Y5 QCA results and secondary banding - help!

[LadyWellian]

DD's in Y6 and we have our first secondary open evening tonight.

Her primary is in a neighbouring borough but the authority we now live in uses 'fair banding' for many of its school admissions, with the bands being 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B and 3 in order from most to least able.

If she went to a primary school in our borough they would fill in the bit on the application form with her band as above. As we don't, they said we should get her Y5 QCA results (which I had been after anyway) instead.

But... having finally received these yesterday, I find she is a 4B for reading, 3B for writing and 3C for maths (doesn't seem a lot of improvement over her KS1 SATS results, but that's one for another topic...). I don't know how to read that across into the 1A etc system.

Is there a read-across or will the 1A banding depend on the achievement of the cohort? (i.e. top 20% are 1A etc)

It's a worry because the borough publishes the admissions for last year and you can see that in some schools you're more likely to get in if you're in a higher band, and some have more spaces for the 'average' people and so on.

One of the schools we will apply to does its own test and bands pupils from 1-9 (with, confusingly, 1 being the worst and 9 being the best), but I believe all the others have intakes based on (though not all equally admitting) the 1A etc bands.

Any teachers, LA people, mothers of many or otherwise veterans of the secondary transfer process out there able to shed any light?

[bump] - feeling impatient/worried

This banding sounds specific to your borough. I think you need to get back in touch with the admissions people for the borough and have them explain it to you in detail. There must be many applications from primaries outside the borough they should be used to this.

Good luck

In Greenwich, they use the maths and reading scores for banding. They do not seem to be interested in writing, don't know why!

In Y5, my dd was 4b for maths and 4a for reading and is in band 1B.

Can you phone the LEA and ask them what band your dd will be in? Most schools do not have significant differences in catchment area for each band.

Thanks very much - am hoping there might be some admissions people at the open evening.

Madsometimes - that sounds helpful. We are in Lewisham. Was thinking I'd be a bit upset if DD was below 2A but given the discrepancy between her reading and maths it looks a distinct possibility! Still, I suppose that might give us a better chance of getting into some of the 'better' schools where they are likely to have a greater proportion of middle class more able children.