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clarendon house ramsgate

Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:49 pm
by Karma-mel
Not sure what schools to put down and have come across this one Does anyone know anything about this school???

Re: clarendon house ramsgate

Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:57 pm
by U400JB9
I have friends with children at Clarendon, and at the girls too ( they are a federation now) All are very happy there.
I`m working with them tonight so will ask them a few questions for you. I work near Ramsgate and the kids I see at work from there are very nice and polite. I haven`t heard anything bad......which is sometimes better than hearing lots of good.... :) :)

Where are you based? Is Roger Manwood worth a look?

Re: clarendon house ramsgate

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:30 am
by Karma-mel
Hi thanks for reply we are in Whitstable quite a distance from the school

Re: clarendon house ramsgate

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 1:24 pm
by Yurgen
Clarendon House has recently formed a federation with Chatham House, the local boys' grammar.

Exact details vary according to who you speak to and when, but the general outline as presented at open day is that the two schools will share their two sites. Years 7-9 will be on the Chatham House site, years 10-11 on the Clarendon site, and the sixth form on both. Core subjects (English, maths, science) will be taught in single-sex groups, and other subjects will be mixed. They will have joint mixed lunchtimes, clubs etc, so it will be effectively like a mixed sex school with some single sex teaching within it.

The original plan was to build a swanky new complex for the joint schools, but that got canned when Building Schools for the Future was cancelled.

There is some talk of Clarendon not being quite up to normal grammar school academic standards, and of Ofsted having said they don't stretch the brightest pupils enough, particularly in sciences. Recently they have been short of numbers and have taken a lot of girls on appeal (something like 20% of last year's intake, IIRC).

OTOH Chatham House is a very highly regarded school with science and maths specialisms, so I suppose one hope for the merger is that some of this will "rub off" on the girls.

From the more holistic, pastoral point of view, both schools are very highly regarded and the kids have a great reputation as local citizens. Certainly when we visited, we were blown away by the warmth and maturity of the boys and just how deeply they were formed by the school ethos.

Actually the boy who led our group was from Herne Bay, and said there were a number of them from out there. Catchment size probably varies from year to year, so I don't know what your chances would be.

We'll probably be putting Chatham House as first choice for our son, FWIW.

Re: clarendon house ramsgate

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 1:26 pm
by Yurgen
What...? :shock:

If you type "s-e-x" on this site, it's auto-replaced with "gender". What's that about?

Re: clarendon house ramsgate

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 1:44 pm
by Karma-mel
Thanks very much for all that information Yurgen. Unfortunately we didnt go to any of the open days but new about Chatham house and the merger. I have put this as my daughters 4th choice (only 4th due to the distance) as this has always been one of my favourites.

Good luck in your sons choices :D

Re: clarendon house ramsgate

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:53 pm
by Posthistoric19
I attended the open evening at Dane court on Wednesday evening and was really impressed by their new facilities. I had an interesting chat with one of their teachers about the split between boys and girls and what impact the new Chatham / Clarendon House Federation will have on them. They are hoping that the Federation will attract a more balanced gender intake, which will in turn help Dane Court to increase their number of boys currently their gender split is roughly 100 girls to 60 boys.