St Clement Danes School

[hamscd]

My son has been allocated SCD but seems to be dissapointed. Is SCD a good school. Our first option was QEB but he is on the waiting list on number 50s and am not that positive that he will get in. We only put SCD on the form as it was the only herts school which would take us (no catchment area). Have not even visited the school.

[Cricket]

Did you get in on distance or academic place? It is a good school - last OFSTED was Outstanding in all areas but that does not make it the right place for your DC. There are positives and negatives with every school.

I would suggest that you make an appointment to visit it asap so that your son can decide if he likes it and if not, look at other options - though not sure what those are - presumably you have another school on CI lists that you could succeed on other than QEB ?

Good luck

[hamscd]

Academic we live in harrow so distance is out of the question

[marsellusvega]

I visited SCD on the open day and was very impressed - I've also heard from many others that it is an excellent school. My DS was also allocated SCD on academic criteria and he's in the 50's on QE waiting list but I very much doubt it will go down that far. My DS is really happy to go to SCD even though his older brother is at QE - probably because he knows how tough QE is! I'm even wondering whether my eldest DS could transfer to SCD for 6th form if QE don't let him do the A levels he wants!

The following is taken from the SCD website:

'Ofsted Inspection – October 2011On 13th and 14th October 2011 the school was inspected by five Ofsted Inspectors. They evaluated St Clement Danes as an ‘Outstanding’ school overall and ‘outstanding’ in every one of the 31 categories that make up the report. This places the school as one of the best schools in the country.

Headteacher Dr Josephine Valentine comments:

“We won’t know how we stand in relation to other schools in England until this time next year but, judging by 2010/11 figures, the chance of us being in the top five schools in the country is extremely high. In 2010/11 only two schools with Sixth Forms out of 859 schools inspected achieved the same level as us, which if replicated in 2011/12 could put St Clement Danes in the top 1% of secondary schools in England.”

This is a fantastic endorsement of the hard work and achievement of the staff and the students at the school. As the Inspectors reported at the verbal debrief:

‘The standards achieved by St Clement Danes represent a huge professional and personal commitment to the education of young people.’

Teaching at St Clement Danes was said to be ‘inspirational in pitch, collegiate in approach and founded on very high expectations and deep subject knowledge’ ensuring that ‘the students engage intellectually at a very high level with the rigors of the subject.’ Staff were praised for their ‘excellent subject knowledge’ presented in ‘a lively, enthusiastic and often inspiring way to challenge students.’

Students were commended for conducting themselves ‘in an exemplary fashion around the school and in lessons’ and for playing ‘an outstanding role in school and wide-ranging community events, taking their various responsibilities across the school extremely seriously’, whilst at the same time enjoying school immensely and feeling very safe.'

Sounds pretty good to me!

[KS10]

My son has been allocated SCD but seems to be dissapointed. Is SCD a good school. Our first option was QEB but he is on the waiting list on number 50s and am not that positive that he will get in. We only put SCD on the form as it was the only herts school which would take us (no catchment area). Have not even visited the school.

You weren't limited to SCD. You could have had Rickmansworth and Parmiter's too.

[WP]

You weren't limited to SCD. You could have had Rickmansworth and Parmiter's too.

They take very few high scorers from out of catchment, but SCD has no catchment for academic or music places.

[KS10]

That's true. I thought the OP didn't know that he could've put those two schools on the form as well.

[hamscd]

We are not in Parmitters and Ricky postcode catchment. If we had applied we would be competing for only 3 places. That would have been a very high risk strategy.