https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg ... d-car-park

City of London Girls to study in dungeons.

I remember going round a couple of private primaries in the City then my local state and wondering why anyone would pay for the privilege of having no outdoor space. But they did at least have odd shafts of natural light!

I'm interested as to why private secondaries seem so keen to extend their provision to early years. Like UCS turning the Phoenix into its preprep and Channing doubling its Junior school. Why is that? Is it to get the kids in young and keep them? In which case aren't they likely to get less academically able (in that it's more accurate to test at 11 than at 3)? Someone was telling me that the reason Highgate does relatively badly at GSCE/A level and yet is so absurdly selective at 11 (ie kids getting into Westminster but not Highgate) is because of the disparity between the academic ability of the senior school entrants with some of those who've been there from preprep (note some - obviously some of them will be brilliant).

Going to take a stab in the dark here and say "money".

A full 20k/year prep - and it will be full if it's attached to a top secondary and shares resources/costs - is going to be ridiculously profitable. As you say though, their academic percentages could suffer a bit in 10/15 years time.

I think you've hit the nail on the head Rhino. Money.

CLSG sent parents a note explaining their reasons. They claimed to needed more prep school girls feeding in to keep their standards up in the high school. The facts don't bear this out, and the people running the school are smart, they know this. The girls from the prep school are middle of the road to bottom half of the class. The girls competing at 11 for a place are more able and crowd the top of the class. However, prep schools are very profitable. An all-through school can charge fees nearly as high as they do for high school, but it doesn't cost as much: no labs, no DT equipment, prep school teachers are cheaper, etc.

It will be very interesting to see the impact this has on GCSE results in a few years time.

I work with some of the preps and their levels are low especially in Maths. They will lose stronger candidates if they start giving more spaces to preps. But there is huge demand for all the preps. St Albans and Habs could probably fill their spaces a couple of times over and the profit margin is higher.

Parents are very keen to pay to avoid the vagaries of the eleven plus.

Did they actually say that more preps would keep standards up? DG

While I agree, the plans do not sound like a nice environment for young children, and I would be concerned about the daily commute for a reception age child (I'm assuming most don't live on the doorstep) I take issue with the idea that standards will drop.
I don't see anyone suggesting that the standards in other schools with larger preps are suffering? And looking at CLSG results, what evidence do you have that prep girls obtain lower results at GCSE and A-Level that those who enter the school from outside I'm year 7?
I could see exactly why a parent would want to send their child to an 'all-through' school and take the stress and pressure off their child to be part of the tutored arms race that thinks if a child is not at GCSE level maths and English aged 11 they are a failure.

I agree that it sounds very profitable to have a preprep and it's probably the true reason behind it (rather than spurious we need better kids for secondary school, crikey are they really not getting enough absurdly bright girls at the 11+?).

However, I find it a bit depressing and disappointing of them. There was much I didn't like about City and we didn't apply in the end, but the thing I did like was that the majority of girls came in at y7 and there seemed to be a genuine push to get bright girls from state schools. They were the only school, for example, to offer a special taster day for state primary girls. It seemed to have much more of a grammar school than a posh girls' school ethos and atmosphere and this will be eschewed if the majority of the girls come from the prep.

I'm sure many would disagree with me but I feel there is a world of difference between the sort of families that go state primary-private secondary than those who won't even countenance state. Primary schools have the potential to be very uplifting centres of the community that genuinely reflect a normally fragmented society and I'm glad that my ridiculously over privileged children have at least some understanding of the range of lives in London, especially since their primary has very high rates of FSM etc. Janice Turner of the Times (and I'm sure many will find this a very irritating statement) says that those who go private for primary do so for fundamentally snobby reasons while those who go private for secondary do so for primarily educational reasons. She said it, not me!

I'm sure there are some very smart girls coming through attached preps, but I think it's fairly uncontroversial to assert that a test at 10/11 will be a more accurate indicator of future academic success than whether a 2/3 year old can follow instructions and hold a pair of scissors.

Although the physical nature of the proposed pre-prep doesn't sound ideal, I do not agree that introducing a pre-prep will detrimentally affect public exam results. Habs Girls and Boys have now stopped the 11+ for their junior/prep children. This is for a variety of sound reasons, but one of them is the fact that when they look at the GCSE/A Level outcomes for junior girls they see that this cohort does even better than the year group as a whole. It is true that there are a few weaker girls in the junior school, but very few! (Habs Girls' parent)

How anyone could think that not being able to run about in the fresh air is an absolute necessity for small children is beyond me. Why would anyone choose that for their tiny tots? What does it say about the judgement of those in charge and who have taken this decision with no regard for the welfare of the children? Most concerning I say.

DG - What qualifications do you have to judge the quality of teaching in these schools? The only people I know who do this are experienced and qualified teachers with additional training and qualifications in education pedagogy.