My daughter has nailed the 11+ (just) and I now need your thoughts on senior schools?
We are quite close to Trinity, which is a Church school and we as parents tick all the boxes for admission.
The wife works at Bexley Grammar, so travel wouldn't be a problem for our daughter.
Help?
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Comments
"State Education" ....its a joke.
And so does his little brother!
I thought you were asleep!
As a parent I must admit that BGS was the best school we looked at and we are more than happy with the progress both our boys are making.
You just have to look up the reulsts table, they are top in Bexley and beat all the scools in Greenwich/Bromley including the private ones.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/education/07/school_tables/secondary_schools/
whilst the relative results of each school are useful my view would be that you look primarily at which school you think will help your daughter to acheive her potential. Some people will do well in a grammar school environment, some will not. If she worked hard and has a supportive family then not being in a selective school will make little difference in the end.
Agreed, both my kids went to a Secondary, and then on to Uni where they got good degree passes.
Trinity isn't a selective school so if you want your daughter to go to a Grammar, it's either going to be Bexley Grammar, Chis n Sid or Townley
Glad to be of assistance
I went to a grammar and whilst I just about came out okay on reflection I don't think it was necessarily the best environment for me (and I moved from there to do my A' Levels).
That said, I would not do away with them as I think for some people they are ideal. Some people I was at school with would have crumbled in a mainstream school and the slightly more insular grammar school experience (in my view) helped them acheive to a high level, yet others I know would have probably ended up with better results if they had gone to a non-selective school.
What's that got to do with Morts post
really? I could have sworn Townley were higher, but is it out of the mixed grammar schools they were top?
I went to townley because i visited chis n sid, and bexley grammar and dismissed bexley grammar right away because the kids on 'open day' were meant to be putting on a good show, but everywhere we went there were misbehaving kids, and teachers laughing along with their misbehavings. Chis n sid was most local but my best friend was going to townley so i went there.
I must admit, my brother who is a year older and I would say more academically minded than me went to cleeve park and came out with much better results than i did.
League tables are all dodgy imo. I left townley to do a levels elsewhere as I could only do certain subjects if i got a b in them! which wasn't likely. I got a d for my geography mock and they told me i couldn't sit the main exam as they weren't confident i would get a C and therefore they didn't want it to affect the league tables and their status. Thats disgusting.
I would check the league tables and check the 99% A-c grades and then find out the exact numbers and how many pupils in that year, as I dare say there will be a few discrepancies.
I wish I'd gone to a non selective school as i would have excelled with a bit more time instead of being neglected beside all the a* students which i wasn't.
Well done Little Morts - Genuis
My little one just fell below the grade - got 210 and needed 217 to get selective status.
I can only speak from personal experience both with myself and my children.
For my part I flew through the 11+ because back then in my opinion it was largely common sense based and suited me perfectly.
However the high pressure of academia was never for me, but my parents chose Dartford Grammar, because of the status it represented. I hated it from the first minute to the last because of the teaching method and I had no synergy with most ofthe other boys there. The result, I tried to buck the system and although I acheived a number of O levels, I never hit my potential because I chose not to.
My Children, like me are not academics and although two of them could possibly have achieved Grammar School entry requirements, they would have struggled in that environment as I did. My Son has now acheived distinction in his chosen field and is considering University, (although I suspect he wont).
My point is that you let your knowledge of your child help you choose the school, if she is Academically minded and will excel in that environment then that's where she should go, but if she isn't then placing her out of her depth may be a mistake.
But the bottom line is you probably should ignore this completely and go with your gut instinct, she's your child, you know her best.
Good luck to you and your Daughter.
So hopefully she'll be going to Thomas Tallis or even at a push Blackfen, but in her case it's finding the right school environment to help her with a couple of special needs issues, and my mum's view was better to go to Tallis with the support, then at a Grammar where she could be lost in the system
Fortunately in Bromley we have two "outstanding" schools and one brand new school with great facilities that Henry jnr gets a preferred place for. All are non-selective.
All seem good but will see which is best going to suit him, which has the right specialities for him and how he feels about it. Has to be somewhere he will thrive rather than just league tables, for us at least.
Out of the 6 of us:
One of us is a Police Officer in the Met
One of us left school, tried being a personal trainer for a while then travelled for a few years, then worked in Waitrose, then travelled some more and now is looking for a 'proper job'
One of us is in a nuthouse after going off the rails on drugs
One is a high flying marketing manager
One of us is a lift engineer with a kid
The other dropped out of DGS in Year 8 after he came out and got bullied terribly - not sure what he does now.
Fortunately for me I have landed on my feet I think but I don't put this down to the school in any great way - more down to my parents and the group of friends I grew up with. There were a couple of teachers who were great but the school per se was so much up its own arse it was unbelievable.
You're obviously not the high flying marketing manager so I'm trying to work out which of the others is you. ; - )
Yeah. Did he ever tell you he has to wear that visor to stop the aliens reading his brainwaves.
Lol
My older two daughters passed the Kent (now Medway) Test and went to grammar school, university and now have good jobs.
My younger daughter narrowly failed the Kent Test and went to high school and ended up with more GCSEs (at A-C) than both her sisters and managed more "As" than both of them. However she chose to transfer to the grammar school her sisters were at for AS and A2 (A levels when we were young!) as she felt the work ethos would be more disciplined at the grammar school than her old school.
As parents (and there may be an element of it was the most recent so you would say that but not much I don't think) we have had to work the hardest with the youngest to keep her academically focused largely because of the very real peer pressure in the high school not to do the homework or work in class.
It is beyond me why the disruptive ones tend to set the social agenda, possibly because they tend also to be bullies. That was the case when I was young and at school anyway.
There is much more of a work ethos in grammar schools and if you don't do the work you are perceived as the odd one out in contrast to the high school attitude.
Make of that what you will. High schools can be very good but if you want your child to do well at a high school be prepared as a parent to actively participate too by continually being "on your child's case."
In my experience grammar schools are as good if not better than high schools in dealing with special needs issues.
I could have been unlucky that my class were majority a* students so my dyslexia was seen as not a problem worth seeing to. I found personally that they felt they could deal with the 25 out of 30 in a classroom that were a-c than the 5 that were struggling with whatever, as they could deal with the 5 and still hit their targets set by the borough/governers.
my english teacher once on parents evening told my mum that i'd written a poem review on "The Hunting of the Snark" by Lewis Carroll and she said "Suzanne has difficulty reading and writing and attention to detail as this was obviously meant to be Shark and she has mispelled it throughout the review" My mum was livid!!!!
Anyway, it is all individual, and I'd just try to make sure that you keep an interest in what your kids are doing and getting up to, so you know yourself that they are on track. I always had a reading ability of a child well older than me and actually apparently taught myself to read before school, I still read really fast now and take it all in, but I used to write my N's backwards so my mum had me tested for dyslexia, surely the school should have noticed something like that? I also have terrible short term memory issues, but long term memory is amazing - I remember birthdays anniversarys phone numbers post codes all sorts!
I did obviously pass my 11+ and like someone said earlier on, i reckon this was more because of common sense than academic ability. I excelled in design, art and science, but struggled with english. the core subjects were obviously the problem ones!!!
I never fail to be amazed by the ignorance of some teachers. And an English teacher at that.