SW London Grammar and private senior school entry 2026

[firsttrax]

Setting up this thread for those of us with DC joining year 7 SW London schools in 2026.

We’re planning to apply to KCS, Hampton, Epsom and Reed’s.

Have been living in Dubai for three years, returning in August for year 6 at DS’ old prep school.

DS has an online tutor focussing on exam technique and any gaps in the curriculum, plus Atom. Current school is great but definitely not preparing him for 11+!

Would agree with this. Have a daughter in the lower school, and they're very selective (from Reception!) as its one of their key sports. It can be a bit brutal.

@SWLmama thanks that's a good point. She's done regional competitions but we stopped her gymnastics for 3 months whilst doing the 11+ so a bit rusty now. But it's a good point to make - how the selection process for the squad goes. She really has her heart set on Putney so we'll see. Conscious of what an incredible position we are in to have to choose between these 2 schools...

Wimbledon emails are out... a warmly written letter I must say! Good luck to all expecting x

@Seasaltlady We also have a similar dilemma here. Putney a little closer and easier via public transport, plus obviously an amazing school, but have an older DD at LEH and we absolutely love it. It's such a great school and has nice links to Hampton too. We're a similar distance away and find the coach very easy and the late coach leaves school at 6pm and pretty much all after school activities finish in time for that, so that is really helpful.

(just to add, unlike the comment above, we've not had any experience at all of LEH being motivated to charge pupils more money. We get occasional charges for a few additional things but far far less than at the sw London school one of our other DCs is at)

WHS is out and thankfully we got the offer.

@Hereweg0again maybe it was my family member who was able to see how schools operated differently because we had similar age DDs go up to different schools and we chatted a lot about what the schools charge. She's happy with the school itself but we agreed it sounded like it just charges more for the same thing or wants to charge you for every opportunity😂Or maybe it's my DD school that operates differently and made LEH look worse than it is. (it's not Putney though)

Very grateful for WHS offer. Unless any curve balls at offer holder events will release PHS and LEH after 26th Feb.

Congrats to all with offers!

Out of interest, how many offer holders events do people plan to attend if lucky enough to hold many offers? I was thinking top two or top three schools? Just thinking ahead on we’ll manage this with work/other children but obviously it is a big decision and needs our full attention!

If I am completely honest the offer holder days were not that useful to us 2 years ago. Assuming you have already been to an open day, there won’t be much you learn that is new, except I suppose meeting the cohort of kids holding an offer (but of course many will have multiple offers so won’t necessarily go there). So I wouldn’t bend over backwards to attend if it is going to be difficult, especially for schools further down your list.

Actually if anything the offer holder days were a bit misleading, because my child was swayed very much by the school that did the most fun offer holders’ day - which obviously is not necessarily representative of the actual school experience!

If you want factual information such as clubs, streaming, how many GCSEs, what subjects offered, then this can all be answered by phone call/ email with the admissions team.

The other opportunity given by an offer holder day is to ask any more controversial questions you might not have felt comfortable asking when you were still hoping for an offer. But again, this can be done by call/email.

I agree with this. When we did it a few years ago, I'd imagined we'd go to most of the offer holders' days just to be 100% sure of our decision. By the time the offers came in, we had a clear favourite, so went to that one (more for the fun of seeing the school again tbh) and then our second choice just to feel we'd done some due diligence.

I think most people by this stage have a clear favourite, or two they're deciding between. I don't think there's anything to be gained from going to more than a couple at most.

Yes same plan here. Personally feel like the best thing is to release any offers you know you are not leaning towards - then hopefully folk on waitlist would also get a chance to go to offer holder events. We have narrowed it down to our top 3, and if DS gets offers from any of those we will go to those, and release the others immediately.

If he doesn't get any in the top 3... (trying not to think about that!!) we will decide which are our new top 2, and just do those.

Congrats to everyone with offers, super exciting - enjoy basking in the reflected radiance of your amazing DDs' accomplishments!

Wish the boys and coed schools were as speedy releasing info 😀

We went to a couple, and eventually chose a school other than that 😂
One school we were able to see a somewhat disorganised aspect of it that we did not particularly like and it helped us rule it out.
The other school made it like an open day, but with a half an hour speech to welcome people as offer holders. It wasn't so helpful because we had already been to an open day. We did see many girls from the same prep (who may not decide to come after all) and it was not an appealing moment. It was still a school that we liked but somehow we just ended up asking questions through emails and ended up choosing a completely different one.

Congratulations to all the DCs with offers so far - they've all worked so hard, though, no matter the outcome of all of this! If we get our top 2-3 tomorrow, we'll be letting all other offers go immediately. The stress of this has been enough for everyone as it is, so I'm hoping that giving up offers will help to shift waitlists quickly (and if we find ourselves in the waitlist boat tomorrow, I will be hoping that others do the same)

Good luck today - especially to those (like us) who still have all their eggs in the Friday 13th basket!

Good luck everyone! The offer emails should be coming soon now :) If you have a portal....you can also check there as sometimes it switches to offer before you are sent an email. We had this with a couple schools.

@SamPoodle123 i just opened the portal and I see acceptance of offer on the checklist. Is that what that the good news you mean?

Looks like the FHSS portal page has updated before the emails are out!

Just received the FHHS email now as well!

@Elembeeeeyes the Dulwich college portal showed that before email were sent! Congrats!

South Hampstead emails are coming

Good luck to everyone waiting for results this morning. I remember from when we did it how stressful it is.

Just FYI - most of ours came through by 10am so hopefully not long for you to wait now.

I know people say this every year, but offers from the same school can come through at different times. I remember one school one year had a lag of about two hours between the first offers going out and the last. So if you see on here that someone else has got an offer and you haven't heard yet, it's not necessarily bad news!

Also, if your child is waitlisted, don't panic. There is so much WL movement over the next few months - first around acceptance day, then around state school allocation day, and right up to the start of term. (Every year there are reports of students getting offers in late August). I know of schools where they still take WL candidates through Y7 and Y8 (because in London there are so many international students and so much movement).

Good luck!

Dulwich has that form on the portal. Does that mean an offer is coming?

Yes, congratulations! :)

Yes, if it mentions accepting an offer it means you will get an email offer shortly. Also, they usually have a check list or other documents uploaded as well.