Unsuccessful grammar school appeal

Of course there is a valid reason. If a disadvantaged child gets the same score as your child despite their disadvantages then they have achieved more and have higher potential. I don’t know why you can’t understand that?

This happened to my brother.

He and I both sat the 11+, a year apart. We got the exact same scores. In my year, my score was enough to get in comfortably. In my brother’s, it put him about 10th on the waiting list.

The issue was, our grandfather has died just before my brother’s test. My parents applied for mitigating circumstances as the death was on the Thursday before the first test, and the funeral on the Thursday before the second. They were told that they couldn’t give mitigating circumstances as they didn’t think a grandparent dying was as upsetting as a pet dying.

My parents appealed but got nowhere. He ended up at a small private school, he probably would’ve got into the school but my parents opted for the private school instead.

@Will2 if it makes you feel any better, with a couple of exceptions I've found grammar schools to be notoriously poor at making accommodations for pupils with any sort of additional need.
I've recently worked with a family with a dyslexic child who is not being supported at his grammar school despite having very modest needs which should mainly be met by quality teaching if it was in place.
Parents lost an appeal to transfer to a local oversubscribed comprehensive school and will try again next year.
And gently, you will stand no chance of getting an EHCP, his needs would be nowhere near the threshold from what you've said.

It doesn't matter. The OP was entitled to make any representation to the panel for consideration and it is up to the panel to weigh the evidence.

Let’s not stray into the realms of fantasy here! Grade 3 at age 11 is hardly gifted. Even my decidedly non-musically children reached Grade 3 by 8 years old with one term-time lesson a week at the state primary.

@Will2 was your son tutored (by a parent or external tutor) for the exam? Willing to bet that he was.

The high likelihood is that PP children will not have been, or not to the same extent. It’s quite easy to “make it make sense” when you think of what a relative disadvantage those kids are likely to have been at, and yet they still managed to score the same or within a few marks of your privileged child.

Were you not able to submit medical evidence before the tests for adjustments to be made?

i wonder if cost of living and vat on school fees has worked against us.

Yes, I’m sure this has been a factor.

Good luck with your next appeal!

The thing is in this particular school you can pass reasonably well and still not get in (for example my son got top 7% for nvr and top 20% for verbal and exceeded the pass mark by 20 points). The school aims to identify the top 25% so many would be well within this. So it's not necessarily a case of scraping through, but getting a reasonably good pass. It's been a bumper year for applications and i wonder if cost of living and vat on school fees has worked against us. The catchment is so wide and maybe I was naive at seeing it as our local school when it's not really, it just happens to be down the road.

Hey ho, it's a good life lesson that you can do well and still be disappointed! We are incredibly proud of our boy but we would be either way. A grammar school would have been brilliant for him but sadly not to be.

In fairness, you can't possibly know that @Will2's DS isn't musically gifted. At most, you can say that he hasn't evidenced his giftedness by performing beyond age expectations. It is possible, for example, that he started playing his first instrument 1 month before the appeal and took his grade 3 immediately.

However, that doesn't alter the fact that the panel only felt that one case crossed the threshold to compel the school to take another pupil.

Given that many of us know which specific school it is and other posts have given a good indication of where the poster lives, it’s entirely right not to violate the privacy of an 11 year old by posting something specific about his medical history.

This is done to create a level playing field. Bright students on pupil premium are disadvantaged in one way or another and yet despite this they have done done well enough in the entrance exam for the school to think that they are worthy of a place. The same is done for disadvantaged students during the university application process.

Ex teacher. You don’t want them just scraping in to a grammar. You really don’t. They’ll be paddling like ducks their whole time there. Just because they can scrape a pass does not mean grammar school is best for them.

You are being rather mysterious about the medical condition. Are you worried to say what it is because it is a stretch to suggest that it would have affected your son’s performance in the exam?

Against our expectations, DC1 also didn’t make it into the grammar school. I was gutted at the time because I knew it was wrong. I did stay positive though because I knew DC1 was motivated and would benefit from being a big fish.

DC1 went to a large comprehensive - with no primary friends - was very happy and did very well. They came out of there with 4 x Astar at A-Level and a place at a top uni (where they also did exceptionally well).

