Kingsdale Lottery - is it really random?

[TheWomanOnTheBus]

There is a rumour going round my DCs' primary that certain (other) primary schools are preferred in the lottery (to gerrymander the intake). I try and squash it by saying: don't be silly, its random how can it be ....

... but then I wondered how do we really know. Who carries out the lottery? The admissions policy says its supervised by someone from outside the school, but who? and how?

Anyone know?

Cannot comment on a particular school, but surely it depends how many pupils from each primary school apply for places. If more pupils from school X apply than pupils from school Y then the mathematical probability is that more pupils from school X will get places.

That's what I'm asking. The rumour is that it doesn't depend on number of applicants. The rumour is that is is skewed. For eg, I'm making this up for sake of illustration:

10 apply from favoured school. 5 get in.

10 apply from each of a number of other schools. 1-3 get in from each of those.

Now 5 in any year could be a statistical blip. But if it happened every year .....

IYSWIM

Anyone know how it is administered? How is it supervised?

Are we talking out Kingsdale Foundation School, Southwick?
If so they have quite a complicated admission criteria. All potential pupils take a test to put them into one of three bands depending on the result of the test. It does not indicate how these three bands are drawn up, as three equal sized bands based on the test results or three bands based on the level of test performance which would not be of equal size.
They then allocate places based on looked after children, some on aptitude and the siblings and the final allocation is by lottery. It says that the lottery is supervised by an independent person, but no detail. Personally at an appeal the first question I would ask is who they are are, how are they independent of the school and how many years have they been doing it. If they have been doing it for the last 5 years, how independent are they actually.
On the basis of the admission criteria they should not be favouring certain schools but there always ways and means if they wanted to. Somebody would need to look very carefully at the actual allocation of places to see that all was above board.
Having said that, what does the school gain? It has a lot to lose if they are found to be playing fast and loose with the admission process.

TWOTB - Who knows - have you got to the bottom of understanding the role of scholarships in the admissions process yet? from this thread?
We were impressed by what we heard and saw o the open day, a bit by the level of marketing hype in the Headteacher's talk compared with any explanation of educational methods and structures. The school don't really explain how the Lottery system is applied in any of their literature - I didn't know about the 3 bands, for e.g. And we have applied.

TWOTB - I wonder whether the high numbers form certain schools are admissions based on scholarships? Becaue we could glean no clue at all about what level of musical ability would set the bar for the music scholarships, and application to the sports scholarships seems to be even more vaguely judged.

I'm not surprised there is rumour and conjecture, because the information supplied by the school is so gnomic. In the heated fervour of secondary admissions that can only generate conspiracy theories.

That an the fact that the school is being investigated for fiddling it's GCSE Maths results.

I do know a family with two DC there and they are doing well and very happy indeed.

It has a lot to lose if they are found to be playing fast and loose with the admission process.

maybe they're confident that any investigation could be handled to make the criciticism go away .
This seems to be what has happened regarding the investigation into exam procedures at the school .

Though perhaps the wait for the outcome is so long that people will have forgotten all about it by the time any conclusions are made public.

I note that Kingsdale's exam results were released on time. Whilst there doen'st seem to have been any official announcement this suggests that the investigation by the exam boards did not find any evidence to suggest the kind of systematic malpractice alleged by the anonymous whistleblowers. I don't know the school but I see that pupils, parents and staff (both teaching and non-teaching) denied these allegations.

I know that some people will think there is no smoke without fire and some of those who oppose academies will seize on this kind of allegation. Indeed, the allegations may be true. However, sometimes anonymous whistleblowers are malicious, pursuing their own agenda.

If you were not aware of the three bands I can only assume you haven't looked at their admission policy on their website as this is clearly described on page 2. The only piece of information missing is whether or not they allocate the places equally between the bands.

I often see this little information on lotteries. You ask who is supervising the lottery. To be honest, I wouldn't expect them to publish that information. You don't want the independent supervisor to come under pressure from parents who want them to fiddle the result.

Aha!
The website has been COMPLETELY re-done. Different style, different design, new content, everything!
Much clearer.

Before, you had to pick through different info in the photocopied pack, the prospectus and the website, and the admissions policy was hardly comprehensible - I promise I wasn't just being thick - loads of parents in our local cohort were equally mystified!

There's something distinctly fishy about that school but I'll be very pleased if dd gets a place!

First time I've ever looked at their website. There are a few faults with the design but I admit I was puzzled as to why you hadn't found the info. That explains it.

I would certainly push them to be clearer about how places are allocated between the bands. The fact they haven't said anything suggests they simply divide the available places equally between the bands but they really ought to make that clear.

prh47 - 5 of us were completely confused in the second half of this thread - including parents who have DC there!

I happen to know a couple of teachers at KD, and one former teacher (not one who left in the controversy). They are all great teachers...the former teacher has not put KD on her preferred list for her DC, despite it being an obvious option for her location, and declines to say why.

They are not offering maths scholarships this year - the reason given at the open day we attended was 'too many people applied'.

Bibbity - is it the uber-marketing that exudes fish? I honestly have heard only good things from parents with DC there.

But I see from that thread that I did actually know about the banding. Duh to self!

Another thing about this school is the complete obscurity around scholarship places. Noone seems to understand it. the policies are incomprehensible. I'm a year away from it for my DD, but a friend of mine's DS got a half-scholarship with an explanatory letter (in addition to the admissions policy). We are intelligent people, I'm a lawyer and spend my time reading and writing complicated contracts, but really I looked, and looked, and looked at it all, and still could make no sense of how exactly you get in with a music scholarship (or half-scholarship) .....

