How to entry excellent rating secondary school in UK

​Case Study:
 
Our family relocated to UK during Christmas time in 2018.  My daughter went to a local community school with a Ofsted Good rating in St. Johns wood area  for her primary education from Jan 2019.  The school was very supportive during Covid 19 lock down with online homework and later on moved to TEAMS class. She did not attend any extra English class but keeps learning piano via private tutoring.
 
In March 2020,  I started to get serious about her secondary school admission process.
There are different schools type you can find with the link below:
 
https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/secondary-school-admissions
 
In this article, I would like to share my personal experience as a parents for children who speaks English as a second language but manged to get in the school she love.
 
Which school to apply?
I went for the rules to apply:
 

• 2 top end exceeding her English verbal capability schools: one grammar and one independent school.- This is for her to understand there are many smart and hardworking kids who she may not met before.
• 2 Aptitude/Talent-the schools  - school had intake by aptitude (music , performance art) with Ofsted Outstanding rating. -This is where I think she potentially can get in  to receive high quality education  at the same time to maximise the tax we paid.
• 3- base on distance, sibling but with Ofsted Good rating.- this gives us security knowing she has a place to study with relatively good education.

 
The preparation for admission test:
We  need to buffer 2-3 assessment per school and check out the exam and interview time.
 

• We went through verbal (her weak one) and non verbal (her strong one with logical)   11+ Bond exam papers. Also some grammar school has sample questions on their website we had downloaded.  She loves doing non verbal but refused to finish verbal (English). I can see this was not good for grammar and independent school applications. However, still ask her to do a few during July-Aug 2020.
• With the aptitude test preparation.  It’s a stressful process at least for me. Firstly my daughter refused to have more piano lessons from  June and July as she felt high pressure from her piano tutor, she even wrote about her stressfulness in her school work and the school teacher had a conversation with me. So instead, I became her private music teacher.  I did some music aptitude test preparation with her. We focus on pitch, texture, rhythm and melody practice. The piano teacher told me to buy the text sample but instead I just google YouTube and play the cords in my own music theory book to mimic the test. At the end, it was sufficient for her to get reasonable good ranking.
• As for the music exam, ideally your kid shall know two instruments, but given my daughter only learn piano. We choose two contrast pieces instead (one from Sonata one from Bach’s miniature). Although she did not get selected on the first run, she was on the waiting list for aptitude results. This also path a good foundation with school’s music head teacher if she gets in.
• Band test- just go and do. She got into A easy. But I suppose the non verbal exercise she did helped. She told me some school exams had similar questions come up. So practice if you can.

 
Result for admission:
At first my daughter got into an good school and was on waiting list for music aptitude excellent school. We accepted the good school first but keep her on the waiting list for the other. After 1-2 months, I received a phone call from local council if she would like to go for the aptitude school. The staff told me if she accepted the position, she will be the first one live so far out of the zone in the last 14 years she had been working with the council. I was so excited and cannot believe it was true and ask her to send me an email after thank you her.
 
 
After school starts:
My daughter and one of the other smartest girl in her primary school got into the same secondary school. I told her she is very fortunately to study with the smartest girl who run out of books to ready in the local library. They soon became closer than before. She also met a new friend who lives far but got in with the music aptitude test. Apparently her mother is a music teacher. This smart girl can play three instruments with Grade 8 in Piano.
My daughter loves design technology club, trampolining club, skateboarding in PE. Skipping her classes to attend drum and piano tutoring in her school. I think she is a much happier girl after all the hard work to get into the school as her first choice.