Secondary allocation anomoly

[candlelight22]

I find it curious that a local over subscribed academy, which states in its admissions document that it allocates purely on a fair banding process, always manages to offer places to all the children who apply from its fee paying prep school.

With over 700 applications for places how come year after year all the existing year 6 children that apply for year 7 get a place!

I've spoken to the prep school and they say their children are in no way favoured and being in the prep is no guarantee of a secondary place. So is it just coincidence that they all get a place every year?

How would one go about checking this curious statistic?

Bolognaise - sorry but can't see how that outed you - you said your child doesn't go there? I am also in the same city and my children don't go there either - I don't feel "outed"?

I can't really see how that kind of banding system can be described as "fair". Most schools would prefer to teach bright kids especially one which until recently was a private school. So it would be easy to take 20% from each band but fix the band boundaries so that very few children end up in the top band (so 100% get a place), and lots and lots of children end up in the lower bands and have a very low chance of getting a place. The one way in which non-grammar schools are not allowed to select is by ability, but " fair" banding sounds like exactly that for many of the places.

I'd hazard a guess that the prep school kids occupy almost the entire of the top band, in which 100% get places.

Marmitelover55 - no its fine, didn't say i was outed just meant dont go into more detail in case it did happen. Cyber stalkers get bits of information from all over the place and add them up. Sadly been a previous victim of that.

In terms of the admission criteria, the secondary school cannot specify a private prep school, that is not allowed within any criteria.
As such i would question how every prep child continues to get a place and the only place that you can go is to the school adjudicator, who will have the power to investigate whether the admission criteria is being administered correctly or not.

I thought a FOI request might be useful to obtain data to show whether the local rumours were substantiated before taking any concerns to the adjudicator but, on reflection, Admission is right. Don't faff about with a FOI request but go straight to the adjudicator, who has the clout to obtain the data and take the necessary action.

So it would be easy to take 20% from each band but fix the band boundaries so that very few children end up in the top band (so 100% get a place), and lots and lots of children end up in the lower bands and have a very low chance of getting a place.
That's a good point. There's a school i read about on another thread that does fair banding that has a really low proportion of low attainers and high proportion of high attainers. I couldn't understand how that could happen with fair banding, but that could explain it.

So it would be easy to take 20% from each band but fix the band boundaries so that very few children end up in the top band

That is not allowed. If there are five bands the boundaries will normally be set so that 20% of applicants fall into each band. It is also permitted to normalise the bands to the local population or national population, so that 20% of the population would fall into each band. This may result in the top bands being relatively empty if applicants are skewed towards the bottom end of the ability range. What is definitely not permitted is artificially setting the boundaries to engineer the intake.

As Admission says, the Adjudicator has the power to investigate the school's admission criteria. As it is an academy investigation of the administration of the criteria is likely to fall to the EFA.

I'm still happy to take a look at the school and see what I can find out if you would care to PM me with the name of the school and the LA involved.

That's interesting prh47 - so you couldn't rig it in favour of all the bright kids getting in, unless you were in an area where the average level of the applicants was well below the national or local averages, in which case you could effectively "rebalance" your intake to match by using the banding.

I think the point you made earlier though about tests putting off a lot of the less academic kids, or less organised parents is very valid though and do think that unless the entrance tests are organised by primary schools and taken during school time it's inevitably an unfair system.

Wouldn't explain what's going on in this case though as if the OP's right in the figure of 700 applicants then that's presumably 700 kids who did at least take the entrance test. More likely to prep ones are getting in on some other criteria - a historic agreement to prioritise those already in the prep school at time of conversion, siblings or "social" or medical needs to be with their friends would seem plausible.

If Bolognese is indeed talking about Bristol Cathedral School they no longer have a fair banding system. This was removed for this years admissions. With an intake of only 120 there are though in reality only about 50% of those places up for LEA allocation after scholars, Siblings and staff children - which is random allocation now. As the LEA now administer this allocation, other than the scholars, I can't imagine the 'social needs' loophole could exist now.

Just looked at the allocation statement for BCCS for 16/17 and only 29 out of the 120 places were available for random selection after places were allocated to children with SEN, looked after children, probationer choristers, music scholars, siblings and staff children (0 places allocated on medical need).