCS are very different schools in terms of intake ability…” would you be so kind to expand on the ability point, a little more, please?

Making decision is very very hard, but we really feel so fortunate to be in this position, and are grateful to your (and everyone who responded to this post) who has kindly shared their perspectives and experience 🙏🏻

A Quick Look at the results would suggest very little difference between CLGS and NLCS intake ability!

demographics are different. NW london ethnic mix very different to central.

Latymer is arguably as hard to get into as many independent schools. The cohort is very much the top kids from a wide range of state primaries in the catchment though rather than a wide range of top london preps and some state school kids in the mix

at Latymer there are 30 kids in a class and as a grammar funding is tight and there is a v active PTA to try and bridge the gap. It’s also a school where you are left to get on with it to an extent.

i have friends with there children there and the teaching is good but no better than a good state comp in a top set. What lifts the school is the high natural ability of the intake

ultimately the OPs child scored in the top 40 and is getting scholarships left right and center and so would be towards the very top of the intake at most schools and will likely do v well in most places!

as far as contextual offers go different universities have different and ever changing criteria but seem to be tied to your home postcode and/or the school you attended - minimum state but perhaps tilted to an underperforming comp, eligibility for free meals. Some children attending Latymer that live in Edmonton for example could fall into the criteria)

Also one needs to look beyond Oxbridge as the be all and all too