QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

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nyr
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Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2013 11:39 am

Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by nyr »

Sports is big at QE.
nyr
Nims
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Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by Nims »

berks_mum wrote:Thank you for the links. I didn't think A level results were more important than GCSE thank you for letting me know.

My observations:
QE: Gone down from 98.34 to 95.97 (entries 471)
RBS: Gone down from 91.83 to 88.12 (entries 564)
QE is position 1 and Reading position 10, same for both years.

Questions:
1) Does RBS have a sixth form cull?
2) Is this(positions) a highly significant difference? Honestly no idea at all.
berks_mum, I would suggest not to go by League tables only. It should be one of your selection criteria and not the only one. In our case, DS cleared RBS, QE, Wilson's, St. Olave's, Bucks etc last year however after considering all parameters, we decided to go for Wilson's. Btw, we shifted from Reading to Surrey as well so that the kid doesn't have to travel so much. Its been 2 months since DS has been going to Wilson's now and we are very happy with our choice.
lemondrop
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Location: North London

Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by lemondrop »

Just had a quick look and Reading has a smaller cohort than QE, they also have an additional intake for 6th form unlike QE who has the 'cull' and no additional intake.

In 2013 12% of Reading boys went to Oxbridge whilst 18% of QE boys went to Oxbridge. I don't think this is significantly different in the greater scheme of things. They are both good schools, go to the one that's easiest to get to. I personally thought Reading looked nicer from their website, but you must go with what you thought of them when you looked round and what your DS feels too.

FWIW I have heard how very important sport is at QE, especially rugby, from my friends with boys there.
allegory
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Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by allegory »

I would be more concerned about travel time: if one school is one hour's more travel than the other and jhe studied rather than played Minecraft for that hour every day, he would have an extra 1365 hours under his belt by age 18.

Surely that is more likely to make a difference to final outcomes than the whether a school sends 18% or 12% to Oxbridge or lies 10th or 2nd in a league table. Your interest is really in the individual outcome for your son, not the outcome for the whole school.

(Caveat: This very persuasive argument has been completely ignored by my own family!)
indiemom
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Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by indiemom »

allegory wrote:I would be more concerned about travel time: if one school is one hour's more travel than the other and jhe studied rather than played Minecraft for that hour every day, he would have an extra 1365 hours under his belt by age 18.
Agree with you provided DS is interested in spending those extra hours studying. Yeah ofcourse those extra hours can be used for afterschool clubs which otherwise will not be possible if DS is already travelling 1 hr or more each way to and fro school.
allegory wrote: Your interest is really in the individual outcome for your son, not the outcome for the whole school.

(Caveat: This very persuasive argument has been completely ignored by my own family!)
What is most unpredictable at this stage for me is what is going to be the probable outcome and what are the subjects that DSs are going to take in A level. Both the schools are strong in some subjects and not so strong in other subjects.

Anyways thanks a lot for all the input from all the posters.

Tough decision ahead.
Last edited by indiemom on Wed Oct 29, 2014 8:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
indiemom
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Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by indiemom »

lemondrop wrote:Just had a quick look and Reading has a smaller cohort than QE, they also have an additional intake for 6th form unlike QE who has the 'cull' and no additional intake.

In 2013 12% of Reading boys went to Oxbridge whilst 18% of QE boys went to Oxbridge. I don't think this is significantly different in the greater scheme of things. They are both good schools, go to the one that's easiest to get to. I personally thought Reading looked nicer from their website, but you must go with what you thought of them when you looked round and what your DS feels too.

FWIW I have heard how very important sport is at QE, especially rugby, from my friends with boys there.
Yes RBS always had 112 intake (100 day and 12 boarding) till this year, but from 2015 they are going to have 124(112 day ), I heard that they are going to stop any 13+ entry. Yes they do take some more students from outside though with good GCSE results but they do not cull their own students in A level to keep themselves up in the league table, atleast we have not heard of anything like that. May be we hear more about QE as it's mostly on the top of the league table and don't hear from others as they are not.
nyr
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Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by nyr »

indiemom wrote:Yes I saw that though there were 96 students in Biology, Physics and Chemistry for GSCE level in 2012 (out of them around 77, 84 and 86 students got A*) but only 34, 56 and 46 students took those subjects in A level (as per A level results of 2014). Some might have dropped those subjects because they wanted to do something else.

A* is the most common GCSE grade at QE. 1087 A* out of 1717 entries, so 63% of entries achieved that grade. If students take on average 10 GCSE then on average they get 6 A*, of course there'll be plenty with 10-11 A* and those with fewer. If we go by the average number of A* the fact that most students take 3 A levels then we really can't expect to see the same number of entries at A levels as there are A*. We should expect the number of A levels in any subject to be about half the number of A* in that subject and even then boys will probably prefer maths to biology. Summing up, I really don't see anything unusual about the numbers you report.
2Girlsmum
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Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by 2Girlsmum »

If you take only the top 3/4 from all the schools on the list I wonder where QE would be though? That could be an interesting project for someone with time on their hands:) It would interesting to see the tables altered to factor in the cull......and yes, others might lose 2 or 3 children, but last year at QE it was 43, and that's ignoring the fact that the remaining boys were only allowed to sit the exams QE told them to.
allegory
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Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by allegory »

My feeling about the cull have to assume you child is going to meet QE's standards - 3 out of 4 children do, after all. Better odds than the 1 in 10 to get in.
wasabi1
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Re: QE Barnet or Reading Boys??

Post by wasabi1 »

I am in the same position this year, my ds got 229 in QE and 111.67 in Reading boys, not very great scores and not clear which one he will get. I am currently in reading and am willing to move to Barnet if I get convinced that QE is better than Reading, however I am hearing arguments from both sides and they all seem very persuasive.

How does QE compare to Reading in the current year and last few years ?
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