What's the Point?

Dear OFS Community,

This week, I was asked by a prospective parent…

How do your pupils deal with 11+, isn’t it easier to get my child into a straight through school that takes them through to A-Levels…?

A cracking question for 9am on a Wednesday morning and considering my views on what can be a conveyer belt route, I climbed into this debate with a huge amount of enthusiasm! We explored the following:

• Do you want to remove all hurdles from your child’s future?
• What if that senior school is not the right setting for your growing child?
• Is it possible to choose a school for a 4 year-old that we know will be right for their 18 year-old future?
• What happens if your child is failing in that setting?
• Why are there no maintained sector schools that go from Reception to A-Levels?

The reality is that children need to face challenge. They also need the opportunity to reinvent themselves and to start again, especially in this ever-changing world. Over half term, I received dozens of lovely emails from parents about the offers that were coming through.

I also received a first – an email from a pupil asking for advice about a waiting list place versus current offers and how to move off a waiting list place – that’s AMAZING ownership that frankly tells me that this young lady is going to be fine wherever she goes!

So, back to that opening question, how have our pupils dealt with the recent 11+ process. Parents will undoubtedly have their version and we as a school will have ours based on observing 61 young learners, Monday to Friday. My take, based on the weekly feedback from Yr6 Tutors, is that our children have been extraordinary in the way that they have tackled these assessments – they’ve got on with it and more importantly, they’ve kept the balance and perspective of what’s really important!

Exams are pieces of paper that will never define a person, at best they capture the smallest moment in time in the tiniest area of school life. To put this into perspective – I heard more comments about what pupils had cooked over the half term as opposed to exam feedback, that speaks volumes and tells me that Orley Farm pupils deal with 11+ rather well!

I would like to conclude with one observation from the 13+ process. Two years ago, our current Yr8 pupils faced their 11+ and a number weren’t successful at the first round for their first-choice school at that time.

Having sat 13+ two years on, a number of those boys were offered places at schools that had originally turned them down because they weren’t ready – the strange thing is that in a number of cases, they’ve not taken up this offer as a different one emerged in the intervening years…I have this cushion on my sofa for a reason:

Harrow Food Bank

Just before we broke for the half term holiday, we had a drive to help add to the Harrow food bank who contacted us to request help in these impossible times. A huge thank you to everyone for joining – Mrs De Freitas was so impressed with members of the School Council who really got behind this and we were able to take over 200kgs of food to the Harrow depot.