SGGS v AGS v RHS

[Dremma]

My DD is at AGS (Y8). She likes the school and despite last year being tricky with lockdown/ home schooling etc she settled in quickly and made a good group of friends straight away.
The teaching seems good but they do get quite a bit of homework! The communication with the teachers has been excellent and they respond quickly by email.
She has enjoyed the netball club and football club but it does mean picking up from school at 5pm.
Do not under estimate the long commute on an 11 year old though. My DD can walk to the bus stop in 5 mins but she leaves the house at 7.35 and gets home at 4.45 - it’s a long day and she is very tired when she gets home. The bus journey itself is good fun as she has friends on the bus. I definitely wouldn’t want it to be any longer commute!
There is certainly a much larger number of boys to girls but she has seen this as a plus point. The girls quickly bonded in her class and are very close. There have so far been no friendship issues. It’s easier to get into the sports teams as less girls to choose from too!
She looked round SGGS and AGS in Y5/6 ( twice to each) and for her she felt AGS was a better fit. She definitely didn’t like the feel of an all girls school. Also - she is very young for the year and only scored 2 marks above AQS but she is thriving there and got an excellent end of year report and a subject prize so she definitely isn’t just getting by!

[StoneyCake]

I must admit I find it a bit hard to get my head around that you are considering a school 1hr 20min+ away when you have one 10mins away.

Have you tried calling RH and asking them for a visit? If so, is it a blanket ‘no’ or just that there are no open days/evenings currently? I absolutely wouldn’t want to make a decision with at least giving my best try to see RHS.

You also need to consider friendships. I think long term it would be easier to have friends local rather than over an hour away, especially when she is older and wants to start hanging out with them/going to town etc.

[Ejf]

I must admit I find it a bit hard to get my head around that you are considering a school 1hr 20min+ away when you have one 10mins away.

Have you tried calling RH and asking them for a visit? If so, is it a blanket ‘no’ or just that there are no open days/evenings currently? I absolutely wouldn’t want to make a decision with at least giving my best try to see RHS.

You also need to consider friendships. I think long term it would be easier to have friends local rather than over an hour away, especially when she is older and wants to start hanging out with them/going to town etc.

I’ve really tried- I’ve emailed the office and the communications/ admissions person. I’ve offered to take a Covid test before we come. They aren’t even doing a live question and answer session. We’ve even stood at the gates at home time to try and get a ‘feel’ for it that way. There are a couple of very brief (2 min) videos online that we have watched. The school are on half term now until 1st Nov and the CAF needs submitting by 31st Oct.

It’s very hard to see a school we love but put another one down instead that we may not even like. That seems too much of a gamble.

I think quite a few children go to AGS from Leamington and we are not far from there. I think with many of the grammar schools, the catchment area is a large that often friends don’t live close by. I’m happy to drop my DD in Stratford or Leamington etc to see friends.

If we’d been able to see RHS and we had liked it, we would have put it down first. I’ve even asked around work colleagues to find strangers who send their kids to RHS and have had phone conversations with how they have found it. One current pupil has spoken to my daughter over the phone and we chatted to a year 10 girl outside of the school. They basically said it was OK- good academically but extra curricular/ focus on producing rounded girls was lacking.

[mad?]

One current pupil has spoken to my daughter over the phone and we chatted to a year 10 girl outside of the school. They basically said it was OK- good academically but extra curricular/ focus on producing rounded girls was lacking.

I understand how difficult it is when you have a clear favourite. Two things though. As sure as night follows day DD will make the best friends with DC who live as far from the school as you do, but in the opposite direction. Secondly, do what you have done outside RHS at AGS. These sound like the answers most teenagers give about most schools

[kelbel]

It’s really hard when you can’t visit the school, isn’t it?

We’ve had the same issue with Alcester - I phoned and emailed several times and just got a blanket ‘no’ so you did well to manage to get a visit there! I really wish we’d been able to. I’m lucky that I visited it twice back in 2018 with my eldest son (who now goes to KES) but my middle son (who we’re currently applying for) has never been there. We’ve just had to trust our judgement from back then (plus watch the virtual tour) but I really wish I’d been able to take him to look round.

Good luck and hope you manage to make a choice that you’re happy with.

[Vicksteroo]

They basically said it was OK- good academically but extra curricular/ focus on producing rounded girls was lacking.

We've had some great help from local friends who have DDs at RHS and I must say that is very much not the message we received! The extra-curricular clubs at lunchtimes sound fantastic, varied, and most of all, accessible to the children who have to catch a bus. So very different from LSS where as far as I can tell there's nothing at all for the boys who catch buses and can't stay after school (and even then, it's only sports). The girls we spoke to also went to some lengths to describe how creative some of their non-creative lessons are, rather than just academic learning. Perhaps you caught someone on a bad day!

We're feeling similarly about RHS having not been able to visit (we've also asked and asked), however, knowing that it would be an onerous commute to Stratford we chose not to consider those schools. We don't want to move, and we don't want to put our DD through that journey twice a day.

Ultimately you know what's best for your child, but we felt that we should only consider the schools that are a practical commute from our home. My son could have attended KES if we'd been prepared to do that journey, and despite my disappointments with LSS I still don't regret keeping him local.

[Ejf]

Thank you again for all the replies. It’s really helpful to hear any information about the schools that others have managed to get.

[ric1982]

I have come across this https://www.schoolparrot.co.uk/schools/ ... ool-103096" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for SGGS. Not sure how reliable is this but along with some horrible negative ones, there are also some good positive experiences from students. Obviously even the best schools have some -ve reviews but the contents of these reviews are alarming.

