Which school do I put as 1st choice?

Great news indeed. I am happy for you both.

Great news whereisegg. I bet your Dd was over the moon.

My old school was Spalding High School btw.

Yes I think the 11+ can be a nightmare, especially if like yr DD someone who should have passed it doesn't.

No not lived there for a while.

Thank goodness as I personally would not want DD to go to my old school. Tho I am sure it is different from how it was... Still all girls tho

Is Boston High co-ed? Sorry can't remember.

Oooh Ok I went to school in Spalding so don't know Boston so well. Do you live in the town or a village (nosey)

Oh where are you OP? I'm from grammar school area of LIncs!

Agree with advice here, put the school you like and the local school.

Fill up your CAF with schools that you are happy with, but your last choice should be a school that you know your child will get a place at.

Check catchment distances for the school that you favour. Would your address be close enough to gain a place in the last 5 years? If not, then still put it first choice, but look for other schools to fill up the lower preferences on your CAF that are sure to accept your daughter.

Actually always put insurance places on a CAF.

If you all love the secondary then put it first and forget the grammar. I would say it is best to be top at the secondary than bottom at the grammar. We turned down a grammar school place for my eldest and it was the best decision that we ever made.

At DD1's school, which will now be DD2's school next year, the 'qualifying mark' is being in the top 120 on a paper. So, if you are top 120 on all 3 papers, you are in category A, top 120 on 2 out of the 3, category B, and the rest go in category C. the scores are then ranked and the 120 places are filled first from cat A and then cat B. So the 'pass mark' is completely relative. But at least the process is easily understandable for the participants.

They are standardised scores which means they have been through a proces to make them comparable and to ensure a certain proportion of children pass (and fail) the test.

And of course, unusually amongst exams that are taken by children, they're age-standardised. The scores are standardised so that children born in September have less of an advantage over children born in August than they usually would. I say "less of" because August-born children are still under-represented in grammars, probably because they're under-represented amongst people who take the 11+ in the first place.

And of course, in super-selective areas the 11+ scores don't need to be comparable from year to year: they just take the first 120 (or whatever). In Kent/Buckingham/etc there's a fixed score, such that if you get over that score you're given a grammar place (although it may not be close) while if not enough people get over that score, they leave places empty.

They get thousands (literally) of level 5 and level 6 children entering for them so have to make them incedibly hard just to sort the good from the very good students.

It's not clear from the OP's posting as to whether they're living in an area with super-selectives which take around 2% of the cohort, where what you say is definitely true (Birmingham, say), or one of the areas which still have a grammar/secondary-modern split throughout the system (Kent, Buckinghamshire, Wirral) where about 20% of the cohort is deemed suitable for selective education.

The implications of not getting a selective place are different between the two systems.

The super-selectives skim a small number of disproportionately middle-class high achievers off the top, but leave the mainstream schools as essentially comprehensive. The effect of the super-selectives is probably no greater than the effect of private schools and home education, taken across the city. The comprehensives which lose the most children to the super-selectives still have an intake which skews significantly towards high achievers because of their catchment areas, and many schools don't lose a single potential entrant to the super-selectives. The effect is more pronounced at sixth form, but in general terms the comprehensives are able to operate without too much impact from the vestigial voluntary aided schools.

In the areas which retain the pre-1970 11+ which selects about 20%, the non-grammar schools simply can't operate as comprehensives, because the entire top set has been removed. In that situation, the exam is nothing like as much of a lottery, and if the OP's child has been working at a suitable level there's an extensive review and appeal process, before getting on to a full-on admissions appeal, to try to sort things out.

Hi Op,

Firstly, I think it's important to note that Grammar schools are so incredibly competitive these days, with children tutored as much as three/four years in advance of the test, that it really is no reflection on how smart you child is when they don't get a place. In fact now, when parents tell me they're hoping for their child to go to a grammar school. my first thought is, good luck.

Secondly, it infuriates me when I repeatedly hear of schools telling parents you have to put their school first on the list to stand a chance. This same thing had me in an unnecessary stressful situation for months before I was educated otherwise. LET ME STRESS WHAT EVERYONE ELSE HAS SAID - THE SCHOOL DOES NOT HAVE A DARN CLUE WHAT POSITION ON THE LIST YOU PUT THEM!Nonetheless, do check out your LA's website if you need to be reassured.

I believe the only time you need to be concerned as to where you put a school on the list is if, for example, you were applying to a Christian school of some sort, were appealing a place on the grounds of a christian school being of paramount importance but yet listed a non christian school before them. There are better experts on MN than me though with regards to the whole appeal aspect.

Please think twice however, about not listing at all the horrid school nearby. As failing your child not getting any of the schools on your list, I am quite confident that the school that will be offered otherwise will be the only one with a vacancy and ten times worse. I meet a lot of parents who say they're only listing say three schools, for example, as those are the only schools they want, thinking that the LA will see that and say, okay then, you can have one of those. When if you don't meet the criteria for those three, then you get the LA's choice which is usually dismal one.

If you don't list the school around the corner - then you could end up being offered a "terrible school" on the other side of the county. Is that a risk you want to take?

Had she had any practice with the kinds of question in the 11+ exam? Maybe she was just thrown?

It all depends on your chances of getting a place in the schools which are further away from your house. If they are very oversubscribed it might be that you don't live close enough t get a place.

Where do other children from your road or your dds school go? Do they get into the school you like?

The reason you have to list one school you will actually get a place in is because if none of the schools you list can offer you a place then the local Authority will give you a place in whatever school has vacancies after everyone else's preferences have been allocated. So it may be even worse and and miles away from the local school.

The local authority should have a booklet about all the schools which tells you whether everyone who applied got a place, or gives the distances for the places offered. However, I THINK these distances are those for places offered in the first round of offers, not any that come up over the summer on the waiting list.