Kingsdale V Sydenham Girls

[cakie1]

I just can?t decide!!! Anyone have any inputs good or bad that could sway my decision? We thought we had finally made a decision with Sydenham girls but having recently just received a prospective full music scholarship we?re back to square one! My daughter loves science& tech, music and acting, so a real split of the two schools. She is a drummer and learning jazz piano Any help or insights much appreciated thanks X

[Coach Beth]

My son goes to Charter East Dulwich (now in Year 8) but he also got a music scholarship for Kingsdale (he is a drummer too!). We were very torn because my partner is a professional jazz musician (jazz guitar) and knows many of the staff in the music department at Kingsdale - many of them are top notch jazz musicians so if your daughter is into jazz, she will get a great jazz music education there. Don't know about Sydenham though! Ultimately, we choose Charter ED because he preferred it and also we thought the small nature of the school (at least for the first few years) would serve him well. Plus he is getting lessons from Matt Fishwick (a top notch jazz drummer) outside of school and if he wants to do music when he is older, he won't really have a problem as he is surrounded by it.

[redjam]

My older daughter is at Kingsdale and we are very happy with it but we have just put Sydenham Girls as our first choice for our second daughter! (Not sure she'll get in as I think we're too far but it's no. 1 on our list.)

Our older daughter has a music scholarship at Kingsdale and it's been great - as well as her normal music lesson, she has a one-to-one lesson each week on her instrument, plus she's part of a weekly ensemble group, plus she has free lunchtime music theory lessons, plus they're allowed to go into the music rooms during breaks and rehearse/mess around on the instruments - really impressive provision. She also has a maths scholarship which is an extra after-school lesson each week - sounds deadly to me (extra maths!) but they make it fun and she's gained a lot from it. She's quite an outgoing child and she loves the busyness of the school and isn't phased by the size of it.

Our younger daughter, however, is really into science and computer programming so Sydenham Girls seemed an obvious 'fit', plus I think she'd benefit from a slightly less overwhelming environment. From what I can see, Sydenham also has an excellent music provision though perhaps not as outstanding as the full scholarship at Kingsdale. But I was really impressed with Sydenham when I went round this year and I've got friends whose kids are happy and doing well there. So in the end I think both choices are great and you probably need to look at factors such as distance of the journey to school, whether or not your daughter would be happy in an all-girls' environment, how she feels about the size of the school etc. Ultimately I'd let your daughter choose if you can't decide! They're both great options. Good luck...

[Sol]

Music at Kingsdale is outstanding but Sydenham School will provide all she likes: music, acting, science and tech; it also has triple science at GCSE; not sure about Kingsdale GCSES subjects.

Does she prefer single sex or coed? What's the traveling times?

Kingsdale has small clases and apparently settings for all subjects from what I heard