Plan B schools if not Tiffin Girls?

[bayesian]

We understand that Tiffin Girls is highly competitive and is a bit of a lottery, so wonder if my girl fails to be admitted despite proper preparation and the inner catchment area, what are some plan B schools (public or private)?

It seems Kingston Grammar is a popular fallback but I do not think it is good enough to justify the fees, same goes for Surbiton High. LEH is the only worthy private school I can think of nearby, and Wembledon or Putney High if a bit further out. Anything else? How about public schools? I can think of many strong public primary schools in Kingston and Richmond, but don't know any strong secondary.

Do you mean for entry this September for Yr7? If so private schools have already made their offers and will have waiting lists so you are likely to be too late unfortunately.

What people do is already apply to private schools, get their offers and then wait to see what they are allocated on offer day for the state schools. You have one or two days to think before the deposit deadline for private schools. I have heard of people turning down Tiffin for LEH, G&L or SPGS. It depends where you live and of course the other way around...turning these schools down for Tiifin.

I think you are confusing public schools with state schools. In England public schools are private. Schools you don't pay fees to attend are called state schools.

So besides LEH/Wembledon High/Putney High, what are some strong private schools in the area, also which comprehensive are good after Tiffin

@bayesian , it depends where you live. GHS is a great school if you live on the sw trains line to Guildford. Waldegrave and Orleans Park are great state secondaries if you live in their tiny catchments. Richard Reynolds is great if you are Catholic etc.

I already said for private schools, as for state comprehensives, not sure for that area and dont think they would compare to Tiffin.

Kingston Grammar School is one of the best co-ed schools in the country.

If you can afford it, all the schools mentioned above will provide a much greater experience compared to grammar schools, no matter how hard to get in to those. Tiffin girls is a great school with motivated cohort that will inevitably be successful academically, but it does not have the resources or the value-add an independent school would be able to offer - that includes teaching.

Not sure you’re entirely accurate on your assumptions of local schools. The gcse data would show that SHS, WHS and Putney are pretty much on a par, marginally lower attaining than Tiffin, whilst KGS is lower attaining. LEH is excellent but further away.

I think it depends how you determine a ‘good ‘ private school.
Assuming you are looking purely at academic performance , then a quick look at the national league tables for private and state combined show that there is actually only a 4 place difference between KGS and tiffin. You say KGS is a fall back option, but it actually places better at 22nd for A level results compared to 68th place for Tiffin. Tiffin does better at GCSE but only 4 places separate tiffin form KGS with tiffin on 42nd place and KGS 46th .
LEH beats them all academically , BUT these schools are high pressure and I would strongly advise you to look at the pastoral support that each school provides. LEH had a bad pastoral record up until very recently with many girls turning down LEH and opting for Surbiton who have a better record of pastoral support and care and still have a great academic record.
if you want to stay state and don’t get in to Tiffin, then wallington county grammar and Sutton
grammar are also options .
what year is your DD?

Wallington County Grammar School and Sutton Grammar School are boys schools I thought?

Do you mean Wallington High School for Girls and Nonsuch?

Last year at A level if you look at the percentage of grades at A*/A:
LEH - 78%
Wimbledon High - 81%
Kingston Grammar - 73%
Putney High - 74%
Tiffin Girls - 71.6%

For GCSEs the percentage of grades at 9/8 which is A*s in old speak:
LEH - 88%
Wimbledon High - 80%
Kingston Grammar - 66%
Putney High - 77%
Tiffin Girls - 82.6%

Things change quite a bit between GCSE and A level.

Ooh yes! Sorry

Hi

I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to go off the raw data when it comes to exam performance, and not a good idea to just consider one year. I found there are quite large variances in performance when you dig deeper. Some schools are arts focused, other science.

What I did is constructed a short list of 5 subjects..... which turned into a longer list of 8 subjects I expect my daughter to be interested in at A level. Then I chose the 3 schools I am interested in and looked at the exam performance for the last 3 years and took the average.....A time consuming task which takes a few hours looking through all the data but well worth it because it smooths out any short term irregularities.

A good example of why this is beneficial is the following.

If you look at 2024 Maths A level, A*/A at PHS it's 72%, whereas if you look at G&L it's 79%. From this one may conclude they are closely comparable.....OK G&L is higher but apparently not by much. At both schools 15% of the total exam entries are in Maths.

However if you then go back 3 years and average you see the following.

PHS - 65%/ 54%/ 72% - Average 64%
G&L - 88%/ 89%/ 79% - Average 85%

So what appeared a 7% difference using 1 years data is actually a 21% difference when you consider 3 years.

KGS and SHS are also very good schools. Have you visited any of them or just going off the websites?

OP you do realise you’ve insulted half the independent school parents and children in SW London, don’t you? “Fallback” indeed.

DD is going to a fantastic independent school, so we are letting go the Tiffin place allocated to her. Tiffin is definitely not top choice for the majority of parents in prep or junior schools.
Results don’t really matter, many independent schools that aren’t as selective at year 7 entry produce comparable results to the grammar schools. That says a lot. Also it is not just about academics, children thrive with more opportunities on offer. If you can afford it, definitely go private, the ‘fallback’ could be actually be a blessing in the end 😆

What school did you decide on @meuntilmarch2025 ?

Abroad, but Kingston Grammar is in litigation so no.

What litigation is KGS in??

If you look across the board at private vs grammar schools’ performance then the trend is quite obvious..
State grammar schools outperform at GCSEs while Private schools do much much better at A Levels. This has to do with the subject specialism at A levels + private schools NEED to get their students into the best unis to keep up their market value and prove their worth. Overall having been through the grind with my DD I would say that A level (in fact year12) results are far more important than GCSEs so comparing with that score is a better indicator of a school’s performance.

How can you directly compare @DoItLikeAWoman when you do not know for sure how many girls left Tiffin, for example, to go elsewhere for Sixth Form? Or how many kids joined those private schools in Sixth Form?
Also, a lot of these recent statistics are now historic if kids are not going private as much at Sixth Form due to VAT?
Girls schools, in particular, in recent years tended to lose a lot of girls to higher performing co-ed schools after GCSEs. We do not know if that trend will continue.
There is so much change at Sixth Form level, results never tell the full story.