% of N.London/ Herts grammar pupils ex-state v. ex-private?

[elevenlevel]

Wondering whether more and more places at the likes of DAO and Latymer, QE and HBS are being taken up by ex-private pupils. How do the state primary pupils manage to compete when I'm hearing that most of the private pupils are getting tutored too?

DAO groupie etc. what proportion of the year 7s coming in are ex-state and do you feel this is changing?

[copella]

Can't talk for other schools, but at Latymer none of my DS's friends were privately educated. All the children we know who attend in different year groups went through the state system. I don't think there is a particularly large percentage of privately educated there.

[2Girlsmum]

Nor at St Michael's Grammar. I'm not aware of any in DD's class.

[IronMikeTyson]

How do the state primary pupils manage to compete when I'm hearing that most of the private pupils are getting tutored too?

A bright girl/boy in a state Primary is a match for a bright boy/girl in a private school provided they have had the tuition to be at the right level for maths and English.

DD is in HBS and there are a fair number of State Primary school kids in there.

[future]

DD is in a well known private school and only 3-4 have applied to HBS. Most parents tend to stick their noses up at 'state ' schools.In this case, the less the merrier

[elevenlevel]

I wonder if it varies by indie/ prep as some of the ones near me seem to have quite a few children going for grammars and having them as a first choice. These are smaller, dare I say it, less swanky indies though not the very traditional, more expensive ones.

[Daogroupie]

I am with Ironmike on this one. As I have said repeatedly, the key to winning places at these schools is doing very specific preparation for the different styles of exams that each school uses. I am very underwhelmed by the prep school students that I encounter. As many are used to a lot of help, support and small classes they do not thrive in the DAO competitive environment. There are no prep schools girls at all in the top maths set in my dd's year. State school students are more than a match for their indy schools counterparts, provided their parents take care to prepare them properly. Some prep school parents assume that DAO will be easier to get into than Habs and St Albans because it is a state school. It is in fact the other way around. Those students who have just come through the battery of super selective tests will now find sitting the indy's in January a walk in the park. Also prep school parents do not have the sats levels information to give them some idea where their students are in the cohort. As a result some of them are not anywhere near the standard they need to be to secure places at QE, HBS , DAO , Latymer and St M's. DG

[elevenlevel]

Very interesting indeed!

What sort of levels are the norm amongst those who did succeed and got a place at DAO?

[Daogroupie]

Some of them are not as able as others who fail to win places. However they have been prepared in exam technique and the format of the papers. In three weeks time we will have the DAO results for this year. I expect the pass mark to have gone up again, especially as this year's papers do not seem to have been especially challenging. The papers [edited by moderator] were preparing with were far harder than the ones they faced on the day. For this reason I expect the marks to be particularly high this year. [edited by moderator] DG

[K1w1mum]

My DD1 is year 7 at WGSG and there are a couple of private school girls in her class. Most are state though.
We had 11 girls go to Watford from our outer area primary school and probably about twice that number that sat the exams. Quite a few who didn't get into Watford or HBS have ended up in pretty decent Indies, such as NLCS.