Year 8 open

[Tentacles14]

My DC goes to a prep school which finishes at 13, in one of the ‘closed’ areas. They have emailed saying that their year 8s will be back as an exam year. Is that in the guidance anywhere as can’t see it? Thanks

The guidance specifies "exam years" and "those taking exams" - there is no specification that this is limited to exams that gain national qualifications like GCSEs so I can't see anything in the wording to prevent a prep school from interpreting it to allow them to maximise what they do for those taking any school entrance exams - many of which will be happening quite soon I expect - y7 exams were al
In mid January anyway.

Fair enough - just a shame year 6 can’t be included as they are also exam years for prep schools (more often for girls). But I guess that’s the juxtaposition of primary and secondary years.

It is less clear-cut for y6 because the government documents do explicitly talk about "secondary-age children" (because they recognise that middle schools and prep schools straddle the boundary between the primary and secondary system) and y6 is not secondary age. Also a prep might not want to put itself out too much to assist in the somewhat problematic issue of half the girls and some boys leaving for the last 2 years and not being able to easily re-fill those places.