No, I don't understand that either. They really should make sure their admissions policies are clear. I think someone should refer them to the Schools Adjudicator on the basis that their admissions arrangements are not entirely clear.

Its just the general lack of clarity Blu, exactly as OhDearConfused says. This year at open day I saw a teacher completely waffling around the subject to a parent who was asking directly about admissions. I went last year and the very same teacher (I remembered him) waffled completely around the subject of how come the school had such small class sizes. I hate to feel patronised.

Plus the awful hype.

Plus the 6 whistleblowing teachers.

Yes, I know everyone loves it.

So, its on my list for next year now ... just got to wait.

Just a thought but do they automatically offer places to children with siblings at the school.
Three schools in my LEA offer banding (via test) plus lottery but there are automatic places for siblings so lottery is only relevant for first child.
BUT they do publish admission criteria as:
Looked after children
SEN with Statement
Medical and Social (limited to 2 places)
Siblings (typically 40 places)
Specialist places 10% (10-12 places)
Random lottery allocation (typically 60 places)
hope this helps

I wonder how the sixth form students did this summer .
Is it the first year and only AS results ?
Any one know ?
And I would be interested in the outcome of the investigation by the exam boards .

Crazymum - yes they do offer automatic sibling places. Which is very strange for a school with no catchment, so will accept pupils from anywhere in London (as I understand it) - and are therefore committed to giving places to all those random pan-London siblings as well.

Infact, I was surprised to discover this year that most secondary schools do give automatic sibling places - especially as I live in an area where there are still quite a few single sex schools.

Infact, Kingsdale is not no.1 on our list and wouldn't be no. 2 on our list if we didn't have girl then boy.

Priority for siblings is not at all unusual.

I may be wrong but I doubt there will be any formal announcement of the results of the investigation. As I said previously, I would take the fact that students received their results on time as showing that the exam boards were happy that there was no evidence of consistent malpractise. If they had concerns I would have expected them to delay the results for this school.

The sixth form re-opened in September last year so I presume students were only sitting AS this year.

I'm afraid my suspicious mind makes me think that the investigation can't have completely exonerated the school ,otherwise that would have been said .

For the students I am hugely relieved that they got their exams ,but I'm left wondering why a number of teachers left and what the outcome of the investigations were .

And my son's school always publicises it's AS results ,so again ,absence of information makes me feel that they weren't good at Kingsdale .

But it's a school with an increasing reputation for excellence which will ( if it hasn't already ) result in that excellence being a reality .
And we need excellent schools .

Having checked further, it seems highly unlikely that there will be any announcement of the result of the investigation. The JCQ regulations which govern malpractice investigations are clear that the work of the Malpractice Committee and their decisions are confidential, although in the case of serious malpractice they may share information with appropriate professional bodies such as GTC. So I suspect you will never know the outcome of the investigations.

It is, of course, the case that every school loses some teaching staff in the summer. Teachers tend to leave school at the end of term or between terms, with the end of the summer term being a popular choice. If a significant number of teachers left unexpectedly that could indicate a problem but when there are accusations flying around it is easy to interpret normal staff turnover as suspicious.

I note that one of the posters refers to "six whistleblowing teachers". I have seen nothing to indicate that the whistleblowers were teachers. Indeed, as some of the reported allegations appear to show the school following the rules correctly, I would be surprised if the whistleblowers were teachers. Of course, it could be that the reports in the press are wrong and the allegations actually made were all genuine breaches of the rules.

I would note, by the way, that neither the school nor the exam boards were the source of the stories in the local press. Most investigations into alleged irregularities receive no publicity at all. I therefore suspect that the information in the press came from the whistleblowers, which makes me wonder if they really have the best interests of the school and its pupils at heart.

To give some context, last year 106 penalties were issued to exam centres and 79 to individual members of staff for irregularities. I cannot find any statistics for the number of centres/staff investigated.

Prh - some of the "teachers" posted on a local forum about the school just after they resigned. Their posts made pretty persuasive reading (ie. that they were utterly genuine and that they were blowing the whistle with very heavy hearts) and I had no reason to doubt what they were saying. Of course I know this means little in the anonymous world of the internet, but still, I did think it would take an exceptionally embittered couple of individuals to concoct the whole story and carry it through to posting on the web about it. And unlike on Mumsnet, name changing is not possible on that forum. The whole thread was deleted after a day or so, and it is impossible to discuss the school on that forum any more because the moderators are very concerned about libel.

I concur with Bibbity. The teachers who posted on a local forum did not attempt to remain anonymous - their identity was known.

A family member of mine who is a secondary school teacher says that fiddling GCSE results in ICT and Maths is 'rife'. It's bound to be tempting when teachers and schools reputation hangs on the overall results under the competitive environment of parental scrutiny and government targets, rather then on simply supporting the potential of individual children.

None of my wondering about what goes in in KD undermines my confidence that it is a good and happy school, and i'd be happy to send DS there.

I am not trying to defend the school. I really don't know the details and, if these forum posts have been deleted, I can't find out. But I read the reports in the Evening Standard and other parts of the press and my immediate reaction was that, if the allegations were reported correctly, whoever was complaining clearly doesn't understand the procedures around exams, in particular what is supposed to happen if a student arrives late.

If you (or anyone else) has full details of the alleged malpractice I would be interested in hearing about it by PM.