City of London School for Girls Entrance Guide

Made our daughter feel at ease within a few lessons. It is early days but very happy with tuition received so far.

Working with our child, Emily focussed on essay writing, reading comprehension tests, synonyms, antonyms and interview prep. Emily was fantastic at polishing our child's essay writing skills and walking her through different aspects of what makes for engaging writing. She did it in a fun and effective way. As a result, we saw a marked improvement in her stories. In reading comprehension tests, we specifically valued how she taught our child to provide good quality open-ended responses within a limited time. Preparation for interviews was also very useful and engaging. She stretched our child’s interviewing ability by exposing her to a wide variety of questions, and advising her on the quality of replies and body language. Emily’s reports on the lessons and progress have been thorough and we have fully enjoyed working with her. Our daughter seconds all the above and adds that Emily was very quick at identifying her weaknesses and helping her improve. So far, she has successfully made her way through different exams and has been offered several interviews.

I honestly don't know where we'd be without Gary. Our daughter's confidence and understanding vastly improved with his help.

Victoria strikes a good balance between being firm with children but not intimidating. Our daughter enjoys her lessons and takes seriously her advice.

Excellent teacher. I started with a little girl unsure and reserved. After 3 months i have a able confident girl willing to have a go at all questions.

Gary is great. He makes maths so fun for our daughter.

I wanted to write to you to tell you how pleased we were with the results we got from working with Josh who you introduced us to start of 2021. My daughter was in year 5 at the time so we were relatively late to tutoring compared to some of her peers. Though our daughter had a good grounding and support from her prep school I know that working with Josh was a huge factor in her success. She’s just had offers from CLSG, Jags, Alleyn's, Sevenoaks and an academic scholarship at St Dunstan’s. The first three would have been considered stretch options for her when we started the process. If you ever want me to do a reference for Josh I’d be delighted to as our experience has been great. We didn’t do any extra work with our daughter ourselves so Josh did all the out of school work. As well as making sure she was confident on the basics and techniques required generally he proactively worked with her on past papers for specific schools - for example highlighting the different approach to some maths questions for City and what they were looking for. His style also worked really well for us as he’s very calm about the whole process and was able to make her feel comfortable very quickly. She really enjoyed working with him and remained enthusiastic about her lessons throughout which made everything easier for me! Thank you to you too Lawrence for finding Josh for us.

Emily has really got to know my daughter’s strengths and weaknesses very well, so each session is tailored accordingly. Session feedback notes are timely and comprehensive with the appropriate amount of homework designated between each sessions.

Natalie is an experienced teacher and my daughter loved every session with her, while learning a lot. We have started the tuitions with an objective to pass the entrance exams and we have succeeded! Thank you!

Isabel was an excellent guide for our daughter in her 11+ preparations. More than the whole preparation aspect, what I was really thankful for was she helped our daughter build a strong foundation in the English language which I believe will go a long way, especially in her secondary education. Also, as our daughter was naturally very creative, she was able to channelise that skill by giving it more structure and format. I was just amazed and blown away by some of our daughter's recent creative writing pieces. Isabel's guidance definitely made that difference. She also taught our daughter the art of precision which was handy in her comprehension exercises. Most importantly, she made the whole process fun and engaging and our daughter loved her classes with Isabel. She worked with our daughter for over a year and at the end of this engagement, I can confidently say that our daughter has a strong hold and a genuine love for the language. Our daughter made it to many top schools in London including CLSG and Godolphin & Latymer that we are having a tough time choosing. Overall, we really appreciate her efforts and are thankful to Isabel especially as we are not native English speakers.

Rachel has worked wonders with our summer-born, state school DD to secure a place in some of the most competitive schools in London! She built a wonderful relationship with DD almost instantly and somehow turned the demanding tasks of 7+ into fun activities for her. This made the past 6 months as enjoyable as possible for DD. The mock exam she organized was very useful for parents to understand areas for further improvement, as well as DD’s time management, highly recommended!

Josh was absolutely instrumental in guiding (my child) in how best to develop her English and Math skills. He has been an absolute pleasure to work with and seamlessly handled the switch to virtual teaching this past Spring. We asked Josh to not teach (my child) specifically for the exam, but to help her develop foundational skills over this past year, and he managed to make the learning fun and engaging for (my child). We would have no hesitation in recommending Josh to other families.

Rosie has been an exceptional tutor to our now 11yr-old for a number of years. Initially employed simply to stop our child from getting bored and frustrated at undemanding school work, Rosie immediately set about providing stimulating work and tutorials which not only engaged their interests and played to their strengths, but also encouraged them to develop their confidence in areas in which they felt less able. Consequently, Rosie has guided our child successfully through the turtuous and rather alien 11+ process, despite that not being part of the original plan! Prompt, polite, professional and properly inspirational, we feel lucky to have had her as a tutor.

I initially contacted Owl Turtors in a panic as my daughter was due to take the 13+ common entrance exam in 7 weeks and was feeling unprepared and was lacking in confidence. Owl put us in touch with Sobia for online tutoring sessions. As my daughter had never participated in online tutoring she was a little apprehensive about how this would work however she needn’t have worried because within 15 minutes of meeting Sobia she felt totally at ease with her. Sobia quickly identified my daughters strengths and also the areas that she needed to work on. She taught her some excellent exam techniques and also built up her confidence. The quality of tutoring that Sobia delivers is of such a high standard and it was a pleasure to observe how she would guide the child to discover the answer themselves instead of just providing them with the answer. Sobia is very personable, patient and friendly and although she is a master in her field she tutors with such a calm, kind and fun manner my daughter really did not want the sessions to end. I felt that every minute of the session was spent learning; there was never any time wasted and if I ever needed to talk to Sobia she would ensure this was done before the session started or after it had ended. My daughter went on to pass both of her exams and has so far received 1 offer and we have our fingers crossed for the 2nd. I would not hesitate to utilise Sobia again in future.

We are really pleased with Rosie. Our daughter's confidence is much improved and she is really enjoying the sessions.

Our daughter is enjoying her lessons with Vicky and seems to be benefiting from her sessions. Vicky is very helpful and knowledgeable and she’s a great fit for us.

Our daughter absolutely loves Vicky! Thank you.

Finn is an outstanding tutor that has worked with both of my children. He is not only tremendously experienced in the core subjects (English, Maths, VR, NVR...) but is also excellent at helping them build their self confidence.