Reigate Grammar or Caterham?

[AnotherSurreyMum]

Have been to see both of these, and am very torn/confused:

• similar very good academic results
• Caterham seems your 'classic' independent school - large grounds/facilities, good discipline, polite children
• RGS seems a bit more 'towny' - doesn't really look like an independent school (more like my old comprehensive!) The kids aren't quite so polite, but seem confident and successful?

Seems a bit scruffy, and I've herad lots of reports of stuff being nicked around the school?

DH & I marginally preferred Caterham, as it seemed more obvious what you were paying for?

DS1 favours RGS as it is likely more of his friends would end up there I think.

Any experience/views?

the commute's honestly not that bad, esp from our end of town ... we both work, drop and run to Merstham station.

i'll give him a lift if you want

Ah - but I work in Reigate, so I'd have to make a round trip which would probably take 40 minutes!

Oh I see, that would be a pita! Thanks for your thoughts btw, very useful to hear people's experiences of schools in the area, I like to try and be prepared these days (primary admissions was a nightmare).

Well done your son too, scholarships for both, you must be v proud. Can I be nosey and ask where he went for primary/prep? Did he do much tutoring?

Did you look anywher further afield? A lot of the children at my dc school go on to trinity and whitgift, some seem to get 100% scholarships. Now that would be a commute!

I know this is a very old post, but I happened to stumble across it and felt that I had to put my two cents worth for anyone who reads this who is also having this debate. I went through the entire 'Caterham or RGS' debate twice for my son and daughter, and in both instances we chose Caterham. My son (who entered at sixth form) and daughter (13+) both received generous scholarships while both came from the state school st bedes. We have found the pastoral care to be outstanding and the staff to be nothing but helpful and attentive when it comes to the very few complaints or queries that we've had over the years. Both my children were involved in numerous drama, music and sporting teams and ensembles, all of which were excellent. Weve had no personal experience with bullying, but it would be wrong to say that no school is exempt from it. All incidents that have occurred have seamed to be dealt with quickly and effectively. The kids love the fact that theres such a sense of family in the school, mainly because of the system of 'Houses' that is in place there....We just found that there was an electrifying atmosphere at Caterham that RGS just couldn't compete with. All academic results have been outstanding and the students are really pushed to their potential, and it seems that the staff have just as much fun with the lessons as the kids do. The school is winning award after award right now, having recently been named the top co educational school in the country, and it looks like it can only get better :) Also, have a look at this if you dont want to just take my word for it;

www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/schools/104857/caterham-school/A21KK36#sch_tabs-2

Doneitall - just to balance out your glowing report, I can write exactly the same about Reigate Grammar! My darling neice and nephew both go to RGS and it is a fantastic school. My brother/SIL actively chose RGS over Caterham (nephew had scholarship too) and are convinced they made the right choice.

The school has seen lots of new development in recent years. It has the most amazing music department, and in the last couple of years a new indoor swimming pool and a state of the art new science block.

RGS just had a recent ISI inspection which rated it Outstanding in many aspects (in fact the report is apparently almost identical to Caterham's from 2010) See here

The current head from RGS is retiring at the end of this year, and my SIL says the general feeling is that whoever takes over is likely to move the school on even further in the future.
I've been to a number of events at the school and the atmosphere at e.g. the drama productions is akin to a West End production - they are fantastic.

Caterham makes an awful lot of noise about it's 'thinking styles' way of teaching (a la Edward deBono...) but a lot of it is a bit of a marketing gimmick. Awards are all very well, but I think a lot of parents would rather the Head & teachers spent time focused on the children, rather than traipsing round the country making presentations to the HMC!

I think the two schools are very similar in terms of results, and where they are ranked depends on what you are comparing. Caterham does very well in A/AS levels due to the high proportion of foreign students coming into the school just for Sixth Form. RGS's GCSE results are excellent, and the league tables don't reflect that the school follows the somewhat harder iGCSE syllabus.
The recent FT school league tables rank Reigate Grammar at 90th in the country and Caterham at 96th, so they really are very similar!

My SIL says RGS has worked very well for her kids because they are at the heart of the community, can walk to school, and in the holidays and at weekends they have all their friends relatively local. One of my nephews best friends went to Caterham and now his friends are spread over a 20 mile radius, which makes his social life harder (more Facebook & less face-to-face!) and his parents permanent taxi drivers!

Anyway, as any parent knows, it's horses for courses, and it seems both these schools offer an outstanding all-round education...

"The recent FT school league tables rank Reigate Grammar at 90th in the country and Caterham at 96th, so they really are very similar!"

No, you're a year out of date. The recent FT school league tables rank Caterham 19th, and Reigate 91st. And Caterham does iGSCEs too. But if you live in Reigate and want a local day school, then agree that it may not be worth the hassel of travelling. As Sandythumb indicates, children don't seem to travel in to Reigate.

But I don't think that anyone could accuse Caterham's head of not being focussed on the children? He is a very visible presence in school, and if anything his trademark is that he spends more time talking to children at open days, speech days etc than to their parents.