So, as others have said, try to put the disappointment behind you and look for the good in the situation. A motivated child will do well in any decent school.

Are there any local children’s orchestras your DC could join?

Perhaps there are opportunities at the new school that the grammar doesn’t have? Clubs, sports etc.

I went to Grammar school in the 1970s, was from what would be considered a poor family, but we were always borrowing books from the local library and there was always books in the school library that could be borrowed and taken home to read. My parents wouldn't have been able to afford a tutor back then, but I knew several children from the council estate where I lived who passed the 11+ and weren't tutored.

As I said earlier in this thread my eldest daughter who is early 30s failed one of the papers, scored very highly on another one without any tutoring. Even then 20 years ago I think there was only 1 or 2 children at her school whose parents paid for private tutoring. I would say therefore in the last 15 years that tutoring has become the norm now.

I can't see the point of grammar schools now.

I say this often... I live in darkest East Kent, where there is an excess of grammar places. There are also no real comprehensives.

The result of this is lots of successful non-qual appeals. Which, understandably, the high schools (secondary moderns) get annoyed about. There are further intakes in Year 8 and 8.

I also want to add, use of PP is a blunt tool. But it does help level the (very uneven) playing field somewhat.

To reassure you, the admissions system is blind. It takes no account of which school you prioritised except for if more than one school can offer a place, in which case you get the school you placed highest on your form.

It's a giant sorting machine.

• Each admitting authority gets a list of applicants and it ranks them against the admissions criteria.
• Position 1 at school A is applicant 'FM'. If 'FM' out school A first on their CAF, they get offered the school and that place is gone.
• If 'FM' put school B on their CAF in first place, and school B can accept them, they get offered school B and school A takes them off the list, so everyone on school A's list gets shuffled up.

Eventually, all the places available at all the schools will be filled with the applicants who were

a)highest in the admissions criteria for that school and placed them highest on their CAF,
then
b) highest in the admissions criteria (compared with other applicants), their highest school couldn't take them but this school was high on their CAF and could take them
c) highest in the admissions criteria (compared with other applicants), their other schools on the CAF couldn't take them but this school is on their CAF and could
d) highest in the admissions criteria (compared with other applicants), the applicant didn't put them on their CAF but they have spaces spare.

In other words, their ranking on the admissions criteria trumps all else. It's only when there is more than one school that can take them that preference (not choice) comes into it.

Noted.

ETA oops early post - I think it’s similar but less explicit in this school with the effective cut off at 220 for PP, but the places are max 20, don’t know if that’s true in Bucks.

@SheilaFentiman In Bucks the fsm grammar pass mark is lower than the standard 121 pass mark required. Around 115 minimum I think. Different system but well used by very bright parents who don’t need to work much!

I think the point is @OUB1974 that with the right support, which this school is able to provide, the boy on full PP achieving 220 (or 229 is the lowest score mentioned thus far) is more than innately capable of matching his peers. This is similar to contextual offers for uni which are maybe a grade below “regular” offers but still require good ability.

The PP places are ranked and the PP boys are within the ability window for the school.

ETA and of course they can’t change the criteria post test even if they wanted to. They can’t say “oh it’s been a higher scoring year than usual so let’s make the PP cut off 230 not 220”

I agree with the pp places, but I would have to question on this year's results how someone scoring (for example) 22 points less than the standard lowest score would get onin the school. Of course some will be higher and some will have exceeded the entry score. I'm wondering how much difference in terms of score it makes. For example, birth month makes a small difference so someone born for example in March would get a standardised score 2 or 3 points higher than a September born. Being on pupil premium may effectively give a child the equivalent of 22 points and I wonder how fair that is to them. But I don't know the statistics its based on and as you may have gathered its an unheard of high entry score this year.

You’re coming across very badly, with statements like this.

Have a little think about why some positive discrimination might take place for children living in economically deprived circumstances.

Come on. I’m sure you can work it out. Don’t let disappointment for your son turn you into a person who doesn’t want all children to achieve.

Because those pupils are at a relative disadvantage. My son receives PP but because it is the Service Child PP and not FSM he wasn't entitled to admission on a lower test score. Luckily he performed well on the day of the test. If you want to play the game, you have accept the rules.