Whitgift School Entrance Guide

All round excellent tutor. Ali can hone in on exactly what is required and pushes children to reach their potential.

Alison is a pleasure to deal with and takes a genuine interest in what engages my son to help him develop and enjoy learning. Thank you, Alison.

Finn has a great ability to enthuse my son during the lesson. He is positive and gets the best out of him in every lesson. His composition skills and his understanding of how to improve his work is coming on leaps and bounds.

Holly is a lovely enjoyable teacher. She knows how to deal with kids very well, both education wise as well as personality wise. She managed to get our son to open up to her and I hear him laughing and enjoying the sessions. She always has a good answer that make my son think back and know what went wrong without making him feel bad about mistakes. His improvement has been significant. She is really good and I appreciate her a lot. She is very knowledgeable.

We came to the tutoring process a little later than most, and with some reservations. My son lacked confidence and was very shy and unsure of himself. Amazingly, Rosie's passion, dedication and professionalism have worked wonders in a relatively short space of time. The lessons are always well prepared with interesting & varied content. They are always perfectly targeted to assess ability in a core topic and identify areas that need further focus. Rosie is always punctual, yet flexible if occasions require. She is engaging and has taken both my son's personality, and my feedback or concerns, into account when teaching. She gives plenty of positive feedback, which has visibly fuelled his enthusiasm: once or twice he has actually jumped up from his seat to dance around the room with happiness when he achieved a perfect score in a maths test. I would have no hesitation whatsoever to recommend Rosie to other parents, and count our family lucky that we have her to help us through preparation for the 11+, which frankly, can be a very pressurised and stressful time for children. Thanks must also go to Lawrence Drew, whose recommendation of Rosie as the right person for our family, could not have been more perfect.

Rosie is fabulous . . just right for my son. . .always enthusiastic, positive and really working hard to give him tools and techniques to cope with his weak spots. Thank you for your recommendation which was spot on.

Finn tutored our son every week for over a year in preparation for his 11+ pre-test which included maths, English, VR and NVR. He tailored his lessons to address the areas which needed more practice, worked on exam technique and provided interview practice on Zoom which was obviously a completely new way of being interviewed. Finn kept in regular contact with us usually by a weekly telephone call to discuss progress and targets. He was very encouraging and was equally delighted when our son received an offer from his chosen school.

Gary has been a fantastic maths tutor for my nine year old son. He has a lovely manner and really helped my son understand some tricky maths concepts, stretching his learning where possible. Very grateful for all the work Gary has done with him and would recommend him unreservedly!

I simply cannot recommend Josephine highly enough! We started working with Josephine in Dec for a series of sessions to bring my son up to speed on 13+ exam and to plug some gaps in his knowledge due to school absence. Josephine immediately gauged my son's ability and needs, and it was clear that she was effective from the very first session. She built a very good relationship with my son from the first session - and he has really enjoyed working with Josephine as she certainly stretches him, but is also extremely supportive, providing lots of praise and encouragement. My son and I have both felt that Josephine is exceptional - and I have know doubt that we are working with an outstanding educational professional. Our need has been to get up to speed on 13+ and plug some learning gaps in a relatively short amount of time - Josephine has understood this and set the pace accordingly. My son has come on leaps and bounds, developing new skills and ways of thinking - he is able to tackle English text analysis questions with a new level of confidence. He also enjoys the discussion. As a parent the communication has been excellent, Josephine uses Whatsapp to communicate with student and parent at the same time, zooms links are sent through early, any relevant work is sent in advance - not a minute is wasted. As said Josephine is an outstanding English tutor, who has had a hugely positive impact on my son in a period of only 6 weeks. It has been a very great pleasure working with her - and my son is also really please. She is brilliant.

Phil tutored my son for his 13+ exams. He was really great, very calm, methodical and precise. In a short space of time he covered all the necessary topics and help to cement his knowledge. He also instilled in him confidence that he did know his subject and would be successful in his exams. Which he was!

Finnian is a truly fantastic English teacher who really manages to bring out the full potential in his students. He shows them how to be creative, he gives them confidence and he teaches them how to pass exams. He is absolutely brilliant!

Isabel is amazing. She is immensely knowledgeable, thoughtful and caring as an educator for children with diverse personalities. She worked first with our eldest son since the summer, helping him cover a lot of ground, as we lived outside the UK for the past 4 years, and reach a very good level for his 13+ exams. He received two offers and will be attending Whitgift from September. She not only managed to identify and address any gaps but also got him genuinely excited about aspects of literature he would not have discovered. He loved his lessons with Isabel and will be continuing with her to further his writing skills over the next year. We also decided to start early our second son working with Isabel, for his 11+ as she is a phenomenal tutor and he already loves it also. Very well done!

Mark was very helpful over the past few months working with our son on his 13+ exams. He has deep experience working with children st the stage, both as a former teacher in a leading school and as a tutor for several children applying to similar schools. At the end our son did very well, got two offers and will be joining Whitgift in September.