Schools admission criteria......

Children in care will have abusive or neglectful mothers (and fathers). Some might have engaged and supportive foster carers or kinship carers but that’s really not a given.

My parents were tutored for the 11+ and they are in their mid-80’s. Tutoring isn’t a new thing.

@Jugjug LAC can include children who are now adopted, so should now have engaged parents but more than likely a troubled past

Haven't rtft but is OP aware that selective schools are not permitted to take siblings into account if they rank in order of test score? They can if the school (or county) sets a pass mark and that confers elgibility with no ranking by score.

I don’t think kids in care are comparable to kids with pupil premium tbh my kids get free school meals pupil premium and even though we’re not rich they have a loving family.

A kid in care doesn’t have that if they had an engaged mother they wouldn’t be in care.
The op begrudging kids in care is very messed up especially seeing as they’re such a small percentage of the population they aren’t actually even going to affect her child’s chances of getting into the school.

Although I do actually agree with the op that having siblings at a school should be prioritised over distance seeing as families can move to the other side of town but it would be inconvenient to drop multiple kids at multiple schools. Although that does apply more to primary school seeing as older kids can usually make their own way to school

This is how it used to be years ago. No tutoring and so only those that showed capability passed the exams.

I suggest a look at the eleven plus forum website. That will open your eyes to the entitlement of a lot of parents when it comes to the eleven plus.
The things parents will do to make sure little Johnny gets a place is beyond words. And it’s not just for local schools. Some parents will enter their children for entrance exams all over the country. Some parents will make their children travel for hours to get to school just to get a place at the top Grammar in the county. It’s ridiculous.
I know if a girl who had to stop all extra curricular activities for 2 years in the run up to the eleven plus so she could be tutored every day.
I value education a lot, but would never go to these extremes.

Many PP parents may be engaged but might not have resources to help their DC and may not have had the education to be able to help either.

If they are that smart they wouldn't need private tutors to pass an exam.

Although I agree with most of your post, lots of the LAC & PP children will have engaged and loving Mothers, it doesn’t mean they aren’t still disadvantaged though.

We have the same problem for our son. We are in pot 5 of 5 and they only take top 7. So if 10 children get the top score of 270 on the 11 plus exam they take the 7 who were marked first. The schools in the same group are just too far away

This

You sound quite entitled and I’m not sure you realise just how poor a family has to be to qualify for pupil premium. Children in care or those who’ve been adopted have often faced incredibly difficult starts in life, why on earth shouldn’t they be prioritised? Many of these children are just as, if not more, intelligent than their peers, whose parents may have spent considerable time and money coaching them for entry. These children will rarely have had that kind of additional support, and even if they were adopted into wealthier families, they may still be dealing with major health or psychological challenges.

Most schools seem to have moved sibling priority further down the list anyway. Both the school my children attend now and the high school they’ll move on to have made this change recently. Children in care or adopted children have always been top of the admissions list and rightly so.

I’m against grammar schools generally anyway. They only reinforce inequality in education and ensure that those with the most resources continue to have the best opportunities. I’m grateful I grew up in an area without them. I struggled quite a bit in primary school, I’m dyslexic, though that wasn’t recognised in the 1980s or 1990s for that matter, so I was just labelled slow or lazy. Thankfully, I attended a good non-selective secondary school where, through hard work, I achieved top grades. I now hold three degrees, including a PhD and have a fulfilling career. I’m very glad that a test at age 11 didn’t define my potential.

It should be tweaked. It shouldn't be those fighting and scrapping at the lower end of income.

For example, banded according to score and household income.

There are always going to be winners and losers but i don't think the current system is fair- as it lumps every household from 16 hours PT NMW earners to millionaires in one category. And the ability to support a child in such a broach categy varies greatly.

Hopping on to say I actually can’t believe how unpleasant and entitled the op is. It will actually do you and your younger daughter the world of good to go to a non selective school so that you can fully appreciate the level of privilege she has. Statistically if she’s smart enough to pass the 11+ and has very engaged parents her outcomes will be very good. Many grammar schools actually don’t do that brilliantly in terms of ‘value add’ ie they take in students with very high prior attainment who are going to be successful pretty much whatever happens in their lessons. My son went to a very bog standard non selective school for gcse and a very competitive grammar for A level and the teaching in many cases was definitely better at the comp.

Why should families that work hard and value education end up with their children being the least likely to get a decent school.

This is disgusting I actually can't believe you've written this. You know who is actually least likely to get a decent school? Underprivileged children, children in poverty....like children in care and those who are pupil premium. If those children have managed to pass the 11+ they have beaten the odds and good on them! Of course they should be top of the list. They often don't have the same kind of privilege and support that your children have had.

