11+ being scrapped

[musu]

At one school in Essex here

Interesting development which follows on from Bucks CC overhauling their 11+ and trying to make it tutor proof (although everyone I know in Bucks is still employing tutors).

It's not possible beatback. Bit of a privacy issue there!

So if a grammar School on its website , said we had £10000 pounds this year for pupil premium. The no of families who could claim the pupil premium but didnt because of stigma. The school should have recieved say £20000 if all the families who could, claimed it.

Absolutely correct beatback. Schools can encourage parents to claim but they can't insist and they have no right whatsoever to know parental income.

In addition to those whose income is below the threshold for FSM and choose not to claim there are those in possibly the even more difficult situation of being just above it. Or even a few thousand above it, which is still pretty low. The grammar my DC attend has a very good scheme for offering financial support but sadly not all grammars do.

In theory then when it says in the statistics, for a Grammar School the F.S.M cohort is 2% the reality is its 4% still low but not quite as low as seeker would have us believe.

Obviously it's impossible to know exactly how many don't claim beatback but it's almost certain to be the case that take up varies geographically.

This is speculation, but I would expect there are more parents eligible to claim in grammar schools who don't than there are in other schools where the percentage claiming is relatively high.

I am not sure about that though there may be more stigma if very few claim. There are many children who are eligible who don't claim because they go home for dinner, but if a school has a very large catchment area, there will be relatively few such pupils.

You could make the obivious post that 98% of Grammar Schools are in Conservative areas and they tend to be more expensive and,attract higher socio economic groups . But in 1976 in a LABOUR STRONGHOLD of Tameside north Manchester there was a massive effort to keep their Grammar Schools, alas because it was a "LABOUR STRONGHOLD" the fact that the majority of the local parents wanted to keep the Grammar Schools was not relevant to the "POLITCAL DOGMA" of the time, and what happened next was "FLIGHT" by the Middle Class in large numbers to south Manchester,leaving Tameside to be a working class area forever.

'I suspect that 20 years ago GSs were ubiquitous and therefore easier to get in since there were more places.'

20 years ago there were roughly the same number of grammar schools as there are today. As far as I am aware, only Milton Keynes has 'gone comprehensive in the last 20 years.

'As the number of GSs decreased the competition to be in catchment got greater. The well off MC families moved to these catchments, driving up house prices thus forcing out the local WC families.'

Except that most grammar schools don't really have catchments. They take children from vast areas which have families at all income levels.

meant to say point

seeker

• From the Judd (a superselective in Tonbridge) website:

"Catchment Area
The Judd School does not have a catchment area, so applicants may be successful from any area. The KCC Admissions Booklet does contain a map of the areas designated 'selective' in Kent, but this is not relevant to admissions to The Judd School."

• From the Tonbridge Grammar School (superselective, IB) website:

"The overall Published Admission Number (PAN) will be 150 with up to 115 places available to in area girls and 35 Governor places available to out of area students.

The school has advised KCC of its intention to offer an additional 23 Year 7 places for September 2013 over and above the PAN of 150. These places will be allocated on 1st March, according to the school?s published oversubscription criteria, as follows: 18 places to ?in? area applicants and 5 places to ?out? of area applicants, maintaining the original proportion of out of area Governor places available.

Following KCC's reallocation on 17th April scores for entry to TGS in September 2013 are:

IN area 398 (with the last offer at a distance of 7.04)

OUT of area 413 (with all 413 scores offered)"

• From the Homewood School (Comprehensive, Tenterden) website:

"Ability or Aptitude
All applicants will be invited to take part in an Assessment with the information gained from the assessment being used to select 72 students according to the scores achieved. In the event of a group of applicants having the same score at the 20% percentile the criteria for selection from that group will be according to criteria specified in paragraphs c) and d) above."

I suggest you visit some schools in Kent in order to find out more

'You could make the obivious post that 98% of Grammar Schools are in Conservative areas and they tend to be more expensive and,attract higher socio economic groups . But in 1976 in a LABOUR STRONGHOLD of Tameside north Manchester there was a massive effort to keep their Grammar Schools, alas because it was a "LABOUR STRONGHOLD" the fact that the majority of the local parents wanted to keep the Grammar Schools was not relevant to the "POLITCAL DOGMA" of the time, and what happened next was "FLIGHT" by the Middle Class in large numbers to south Manchester,leaving Tameside to be a working class area forever.'

Tameside may have normally been a labour stronghold but the plans to introduce comprehensive education in 1976 were reversed because the Conservatives or even, "THE CONSERVATIVES" won the local council elections that year. It wasn't a massive effort, simply the new council shelving the plans that the previous labour council were implementing. The reason it was newsworthy at the time was the secondary school allocations for the coming September had already taken place before the council elections. In practice it meant that places at one grammar school that had been destined to be a 6th form college were now up for grabs for bright 11 year olds taking a belated 11+ exam. I am not sure when Tameside eventually became comprehensive but I doubt if that is what can made it a working class area.

"Yellowtip- I don't have a problem with proximity for tie breaking- surely there isn't any other way to do it?"

How about by age? That is widely-used tie-breaker in French schools overseas - in the event of a tie-break, the older pupil (ie the one born earlier in the year) gets the place.

Or you could use height? Another totally arbitrary but objective criterion...

I believe a number of GSs in Kent have specific catchments. However most GSs don't, or they have such large ones that they can hardly be called catchments. Take a look at the designated catchment for Latymer in Edmonton, or the proposed new catchment area for Tiffin Girls School in Kingston - they are HUGE. Contrast this with highly popular comprehensives in affluent areas, such as Fortismere in Haringey, where the catchment is about 500 metres.

I would have thought the younger child should have got the place in the event of a tie break. Years ago, 11+ scores were weighted in favour of children who were young in year. It doesn't really matter, does it, whether you toss a coin or whatever?

No, it doesn't matter. The point is only that using distance as a tie-breaker doesn't negate the fact that Judd, TGS or Skinners are superselectives with either no or only partial catchment criteria.

Cecilyp.I was born in Tameside and my family had a succesful business there for 40 years, we left along with many middle class people to go to south manchester and cheshire in the early 80s,and although we had a succesful business there, we were looking for a better quality of life. When we sold the business in 2006 you could see the place was just getting worse. One of the first things to start the rot in Tameside was the abolition of the Grammar Schools that would have been a reason, for people to stay, Tameside and Oldham have never been able to escape their past as textile towns. "TAMESIDE IS AN AREA" of sterotypical northen towns "FLAT CAPS" FERRETS" although Tameside Council have tried very hard to rejuvenate the place "LABOUR", this is not about Labour or Tory, its about mistakes that were made in the past.

"There are fewer FSM kids at GSs compared to neighboring catchments because of house prices so it is a bit silly to argue that its because the 11+ is unfairly biased against WC kids."

No. The 9.6% gap is in relation to the catchment the grammar school is in. Not the neighbouring catchment.

Well seeker for as long as grammar provision is not nationwide and the norm, and as long as people like you keep on banging on about how incredibly mc all grammars are, the more you'll deter those less well off from applying or wanting to apply. But of course this entrenches the mc whilst allowing the mc to enter their kids for the test whilst at the same time wringing their hands. Brilliant!