St. Paul's Boys admission - our experience

[Rhinoo]

I didn't realise that you and George Osborne were such good friends Amber!

George Osborne never doesn't given jobs though. Can't be him.

[Surferfish]

I am not sure whether to post this but will anyway. I know very well someone who went to this school a good few years ago. He has always been, shall we say, full of self-belief and assured of his own worth, even querying decisions not to give him a job after interviews, challenging his final degree grade etc, and assuming others had made a mistake and he deserved better. This could of course just be his own personality, and I am sure it is different at the school from how it was 20 years ago; but I am wondering whether some of this has come from going to a school which made him feel that he quite genuinely is better than other people.

I'm guessing he's not top of your list of people who you'd want to invite round to dinner?

How would he be regarded professionally though? Does he have a highly paid, successful career?

[Amber]

The closest I ever got to hobnobbing with a Tory government minister was when I met Michael Gove at the Cheltenham literature festival 2 years ago. I went and asked him if he would be happy to allow me to interview him at some point for my research, and, in front of my children, he agreed that he would. He shook hands on it and gave me his email address.

When I followed this up, I received a reply, thanking me for my kind invitation ( ) and saying that sadly he would be too busy to take me up on it. I did try again, saying actually it was not exactly an invitation, and that he had shaken hands on it; but I received no further correspondence from him.

He came to Cheltenham to speak about the decline of manners in modern society.

Sorry, OT. But no, not George Osborne. And I definitely would not want him to come for dinner!

[expat]

Tutors who advertise as experts in preparation for the top independent schools already have the kind of information I have written about based on information given out by students they tutor over the years and they charge on average 90 to 150 pounds per hour to divulge this kind of information.

Just one question. How does one train and qualify to become one of these tutors!?

Be a current or former teacher at one of these schools and have experience marking their entrance exams.

[Guest55]

Just one question. How does one train and qualify to become one of these tutors!?

Sadly you don't need any qualifications whatsoever to set yourself up as a tutor. The 'industry' needs to be regulated to ensure only people with degrees and teaching qualifications can offer tutoring.

[expat]

I am pretty shocked by what is required tbh, and also the idea that the hard scholarship-sift question would lead to 'an interesting interview'. These are 10-year olds! Who would want their child put through that kind of challenging interrogation?

Someone who is desperate for their child to qualify for a scholarship or a bursary?

[Loopyloulou]

Or (more usually) someone for whom in the normal course of events it is simply the next step in their child's life.

[LolaD]

I am stunned by such high expectations of 10 year olds, scholarship material or not.

How would you propose to distinguish between scholarship candidates, if not by giving them questions which only a very few would be able to answer?

Perhaps you misconstrued my comment. I was not suggesting the schools shouldn't have a way of discriminating the 'scholarly' from the other candidates. However,I feel these types of questions raises the bar to unachievable heights for 10yr olds!

I see that tackling this question requires either a formulaic or cumbersome approach. Given the time constraints of these exams, I fail to see how realistic it is to expect a 10 year old (even if scholarship material) to get the answer unless they've seen this sort of question before and hence quickly have a formula at hand and even then I reckon it'll still be a stretch. As another poster alluded to that perhaps they're not expecting 10year olds to get the answer right but rather evidence some form of logical reasoning, a duggedness to try, an I-can-do attitude etc May be this is the case!

On the subject of interesting interviews, I discovered on this forum and I have been very surprised by the multiple layers of selection some independent schools adopt. So for example there's a first round exam then a second round exam then an interview with a teacher then yet another interview with the Head, some even interview the parents. A further surprise was that some interviews were actually academic where the child is subjected to yet another test. So there's a scenario of selecting within the selected

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting the schools should not select their candidates. However, I think passing an entrance exam should be enough to secure a place. An interview(a short informal chat nothing academic) should be the realm of candidates being considered for scholarships; the high fliers in entrance exam. This is the format used by one of our local indies and I think it's simple and straightforward.