It's pretty rare though, which is why it's a big deal and they're top of the list, so don't worry I'm sure there won't be too many taking up space that you want. Most children in care and poverty aren't lucky enough to manage it. They're probably just not hardworking enough or don't value their education like your family does.

Also earlier you wrote 'hindsite' I just want to clarify that it's actually 'hindsight'. Maybe you should work harder and value education more? Wouldn't normally do such a low blow but honestly this attitude towards underprivileged children has totally disgusted me.

Passing the 11plus these days has a lot to do with how much tutoring a parent can throw at their child rather than actually having the sort of brain that will benefit from a Grammar school education like it used to be.
Parents spend an arm and a leg on private tutoring. Guess who can’t afford this tutoring? Children who are usually in care or from low income households that’s who. So they are at a disadvantage before they even enter than exam room.
It never used to be this way. When my Dad took the eleven plus he said there was no tutoring at all. You got into Grammar based on your intelligence alone. He comes from a town in the North East with a lot of low income families, but he says that his school was a real melting pot of children from all backgrounds.
I thought that all schools now put “looked after” children and pupil premium children at the top of their criteria. The school your DD goes to is no exception believe me.
I actually can’t believe you are posting about this. This is a non issue.
Your DD has passed the eleven plus, there will probably be places for 100 girls roughly and I can guarantee you that there won’t be more than 20 girls in the first criteria so that leaves 80 places for girls from “good hard working households” as you put it.
If your DD is roughly a 12 minute train journey away from school, I’m wondering if Kendrick in Reading is the school? To be honest I wouldn’t want my DD going there for all the tea in china. She went to a normal comprehensive school, but had friends at Kendrick and she beat all of them in her A Leveks.

You have to have some constants- how else can you compare?

I didn't talk about parent taking on a 'very low wage job' by choice. I said FT NMW. I didn't make value judgements about whether by choice or design or necessity

My comparison was to show that those children eligible for PP under their parents UC plus £7400 criteria are not working FT in paid employment- and are not working 16 hours at NMW.

That children of parents on a FT NMW would not be eligible for PP place.

The household income for both families under these scenarios I imagine would not be far apart (if at all) assuming constants were all the same (IE around ages of children, parent, location etc).

I would argue that based on the above criteria, the child eligible for PP is no better or worse off financially (and could indeed be better off as PP is based on a 6 year window). If it's time based, then based on delta between worked and unworked hours, the child from the PP family has more time- for at least the time they were eligible for PP.

The issue really isnt the above. It's not a race to the bottom. It should be tweaked from the other end.

Is it fair to preclude those children whose parents have a disability, poor English, caring responsibilities and lack of formal education whose parents work FT in a NMW (or indeed 16 hours in a NMW role) a PP place?

Children in care already have most things in life stacked against them. Same for pupil premium children. If these children can pass the exam of course they deserve to be at the top of the admission's criteria. Percentage-wise, it's not as many as you're imagining. Sadly, frankly. As someone who works with a lot of these children, they deserve at least this chance in life as most don't have much else going for them. This gives them a chance at not repeating the cycle.

Children like yours, on other hand, have parents like you. Parents who will help them succeed even if they don't end up at their first choice of school.

But those students who did well in the test and were disadvantaged (LAC and PP) are likely to be more academically intelligent than someone who has been tutored rigorously for 2 year prior to the test.

No test can accurately test for intelligence, which is very hard to even define. If you can practise and get better then some groups will be advantaged and some disadvantaged. PP is a crude tool to try and balance this, but better than no tool at all.

A 12 minute train ride is far though and your daughter cannot have the advantage of having a same sexed older sibling already there to overtake someone else is an unfair advantage for selective advantage

Imagine resenting children in the care system because you perceive them to have an advantage over your children. Your children are ‘on the back foot’ compared to those in care. Wow.

Of course I realise that £7400 is not a F/T wage! From what you are saying you disagree with the change that the government brought in with UC, as the threshold used to be a lot higher with tax credits, and I do agree that the threshold is very low now. It’s not a race to the bottom.
However, there may be very many reasons why parents are on UC and not working F/T including having disabled children but many times this means that their children will be disadvantaged so it is fair to try and level the playing field. I agree with @ThesebeautifulthingsthatIvegot .

Exactly this

Im struggling to understand the issue. Don’t kids in care, pp or EHCPs usually come first in most school admissions criteria?
I’d rather that than out of area siblings wangling their way in!
As long as they’ve passed the 11 plus then what is the issue? i’d imagine the number of kids in these groups passing to be pretty low though.