This one for e.g. particularly concerns me

"...One of the worst problems at this school, however, is the misogyny. This may sound surprising coming from a girls’ school, but while we were all called “girl bosses” one minute in some insincere assembly, we would be called “disgusting” for having our skirts above the knee the next. A senior member of staff once sent out an infamous letter stating that because a member of the public had complained about how messy we look, and because we were distracting the male teachers (yes this letter was addressed to children), that we must wear our skirts longer out of respect for the school. I felt betrayed that my own school was comfortable with the prospect that someone they had employed might be capable of being distracted by the thighs of a 13 year old (and that if this were the case, they would hold us responsible), and that they were perfectly happy reducing us to the “image of the school”, instead of honouring our individuality and liberty of expression as young women. ..."

Would be great if any parents here can share some experiences if these are reliable or unfounded?

[del]

That’s certainly not the impression we have had of SGGS. My DD has been there since September and absolutely loves it. No hint of any of the problems highlighted in these feedbacks. Yes they have a strict uniform policy but my DD prefers to wear the trouser option anyway. There is certainly no one standing at the gate with a tape measure. The work so far has been enjoyable, interesting and manageable. I’ve actually been surprised and impressed as to how enthusiastic she has been to complete any homework tasks well before the due date. Takes little more than an hour to complete at most. 1 hour when they get home from school. She has on occasion even done some in the library after school in the 30 minutes she has while waiting for the bus. I mean, what else are they doing in the evening? Watching TV/YouTube/TicToc? That's simply down to discipline from the parents. Homework first and then they are free to "play".

I guess each child is different. Some are more motivated than others and some need reminding by the parents, but absolutely the work is not overwhelming in terms of time. It’s a school with high standards and work ethic, but that’s exactly what we wanted.

Our DD has made many new friends already, they are forced into it because of the large catchment area and diversity of feeder schools. No more than 3 or 4 kids usually qualify from any given school, so pretty much everyone is new. No hint of bullying or rivalry over grades. I’m absolutely sure that there is more bullying and bitchiness going on in the local comprehensives.

In terms of answering the OPs question SGGS versus AGS versus RHS… We put all 3 schools down as a preference, in that order. Reason being because SGGS is not only the closest, but the more prestigious in our view. No disrespect to AGS or any of the Rugby schools (at the end of the day we would have been happy with any), but I think the majority in the Stratford catchment area put SGGS girls or KES boys as a first preference and AGS as a second. There’s no point in putting AGS as a first preference and SGGS or KES as a second because if they have qualified for SGGS/KES they will have almost certainly qualified for AGS as well with AGS having a lower AQS. We put RHS and Ashlawn down as 3rd and 4th preferences even though we are out of the catchment area. Also, last year we didn’t know the 11+ results before the school preferences needed to be submitted, so we just put all 4 grammar school options down as 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th preference. Luckily we got our first preference. If DD hadn’t qualified for any grammars, we would have gone down to our 5th, 6th or 7th preference which were the local comps. I think in this case we would have considered private, although it would have been a tight squeeze money wise.

We have a friend whose DD is at AGS and by the sound of it she is very happy there as well. Contradicting my own statement earlier, they put AGS as their first preference because they wanted their DD to go to a mixed school. Her only comment is in her class there are 20 boys and 10 girls and I think this is reflected in the school in general. There does tend to be almost twice as many boys than girls, probably because there are fewer places at KES and a different catchment area means more boys higher up the marks than girls. SGGS and AGS are fishing the same pond.

It’s impossible to know which school is best for your DC. There are so many factors to consider, the biggest one in my opinion is the friendships your DC will form which is totally out of your control regardless of school.

My advice it to weigh up the pros and cons of each school, but a big, BIG pro is proximity to the school. The nearest grammar would be the preferred option every time IMHO.

[TimM10]

My daughter is now in Year 10 at SGGS and she loves it. We did look around AGS (husband went there) but DD was adamant that SGGS was where she wanted to go, we supported her and kept our fingers crossed. She'd had a tricky time at primary, but it was such a relief to see how much happier she was at secondary school. The school is fantastically supportive and very used to only getting one or two girls from each school. The vertical tutor system helps hugely with this, encouraging the girls from different years to get to know each other. My daughter has a fantastic group of really lovely friends, although there is a fair amount of driving when they all meet up given the wide catchment area! They're very supportive of each other and watching them work and collaborate together academically and through sport has been really lovely. Pastoral support at the school has always been very good, and continued to be throughout the pandemic and once they had returned to school. The staff speak of mental wealth, rather than mental health and are very positive in this regard. Homework is manageable and increases steadily as DD progresses up through the school, as expected.

There's a lot going on at SGGS after school too and DD has thrown herself in to this with huge enthusiasm too, you may need to factor this in for daily commutes. We're based in Worcestershire, pretty close to the edge of the catchment area when we applied. We've always managed to juggle the commute but you do need to be prepared for the train (in our case) or bus not turning up, or being late or detouring, traffic into Stratford can also be hellish, particularly once roadworks are thrown into the mix. Until you start doing it you've no idea how long it's going to take. I'm lucky in that work are fairly flexible, but I have sat in my car with a laptop on my knee and I also now have a car boot library, it's surprising how many books you can get through waiting for children to finish after school activities! If you have other children too they'll need to be part of the process, I have a DS in Year 9 and it was a huge relief when they were both going to schools in the same town again.

I appreciate that we were lucky being able to look around the schools before filling in the CAF form. Our daughter loves SGGS and it was absolutely the best fit for her, standards are high, they work hard but have a lot of fun doing so, you just want your children to be happy. Wishing you the very best of luck with your choice and decisions.