Our Lady's Abingdon offers exam-free entry

Our Lady’s Abingdon (OLA), an independent day school in Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, has announced that they are cancelling their entrance examination for 2021 and 2022 pupil intake to support COVID-19 affected families across the county.

According to the school, “COVID-19 has caused an extended period of lockdown and school closures across 2020 and 2021. During this period, many pupils have missed a significant amount of schooling. In these unprecedented circumstances, OLA has taken the decision to adapt its admissions approach to ensure that no child is disadvantaged in applying to the school due to a loss of education time.

“As such, for both 2021 and 2022 entries to OLA Senior School, there will be no written entrance examination. Assessment will instead be based on an online admissions interview, school report and school reference. Pupils currently in our Lower School are already exempt from the entrance examination and will progress seamlessly to our Senior School.

The school continues, saying, “We welcome applications from pupils of all faiths and none, who have the potential to make the most of the many educational opportunities on offer at OLA. Our entry process is designed to identify applicants who will thrive from the broad, balanced education that the school provides.”

Mr Prav Karian, OLA’s Chief Operating Officer, said, “OLA is renowned for its pastoral care and concern for the individual child. It is in this spirit that we have decided, for the second year running, to run an exams free admissions process. We hope this will help all families whose children have missed out on learning as a result of the pandemic and enable us to assist these applicants as fairly as possible.”

Our Lady’s Abingdon is a Catholic independent day school for students aged 7 to 18 with a fun and innovative learning experience in a happy and friendly community. With under 400 pupils in total, the school offers small class sizes and a very high teacher to pupil ratio.