St Michael Gramma School, Barnet

[pkhua]

Need advice please from St Michael School mums. How tough are the entrance exams.
Are all 4 exams mutiple choice? and do the kids sit all 4 exmas on the same day? Am unsure whether my DD should have a go, if her chances are slim of passing I don't want her to go through all the stress. Many thanks in advance

[thenevernever]

You'll probably find info on the elevenplusexams.co.uk forum. I've heard its a good school but don't know the entry details myself as were not catholic and so couldn't apply.

[pkhua]

Thank you for your message thenevernever .

[peteneras]

pkhua: Need advice please from St Michael School mums.

My DD left St Michaels?s more than two years ago and is now in her final year at a Russell Group university. It was tough then getting into St Michael?s (but not impossible ? DD was a whole year younger than most and still ranked in the first two dozen) but I guess it is even tougher today; not to mention the exams may have changed somewhat. Why don?t you ask the school itself about their present day exams? In the whole of my DD?s seven years at the school, I had never encountered any problems and the staff were absolutely fantastic and patient should you want to talk to any of them (best after their working hours) about anything.

[peteneras]

thenevernever: I've heard its a good school. . .

To say St. Michael?s is a ?good? school is an understatement. Just take a look at The Telegraph?s Top 100 UK Schools in their latest GCSE League Table.

Or The BBC?s English Baccalaureate and AS/A League Table for the Borough of Barnet.

I can never forget the Asst. Head Teacher, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Ward who is my hero of a disciplinarian. For an all-girls school like St. Michael?s, all super bright as it is, the fact remains that the raging hormones in some of these girls need someone like Mr. Ward to straighten them up and toe the line sometimes. He has been known to slip quietly into the local MacDonald?s down the road to demand that his girls, now all grouped together after school having a nice time at the restaurant and generally making a nuisance of themselves, to beat it and go home!

I remember chatting with him one afternoon just outside the school gates waiting to collect my DD when a group of girls emerged, all smartly dressed with school blazers except for one girl who had her blazer folded over her forearm. Mr. Ward stopped this girl and asked her if she knew the school rules or not; she nodded her head and returned, not inside the school gates but all the way back to the classroom to put on her jacket before emerging again.

Pastoral care at the school is second to none. And then of course, the academic achievements are now legendary as the tables above show.