Think at GSCE level they are pretty similiar, they both do IGSCE in certain subjects but Caterham edges it at A level, 67% A or A* as opposed to 59% for Reigate. They are both very good schools, but if you are Reigate based I'd probably opt for Reigate for convenience. There are a fair number of coaches coming into Reigate every day so there are a fair proportion who don't live in Reigate.

Actually having looked at the Caterham website they don't mention IGSCE, just GSCE, maybe they don't make a separate reference to it.

The new league tables (just published, and available on BBC website put Reigate Grammar very marginally ahead of Caterham at GCSE : 96% achieve at least 5 GCSEs (vs. 95%)

GCSE is a much better indicator of value added than A levels for Caterham, since it measures the achievement of children who come into the school at 11+/13+.
The problem at A level is that the results get inflated by the high number of (often very academic) foreign students who join the Sixth form (many as boarders) as a prelude to getting into a UK university.

That said, the latest results (again on BBC website) show that the average A/AS point score per pupil is higher at RGS (951 vs 945), as is the % of students getting 3 or more A levels (99% for RGS vs. 87% for Caterham)

Which only goes to prove.....

.. that you can always find a league table to support whatever point of view you are promoting!

The BBC league tables are a notoriously poor indicator for private schools though. 95 v 96% rates are skewed though as some children are "out of year" at each school. The actual GCSE results are here for Reigate and here for Caterham. As you can see both schools have far in excess of the 95/96% of pupils getting 5 or more A-C, and the stats at each grade are pretty clear too. At least the overseas boarders might explain why a Caterham pupil got D in English language. Do you think that the 3 who got E's at Reigate are all local?!

The A-level results are also available on each schools website.

Do you know when Reigate will announce its new head? Where is Mr Thomas off to? The "no head should be there for more than 10 years" seemed to come as a surprise to some of his leadership team!

LadyMuck - like I said, you can always find something in a league table to support whatever point of view you are promoting...
Are your children at Caterham by any chance ?

I asked my SIL, and she didn't think the Head's departure was a surprise at all, and that she and other parents were certainly aware that it was coming.
I think personal/ family factors are an important element in the decision - his wife has been very ill in the last couple of years I believe, and I think this is part of the reason he wanted to step down? He's on record as saying he wanted to devote more time to family life.

I think perhaps the only surprise was the timing, but then there was speculation that he decided to announce it earlier than planned, when the ISI inspection was scheduled at the end of last year. However good or bad that report ended up being, if he'd announced his resignation afterwards there would always have been a suggestion that something in the report findings had led to his departure.
As it is, it ended up being a very good report so no worries there after all.

(P.S. doneitallbefore - has never posted under that name before - methinks the Caterham marketing machine maybe at work..... )

I think you'll see that I've got one there from earlier on this thread. He's come from a prep which send boys to Caterham (and elsewhere), and I have another child at a different prep which also sends children to Caterham each year. Neither school has children applying to Reigate, which I think supports your view that it is mainly very local children who apply for it.

By the way, it is fairly common to namechange on a thread when you are naming the school which your children attend by the way, especially when you're indicating previous schools etc. I doubt that either school would be resorting to fake posts on here as part of their marketing!

LM - I hadn't read the whole thread, so didn't see your earlier posts about your children being there.

I know people namechange if they are revealing personal details, but I have to say I found something just a little bit strange in doneitallbefore's post. If you re-read the last four lines it's just seems a bit too 'gushing' really.

I know for a fact that many top independents employ people either in house or via PR agencies to do exactly this - pose as parents to write glowing reports on forums and on school review sites, so parents mustn't be duped by everything they read here and elsewhere! It's a lucrative business for educational PR people - it's called 'seeding' - it's the equivalent of bumping up ratings for Trip Advisor!

By the way, I'm not sure that Reigate Grammar is mostly just 'locals'? Certainly it does draw a lot of children from the immediate area, but my DN/DN's friends come from as far afield as Guildford/ Ardingly/Epsom/Godstone, and there are buses coming in from all directions IIRC.

OK, your first post indicates that all of your dn's friends were local vs Caterham being very spread out? And that that was the main advantage of Reigate over Caterham?

If you think a post is seeding, then report it. I would expect seeding to be better executed tbh.

The new Head at Reigate Grammar has just been announced - he's the current head of Pate's in Cheltenham, which is an excellent school (55th in the country?).

The general consensus seems to be that this is an excellent appointment and just what RGS needs at this stage of its on-going development.

All the parents I know are very pleased and excited!

I'd anticipate a period of transition, some of which may be painful short term. David Thomas has been there a very long time .

Well, change is always difficult for some people, but there's a very strong senior management team which will really help the transition. DS has only just joined the school, so there's plenty of time to get things in order. DS2 may follow in a couple of years.

We agonised about which school for DS this time last year, but I have to say, we've been really pleased with our choice. He's settled well, has made lovely friends, is actively involved in all sorts of clubs and activities and had a glowing report earlier this year. You can't really ask for much more than that!
Over half term we've seen various of his friends who chose different schools and not all of them have had such a positive experience unfortunately. One of my friends (one of the mums) admitted that she is run ragged with what has turned out to be a 50 min round trip school run, and missed/unreliable buses.
Another of DS's friends has really struggled to make new friends, and his parents are wondering how to help. Their school hasn't really done much to help .