Welcome to the forum!
For some parents it’s the prestige element of saying their children are at a GS (sometimes even without caring WHICH GS, many threads on here for how far people will travel/how many schools they will target)
For others it’s simply having a wider choice of secondary school than just their cachement comprehensive: taking the local GS exam with some DIY preparation and practice.
Also Areas differ: Some areas (Kent/Bucks) are all-in selective (a mix of GC and non-selectives), others there is one GS and all else comprehensives (like Reading) or a cluster of GS but most of the places are scorebased so many go to children out of immediate school area, as local-to the-school children often don’t pass (Slough, Birmingham) . then there’s the superselectives like Tiffin and QES where they just want the very highest achievers, so casual entrants are exceedingly unlikely to get a place.
The difference in GS to a high performing comprehensive may be very little (eg Bohunt school in Hampshire) but not everyone has access to a great comp.
I didn’t go to a GS but had issues at my comp for being the “swotty one”. I didn’t want my bright DC to have the same experience. Big advantage of most GS is that keen bright kids who want to learn is socially considered “normal”. That was a big factor behind us personally wanting to try (we DIY’d too).
For some parents it’s the prestige element of saying their children are at a GS (sometimes even without caring WHICH GS, many threads on here for how far people will travel/how many schools they will target)
For others it’s simply having a wider choice of secondary school than just their cachement comprehensive: taking the local GS exam with some DIY preparation and practice.
Also Areas differ: Some areas (Kent/Bucks) are all-in selective (a mix of GC and non-selectives), others there is one GS and all else comprehensives (like Reading) or a cluster of GS but most of the places are scorebased so many go to children out of immediate school area, as local-to the-school children often don’t pass (Slough, Birmingham) . then there’s the superselectives like Tiffin and QES where they just want the very highest achievers, so casual entrants are exceedingly unlikely to get a place.
The difference in GS to a high performing comprehensive may be very little (eg Bohunt school in Hampshire) but not everyone has access to a great comp.
I didn’t go to a GS but had issues at my comp for being the “swotty one”. I didn’t want my bright DC to have the same experience. Big advantage of most GS is that keen bright kids who want to learn is socially considered “normal”. That was a big factor behind us personally wanting to try (we DIY’d too).
Statistics: Posted by Aethel — Sat Jul 20, 2024 1:20 pm