Pate's school

Pate's is widely considered the best grammar school for academic results, along with excellent facilities in sports, drama, music, and the like.

In fact, their academic results at GCSE and A-Level beat the private schools in Cheltenham (St. Edward's, Cheltenham Ladies' College, Cheltenham College), whilst being a free state school.

If you and your child are aiming for Pate's, you must be realistic about what the process will involve. Families from Bristol and Birmingham are regularly applying for Pate's because of its academic prestige, and your child will need to be in the top 5% across Gloucestershire and beyond to earn a place. Can you genuinely look at your child and say they are in the top 5% of academic performance in your county?

I'm not going to spend time here debating whether this is a healthy way to look at your child, and I do think that studying can be enjoyable and confidence boosting, but you must be realistic that Pate's will take extra hours each week in study.

The other factor is test precision. Many, many smart kids can drop marks for misreading a question, forgetting a minus sign, feeling tired on the day, etc. These kind of slip-ups will be the difference between getting into Pate's, and not. At least, that has been the case. Supposedly the new test will address some of these issues. So they need to be equally good at the knowledge part as the taking the test part, with lots of timed mock practices.

Pate's is a fantastic school, and the lifetime boost it provides for being a free state school is phenomenal, however it is in a totally different league to the other grammars. You cannot go on holiday and forget to take the books. You cannot skip that week's homework or tutoring because someone has to go to the dentist. It is a multi-year commitment to getting in.

Again, I haven't written this to scare you, but to prepare you. It is achievable with a realistic determination.