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Gloucestershire • Re: Pates and STRS.. opinions?

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I have had dc at both schools, starting Y7

STRS advantages

1. They just ‘get’ bright boys. Quiet boys, sporty boys, autistic boys, musical boys, disruptive boys, artistic boys: it is a very welcoming and accepting school and my ds who had never quite found his crowd at primary school thrived there - the school helped him find his talent and they nurtured it, and helped him feel proud of himself.
2. Excellent DT and cookery in the first few years. Pate’s will tell you about TPM being ‘from Archery to Zumba’ and while the kids have had at least one session of both of those, and a bushcraft session in Y7, it’s generally a bit mediocre and by half way through Y7 they realise that it’s not that great.
3. Pastoral care great - seemed just part of everything they did.
4. No sterotyping about music, drama, English being for girls and maths/computing being for boys. At Pate’s my dd has felt the boys dominated computing and maths classes and were disruptive in language lessons.
5. The progress reports from STRS are actually useful. They are much more granular on telling you where your ds is against where they should be. The Pate’s ones give a colour rather than a score, to stop the kids comparing- they do anyway, but the staff say its effort that matters (in which case why make this the least visible element of the report card! It’s very hard to gauge where your dc is in the cohort at Pate’s)
6. STRS lets the boys choose their sport in Y11. The choices included chess, which had a certain appeal on cold winter days!

Pate’s advantages
1. Every dc has to do house music and drama in early years, so dc are pushed out of comfort zone. The house system is much more of a thing at Pate’s than STRS and they have things like house bake off and house dance etc.
2. Pate’s has a wider range of extracurricular activities and the shooting/climbing/CCF is an opportunity not on offer elsewhere - or you’d have to do it outside school.
3. Pate’s have a much more active system of senior pupils working with younger kids as their house officials and house activities push the groups together so I think there are more connections between year groups.
4. Pate’s have a very clear ‘Pate’s learner’ ethos. Your child will be thoroughly fed up of hearing about it after about a term, but I think it makes a difference to be reminded about the things that the school think matter.
5. The cohort as a whole get better academic results, because the entry level at Y7 is higher. Pate’s won’t necessarily get a child higher results than he’d have got at STRS but the results are more uniformly high. Pate’s only take the dc who score well in maths and English whereas STRS has the kids who are brilliant at one and weaker at the other. (I thought it was good that the ability range was a bit wider at STRS as it was a more sympathetic environment for a dc who might have specific subject weaknesses. Ds did fantastically well at STRS as he was really helped in English which was his weakest subject and came out with 8s at GCSE and 9 for pretty much everything else)
6. The food is better at Pate’s refectory than STRS canteen.

If I could choose schools again for my dc I would have sent one to each school - they are both fantastic and it comes to choosing the right school for the child.
All of this!

Likewise ds at each from year 7 and each at a school that suit(s/ed) them. They are both excellent schools with lots of wonderful staff, so there is no bad choice, just perhaps the one that may suit your own child better. For example, my STRS ds would not have enjoyed all the house music, drama and performance elements at Pate's (although very happy to participate in other house events at STRS), whereas the Pate's ds loves this more than any of the academic stuff. In our case it has mapped pretty obviously onto the introvert/extrovert spectrum, although I know from others that the reverse can also be true.

There are a few other variations in what they offer:
The DT department at STRS is excellent if that is something which may matter at GCSE level for those interested in pursuing engineering, design, etc at a practical level (Pate's no longer offer this at GCSE).
Availability of Mandarin and automatic start on 2 languages from beginning of year 7 is something only offered by Pate's.
Whilst the music (department and extra-curricular) is great at Tommies, the sheer range and variety of music ensembles on offer at Pate's is extraordinary. It's the kind of place where it's not anything of note for someone in your house orchestra to play the harp or bassoon as well as singing in Faure's Requiem for fun (not saying they all do this, but you wouldn't be remotely unusual if you did).

Re the 'getting' bright boys Lysander mentions, STRS consistenly outperforms the other Gloucestershire grammars on progress 8 for boys (when you drill down into student characteristics along gender lines) - although they are all above average at this anyway. A large majority of boys there do not opt to move for 6th form, although many would have the grades to do so - and not because they can't be bothered or lack confidence. It's an entirely positive choice. As Lysander identifies, there is a very refreshing lack of gendered assumptions about subjects amongst the students there (one of the selling points for us) and even the more science/maths focused boys have the chance to take languages and arts seriously (as you can see from the results in the Art and German departments, for example).

Again as Lysander says, communication around reports and progress are really meaningful at STRS - and across the board the parent communication there is exemplary, which is very helpful as a parent (I am comparing with 2 other grammars, plus experience at primaries). I wonder if this is because they do not assume boys will be totally reliable at relaying information?!

The 'Pate's learner'/independent leaner ethos is definitely a very important focus in Pate's, but this doesn't automatically translate into being the easiest environment for a child to gain the practical skills necessary for independent learning. It's probably down to personality, but some could perhaps benefit from a slightly more supported stage in their learning journey early on. It can be quite a jump from cruising along at primary to taking full responsibility for following up on anything you are not so sure of in year 7 (even if you are a top 150 qualifier) - although I think the school provides ample support when parents or students ask for it (students just don't always think to seek it out!). I don't know if this may sometimes be more of a challenge for boys than girls? Either way, both schools produce successfully independent learners by the end of 6th form.

Overall, like Lysander, I am confident the 2 different schools were wholly good choices for my 2 different ds, but equally that neither school would have been in any way a bad choice if they had ended up at the other option. They haven't both been all the way through the system yet, so I don't have an absolute comparison results-wise, but the STRS one certainly did not lose out on anything in terms of formal results. They are both fantastic choices.

Statistics: Posted by tulips — Mon Oct 28, 2024 11:55 pm



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