Graveney - catchment area half 2012 distance!!

No, not ignoring, just missed the question, sorry. Which year were you interested in?

(I do reserve the right not to get into that debate though)

, GraveneyLady!

Gazza is right - we anticipate some movement once the Grammar waiting lists start moving.

Good luck to your friend's DC, SWandStressed

I'm sure some will decline places as I'm pretty certain,as with us, that Graveney constitutes the 'fall back' option (for some) if a DC doesn't get into a grammar school (not saying that's the case for everyone but the children who do the 11+ tests tend to also do the Wandsworth Test, particularly if they are out of Borough). So there will undoubtedly be some children with selective places at Graveney who are high up on waiting lists for grammar schools.

So does that mean that children might have got in this year on selectivity on a lower score than in recent, previous years? I am not good with statistical analysis (blush)

273 is the typo

Hi - back again

Stressed - the 250 was not a typo. Standardisation rather surprising this year.

And places are withdrawn from time to time. Obviously I can't go into detail about that, but it does happen. It happened last year.

Alias, thanks for the letter. They are pretty tough, aren't they? I wonder if it works for them? We do insist that applicants who get in on distance prove their address of course.

Judging by the context I think I was being deeply cynical!

Oops I had a comment deleted - what did I say that was controversial?

Thanks aliasP&J - very interesting. I think if this was standard wandsworth practice then several families in my DCs classes might not have got places.....but I now see this has been debated to death on another thread on MN so I will retire from the debate.

GraveneyLady, you asked "the rental thing is a perennial issue. I wonder if any of you know any other schools/authorities that have found a good way to tackle this?"

Here is a link to a letter to prospective parents for another local(ish) school that is very popular and I believe has similar issues as your school.

admissionsletter

Is this similar to the stance that Graveney takes?

gazzalw I suspect we're in broad agreement - we clearly agree that selective schools are a good thing and are happy to take advantage of the choices they offer - such as streaming, a choice of co-ed or single sex and so forth. But to try to argue at the same time that places at such schools should be reserved for local families is illogical.

Re bright children from poor backgrounds at Graveney, I don't know, but my DC's extension stream class is a very mixed bag. But as GraveneyLady's figs have shown, those children admitted on criteria about which locals on here are objecting are also very few: just 4 commuting in from more than 7000m away, for example.

Gazzalw, do you mean (your first para) you filled in the CAF in the order of likelihood of getting a place? That is not how the system work: the only reason for putting Graveney fourth is that it was your fourth favourite school, not your fourth most likely. If as you suspected he hadn't got the mark needed for Graveney, then putting it first would have had not impact on your other choices.

Which is a decision I think you are entitled to make btw, not double standards at all - that is the way the rules operate. It is perfectly reasonable to wish that your "local" school did have a catchment big enough to meet the needs of children living close enough to walk (say), while recognising that in fact it does not and you therefore need to look further afield, as you are also likely to live too far from your next most "local" school to qualify on distance there either. That is a position many Londoners are in.

The problem is that schools that do not (completely) serve their local communities still occupy a physical space within them, so people living close to schools that use lotteries, partial selection etc may miss out - and have to apply to schools in other areas that operate those policies too.

I dunno which is best - I can see the selection by postcode argument too. But all you can do is stick to the rules, surely - it isn't double standards to think that in an ideal world, things might work differently, and to recognise that in a higgledy piggledy mess of admissions policies and demography, some people may be winners or losers?

Well I can see where you are coming from but I would argue it wasn't, given that DS already had two 11+s in the bag by CAF submission date. Most people go with a certainty rather than a maybe (particularly when it comes to very sought after schools) which is what we did. Had the Wandsworth Test results come out before the CAF had to be submitted, it might have been higher up our list (if we thought his mark would potentially be high enough to get a selective place, which I'm not entirely sure it was, when we did find out in mid-Feb).

Anyway, DS, for whatever reason wasn't at all struck by Graveney even though we were. As I recall it was actually difficult negotiating it into 4th place on his CAF!

Graveney is a very appealing school to us (we've visited it twice now) and it wasn't about passing it over for "a better offer" but what made sense for DS and fitted in with where he wanted to go. We always saw him in a single-sex school (as did he) and he was fortunate enough to get the offer of one so why shouldn't he have taken it up?

For DD it would make perfect sense for her to go there, but we won't get in on distance (unless it embraces a lottery system) and it is yet to be seen whether she will make the grade for selectivity.

I wonder what % of bright children from poor backgrounds do get in on the selectivity test though? Probably a handful? Whereas I am pretty sure that more than a handful of not so bright children with rich parents helicopter in to get catchment places.

But Gazzalw that really sounds like double standards. It seems 'being local' is a badge of honour that is really just a matter of convenience, used to argue an entitlement to a place at Graveney when it suits, but if a better offer comes along miles away in another borough then avidly 'local' parents are happy to pass over the school.

Graveney isn't a community school and has never claimed to be - there are other schools locally that perform that function. It's a foundation school, before that it was grant-maintained, which means it sets its own criteria - so if you move locally expecting to be entitled to a place, you are likely to be very much misguided.

In the past the school has argued that its system, at least in theory, allows a bright child from a poor background in, say, Brixton the chance of a place and a top-notch education. Many people support that - and find it preferable to 'being local' - which is a byword for selection by accident of birth - i.e. ability of parents to pay for highly expensive local housing.

But we don't live locally enough to get in on distance.....So near and yet so far... We put it 4th on DS's CAF because we already knew DS had passed two 11+ exams (and a third result was pending) and we couldn't guarantee he'd get a high enough score for Graveney (I think he got 271 out of 282 if my memory serves me correctly) anyway....

Believe me if DS (and his younger sibling) could just get in on distance I very much doubt we'd have gone down the grammar school route. We were just very lucky that DS proved bright enough to get into a grammar school. Not convinced about DD so Graveney is even more attractive a proposition for her, but with rising birthrates and increased demand on all secondary school places, I very much doubt she will qualify for catchment entry to Graveney either!

I am definitely of the camp that it should be a local school for local children

But gazzalw that's dog-in-the-manger: you live locally to Graveney but have opted to send your DC to grammar school elsewhere. Why shouldn't others do the same?