'No special prep is needed' for the South Hampstead 4+ Assessment is like telling me 'no dieting is needed to lose weight'

If ‘no special preparation is needed’ for the 4+ at South Hampstead, why does the school have such high expectations of the girls in terms of their academic excellence?

If ‘no special preparation is needed’ at South Hampstead, why does the school have such high expectations of the girls in terms of their extremely high behavioural expectations?

With only 24 places and at least 240 girls attending this very popular 4+ assessment, are your really going to pay attention to absolute BS telling you that ‘no special prep is needed’. You can do what you want of course but then please don’t contact me after the fact and complain about it.

One of my students who I personally prepared for her 4+ Assessment at South Hampstead was initially placed on the Waiting List. She is a very bright little girl and she worked very hard to prepare for her 4+ Assessments at South Hampstead. She showed up every single week for 9 months to prepare for her 4+ Assessments at this school. She made a tremendous amount of progress and she was more than ready.

So why was she not offered a place immediately?

Why was she placed on the Waiting list?

When her mother had a discussion about it with the school, she was told that other girls were stronger than her daughter in terms of their phonetic abilities.

Ok, so that contradicts completely what South Hampstead say about ‘no preparation is advised’ doesn’t it? Also contradicts their statement that ‘girls are not asked to read or write in their assessment.’ Clearly, she was asked to read otherwise how would they have known about her phonics ability?

If my student wasn’t as strong as the other girls in terms of her phonetic abilities (and trust me her phonics were strong!) then what did the other girls show in order to have performed better or as the school said ‘to be stronger’ than my student? Do you really think that they did not have ‘special preparation’ in order to demonstrate such strong phonetic ability? And obviously to show everything else that they had to show in order to be offered a place to study there from Reception.

So to those of you who call me and tell me that you don’t need to prepare for South Hampstead because the school have told you not to, you do what you want and why call me in the first place? Don’t bother. I know that girls need to be thoroughly prepared to be in with a chance at South Hampstead. I’ve known it for years. And we will just continue to stay in our lane and continue to prepare our beautiful girls for this 4+ assessment.

Will you send your daughter to the South Hampstead 4+ Assessment with ‘no special preparation’? I think that is just mean and unkind actually. But you do you.

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