Schools admission criteria......

[LookingforMaryPoppins]

So, my youngest has her heart set on the same grammar school as her sister. She has worked hard and successfully passed the 11 plus. Really proud off her, she is dyslexic so no mean feat.... having just checked the admission criteria, having a sibling at the school makes no difference. Passing the 11 plus is the first criteria followed by children in care, pupil premium and then distance - she is bottom of the pile. If she doesn't get a place, which with that criteria is likely., the option is a sink failing school..... how is that fair?

I think you’ll find the kids in care are the ones on the back foot. Imagine feeling hard done by over kids in care.

It therefore makes the most sense to prioritize purely based on which children get the better test scores and do away with anything else.

I think only so called “super selective” schools use nothing but test scores ie are completely agnostic as to distance etc.

Grammar schools are still within the state school system and therefore it is not unreasonable that “typical” state school criteria like distance, LAC etc apply. The pupils in the case of OP’s school have all passed the grammar school standard, so they are all smart enough to be in the school.

Why should a child lose her place just because another child has an older sibling?

Children on PP are not more entitled to a place at the school above other children - that isnt how PP works.

Children in care will be higher up the list than your daughter IF they pass the 11 plus. If they don't pass then they are higher up the list than children who want to go to that school but didnt pass the 11 plus if there are places still available.

If you school admissions policy is different to that then I think they are wrong.

I think YABU.
how many kids are in care, applying for 11+ and actually passing itt? Probable not enough to tip the balance either way.

you have the option to move if you don’t like the local school as many people do/will have. Hopefully she’ll get in. She’s entitled to a school place somewhere, you don’t like it so are choosing a selective school (as I would do), so you have to dance to the beat of their drum.

who said that life was fair anyway? My local 11+ give priority to local students, ones out of town have to score higher to get in, despite there not being a local grammar. Seems unfair too but they dictate the rules.

The Admissions Code allows schools to give priority to children on pupil premium in their oversubscription criteria. Many schools don't, but some do. For those schools, children on pupil premium will indeed get a place before other children.

"Long emotive stories are compelling...Oliver Twist" Are you kidding me? I parent a child with one of these so called long, emotive stories and see the reality of it. He was born to a drug addict and adopted as a toddler. He is doing really well considering, but has been helped by getting into a particularly good school (through being given priority) who have nurtured him. Your perspective promotes the notion that intergenerational unemployment and cycles of poverty are there to be perpetuated. Keep the disadvantaged where they should be and don't let them hope that they could aspire to anything.

exactly !!!!

fancy being so bitter about disadvantaged children being given priority - it’s a appropriate reasonable adjustment for very real disadvantage !!

OP states her daughter has dyslexia - presumably has a diagnosis and reasonable adjustments in place ??

utterly selfish to be moaning about kids in kids / pp …

Passing the 11+ is the first criteria and she has done that. These other criteria are usually applied if the school is oversubscribed - so a child who is in care or PP would also need to have passed the 11+

A Looked After Child who passes the 11+ in spite of everything @elliejjtiny describes IS inherently smarter than the equivalent child from a 'normal hard-working' family, to use the OP's judgy terms.

They're harder working, more resilient, more adaptable, more driven AND bright enough to ace the test. They are exactly the kind of young people we want to nurture into jobs that require smarts.

A child who's never been tutored and is in a fairly standard inner-estate primary with parents in minimum wage jobs who passes the same exam as a child who's in a progressive primary, recieving tutoring twice a week with degree educated parents to oversee her work is arguably brighter naturally than that peer.

I thought looked after children were always a priority so this may have also been the case for your oldest daughter?

A lot easier to pass the 11plus with two engaged, supportive parents and some tutoring. A lot harder for someone from a chaotic background where perhaps academic success is not really rated.
No one is saying that PP kids should get in without passing the test, but I think if they do pass the test, it should be recognised that that might have been in spite of their home background rather than because of it.
(Of course, not all PP kids come from chaotic backgrounds but the numbers of PP kids getting into grammar schools are small enough anyway, not to be a serious issue to those who feel it unfair)

Sadly very few children in care and on pupil premium pass the Eleven Plus. The good news for you is that it won't materially impact your daughter's chances of getting in.

Statistically they certainly are disadvantaged.

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.

Exactly this

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 .

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.