Dartford Grammar School (DGS) New Admission Criteria

And the LA do not “say” how far it is reasonable for a student to commute. You can apply from 100 miles away and, if the school isn’t full, you will get a place. Distance (or catchment) is a ranking criteria not a reasonableness criteria

There’s no way that you could have a school criteria system that worked on “time to get to school” though. It would leave itself open to so many appeals. Distance “as the crow flies” is an unchangeable fact, not reliant on time of day, train timetables, traffic patterns etc.

Dartford Grammar school’s GCSE results will go down in years to come if they reduce the highest achiever intake by 50%. They currently top Kent due to the superselective candidates. If you look at Judd and Skinners, there is a direct correlation between results going down and taking fewer OOC.
Which then means St Olave’s in Orpington will become even more popular as it will remain superselective and now people in South East and South London are applying to Sutton grammars instead because they still have a lot of superselective places.

I do understand your point, however, on the comparidon with Bexley, one can also argue that it's still not entirely based on merit. My son narrowly missed out on the top 180 and he initially couldn't understand why kids in class who scored 50 marks less than he did got into BGS while he was the waiting list until l explained to him. Although we are in the borough, we were outside the catchment for BGS. However, he got into DGS OOC purely on his score. In my opinion children shouldn't have to travel too far to school. Also, l find that living far away from the school makes it even more challenging for parents to participate in the school community.

It’s important to keep in mind that local authorities are responsible for ensuring sufficient school places in their area.

I agree with @steppemum - everyone who has answered the "question you posed in the forum in the first place" doesn't agree that DGS/DGSG would be allowed to have a sibling priority.

For ease, I paste that here:
1.9 It is for admission authorities to formulate their admission arrangements, but they must not:

j) in designated grammar schools that rank all children according to a pre-determined pass mark and then allocate places to those who score highest, give priority to siblings of current or former pupils

The policy that you would like DGS/DGSG to have is clearly not allowed, because it would give sibling priority. It doesn't matter that IC/OOC is more influential on the outcome. The code explicitly rules out sibling priority AT ALL.

I think that you have deliberately ignored the fact that they CANNOT chose to add the sibling criteria to their admissions code because within their 2 categories (IC and OOC) they do select by rank.

They are legally bound by that code, and if they use rank at all within their selection procedures, then they are not allowed to add siblings in.

You are repeating several times that they are not allocating by rank because they split their intake into IC and OOC, but within those groups, they do choose by rank, and therefore are not allowed to use sibling criteria.

I am from a different grammar area, which now takes a vast amount of OOC children. My own children have benefitted, but I am very sympathetic to the families who live locally and cannot get into the grammar schools any more. Particulary as there is not a good comp alternative for many.

To be honest I think in this context siblings are a red herring, the big issue is how much you restrict to IC children. It is an interesting discussion.

At least one school I know (not in the area under discussion) is entirely distance blind and offers purely on ranked score. If you live 200 miles away when you reply, it's your responsibility to live within a reasonable distance by the time you attend the school.

I think Bexley is conceptually very different, because all the Bexley Grammars are based on pass and distance. There is just an overriding exception that those in the top 180 can choose the Bexley grammar they want and in theory, they could all go to Bexley Grammar or Sid&Chis in one year and fill most the places. But in reality, that never happens. And lots of the kids who make the 180 get eg St Olave’s or Judd or Newstead or TOGs or whatever other superselective, maybe even Tiffin (if it is the type of parent who moves once the kid got a place).

I am finding it hard to follow the argument. If they allow a sibling in at just a pass, then surely that will include siblings in the IC numbers too? So then it no longer is about score. And those siblings would they go into the places for IC or OOC?

Also, neither Judd nor Skinners, which are much more like Dartford Grammar admit siblings?

And Judd is taking another 25 into Sixth Form. And Judd is offering via Atom Learning free access for FSM.

Not really, there needs to be a distance cut off at some point, or kids from Manchester or Aberdeen might get places. I wouldn't suggest that is a reasonable commute. I would suggest that having 2 secondary kids travel half an hour in different directions by themselves is reasonable though.

I'm making assumptions because no one would care about this unless it affected them someway

Depends a lot on area and whether it has to be parent-taxi after a sports/drama club because the school bus runs only twice a day. Plus, good to have hand-me-down uniform etc.

Sibling priority is common but not universal.

Surely by secondary there doesn't need to be a sibling preference. It makes sense in primary as we don't expect under 11's to be bale to make their own way to school, but your average secondary age kid will be fine to.

@Pincopalla fair enough. I think you have your answer though. They aren't allowed to give sibling priority. So the only way to be sure of a place (if your child is of standard) is to live in the catchment area.

I'm not unsympathetic. I think the grammar system must put hideous pressure on a child to 'succeed'. It's alien to me, though, because I live in an area where there is one school, just one, that children living here will be successful in applying for. We can show preference for 3 schools on the CAF, but in reality, nobody will get anything other than the one school in our area. I suppose there's nothing to stop us applying for a school that is undersubscribed and miles away, but I don't know why anyone would do that.

@Pincopalla there is the detail, though, that if there aren't enough 'standard' in area applicants, the remaining places get added to the OOC pool. So the standard must be achievable by many.

“Similarly with the sibling rule: one should not be able to claim that it is fair for WGS / WGSG / BG / C&S / Beths / Townley to have one but, at the same time, to claim that for DGS / DGSG it is fair not to have one.”

My understanding that, selective or not, schools can set admissions policy (within the rules) without reference to what nearby schools do.

I think sibling priority or catchment priority are both fair, in that they provide objective and reasonable ways to balance applications against each other.