Mary Mags or Central Foundation for secondary school after missing grammar entry

[Ana19755]

Unfortunately, despite doing well in his mock exams, my son became very nervous during the grammar school entrance exam and didn't pass. I'm now losing hope of getting him into a private school, so I'm considering two options: Mary Mags and Central Foundation. I have more chances of being accepted at Central Foundation
Is Mary Mags really a good school, both academically and in terms of its pupil demographics? How does it compare with Central Foundation? I'd really appreciate hearing from parents with first-hand experience of either school.

I would not be very hopeful of a place if you are at all far from the catchment of the last few years as it is only becoming more popular. Unless you have any priority

For many of the core subjects the majority of the children get Grade 7+, you have probably seen this on the website. It is a comprehensive school, so there are many children who work very hard just to get a lower pass, and so you will never see everyone getting As in any of the subjects that the children who find learning most difficult take (like Maths, English, Spanish). The children are put in sets for some core subjects from the start of Y7.

I don't know about demographics. We had priority coming from a local CoE primary school, and the other Islington CoE schools do too. I don't know whether that means there are more Christian families than average, there are children there of all religions and none. There are a group of kids each year who get in via the test, they are probably from very school-focused families. In every year there are also a number of kids who are siblings of the test-kids. That probably doubles the number of those type of families in each year. Apart from these quirks, it is a local, comprehensive school and there are families of all types. The school is open until 7pm, so children can do homework there and hopefully it means children who do not have a good working environment at home will have somewhere supportive to work.

What do you mean by "pupil demographics"? Do you mean socio-economic groups, or are you (obliquely?) asking about ethnicity?