Best place to live in Kent for Grammar school

[vik2017]

Hi,
This is my first question on this board....
and I wanted to know which is the best place to live in Kent and falls into Grammar catchment area and also if my son dont get to the Grammar at least will go to a very good comprehensive school.
Any suggestion will be appreciated even suggest to move to another place considering we both work in London.

Many thanks in advance...
Viki

mountford
If i was not being disingenuous i would suggest a comprehensive school had a make up of at least 40% high attaining pupils 40% middle ability and 20% low ability students.
But that shows how poor your grasp of statistics is.

The chance of any one catchment exactly matching the national statistical norm is diddly squat.
Same as the chance of any one school having the same ethnic mix as the country at large.

A comprehensive school will / should roughly / match the demographics of the houses around it.
If that is in a deprived area of the country with high unemployment
it will be very different to a place next door to a world class university
(or IBM research lab in the case of Thornden)

A comprehensive school accepts all of the children who come through the door who will fit in the classrooms.
The parents do the selecting (as I did) or there is no selecting at all.

They can not refuse a child with SEN on the basis of low academic performance (which Grammar schools do in the form of an entrance exam).

That very thing happened to a friends son. The Comprehensive school advised that school B was likely to be a better fit ! The school reluctantly backed down when presented with an ECHP which designated that school . However, my friend decided they did not want their DS to go a school that didn't want them.

They had by proxy refused entry to that child.

Somewhere has to meet the statistical average !

However, my friend decided they did not want their DS to go a school that didn't want them.
Then your friend was a twit
as each of the comps will have a "specialism" in their SEN units and they spread the kids around so that resources are best used.

Somewhere has to meet the statistical average !
You and Michael Gove might think that
the rest of us know it not to be the case.

Not hot on data sampling are you

Of course i am being obtuse quoting what are likely to be average cohort numbers across the country to present an argument !

mountford100 how did the school know how the child was performing academically?

It was not about their academic ability more about the support , the child would require !

However, perhaps they concluded the child was prone to outbursts and behaviour that would require a TA to be in attendance at all times.
Large cost of resources was probably the defining reason, for the school wanting to push the child on to somebody else.

They can not refuse a child with SEN on the basis of low academic performance (which Grammar schools do in the form of an entrance exam).

mountford100 - That very thing happened to a friends son.

mountford100 all schools, Grammar/Comp. other will advise parents if the do not feel they are well placed to best support their needs. This is not a comp. issue, it is a SEN funding issue.

At the end of the day, some parents make a far bigger meal out of which school their child attends than is necessary, as though one good school could wreck their child's entire life and another one be the sole cause of their future success. Yes, some schools are most definitely worth avoiding where possible, but there are plenty of perfectly good schools out there in all sorts of different parts of the country. Personally, I would loathe to live in Bexley and don't think a person's sole choice of location to bring their family up in should be based on nearby schools that they may never send their children to, anyway. vik - if you are that uptight about schools, just base yourself in an area you would genuinely like to live in that has some good fee paying schools nearby, since you can afford these, and good state schools of any type, remembering that by the time your child is of secondary age, the local schools may have improved or gone downhill, and you have no way of knowing which, so no point thinking you can plan so far ahead, anyway. Don't ram yourself into an area you don't actually like a good six years before you will even be applying, anyway, in the hope you will get your child into a school you might not succeed in getting them into, anyway.

I have several times taught children in a manistream, comprehensive entry prtimary who as a school we would have advised should attend a Special School instead, and have also rtaught children who we would have recommended a specialised unit attached to a (different) primary.

In all cases, the parents chose not to follow that advice (advice also given by all professionals working with the child, including advisory teachers, paediatricians etc) so we could not refuse admission.

A grammar school can refuse admission to any child, SEN or not, who fails the 11+, regardless of the views of the parent. That is the difference between the two.

That does NOT mean that all comprehensive schools have identical cohorts (as any school would know, even for comprehensive schools serving an identical area each year, the ability of each year's coort can vary dramatically)

As I said before:
"A comprehensive school is a comprehensive school if its intake matches its applicants because there are no selection barriers other than distance / catchment to pupils being admitted, and if no other state school preferentially admits selected pupils from the school's effective catchment.

So a school is not comprehensive if it selects some pupils by aptitude, any pupils by faith, or by ability, or has any significant number of potential pupils drawn away by nearby selective schools.

Comprehensive schools WILL vary in their composition, because they are situated in different areas and parents may exercise their preference to apply yo another school. The school remains comprehensive unless the alternative school selects any of those applicants by ability or aptitude or faith."

Cantkeepaway accurately defines what a Comp is.

Notice that not only does an individual school have to be non-selective, but all of the local schools also have to be non selective too - the moment one is selective, in prevents the others being truly comprehensive. That's why there are no Comps in Kent - the Grammars prevent everyone having access to all schools for any reason other than distance.

And also, vik, don't be so silly as to think sending your child to a comprehensive school is a "risk." You have no idea whatsoever at your child's age which schools are a "risk" and which aren't.

I say it was not about ability to give the school the benefit of the doubt. However they indicated how much they would have liked DS to join them next year when we visited. DS is HFA and has an ECHP , the difference is DS is highly bright and easily passed his 11+.

Maybe it is just coincidence and nothing to do with ability , that they were desperate to attract DS and farm off friends son 3 years ago.

roundabout
TBH I'll back vik up here.
If her catchment school is the one I mentioned up thread - its never going to improve so she is sensible to start looking at other options now.
Not that I think moving out of Hampshire will achieve what she wants.

mountford100 I say it was not about ability to give the school the benefit of the doubt.

How could it possibly be about ability. How did the school know what the DCs academic ability was? They wouldn't have had copies of school reports, SATs results or anything.

Herne Bay high is classed as a secondary modern but anyone that thinks it loses a lot of high achievers to grammars are mad! I live in hb, I know lots of peoples kids that did sit 11+ and passed and chose not to go to the Canterbury or Thanet grammars because

They wanted to stay with friends in hbh
Parents not too keen on quite a long travel to school in the mornings

Hbh now has a grammar stream to accommodate the amount of kids coming in who are ‘grammar material’ of a way to word it, we are pretty sure my eldest will pass the Kent test but if he wants to go hbh after viewing the others I would not stop him, plenty of kids do well in the schoo.

Tbf, some individual schools can be APPALLING in terms of informally indicating that certain pupils aren't really welcome - or in terms of managing out pupils who will harm their statistics [see previous comments about the grammar school that turfed a child out in mid Year 11 to take exams at a different centre so they didn't spoil the school's 100% English pass rate].

I encountered it when looking for a primary place for DS in Year 1, when he was a selective mute through school-induced anxiety. One school openly questioned what my DH's job was, on learning that we were moving - the fawning obsequiousness that was turned on as soon as i indicated that not only was it a reasonably high powered job but also that I have a PhD was repellant. Another school openly implied that DS 'wasn't really the type of pupil who does well here'.

Such behaviour is wrong - and generally illegal - wherever it is found, but it isn't a specific characteristic of comprehensives any more than it is a specific feature of grammar schools. I could still have applied and got in to either of the primaries that were so unwelcoming - they had places, and could not have refused.

DownstairsMixUp is this the school?

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/136465

25% Grade 5 or above in English & maths GCSEs is pretty shocking for a comp. TBH.

HBH has about 15% high attainers I think.

Than 60% level 5 English/Maths for a 'Modern' must be amazing ?

Mumtrying
Herne Bay is bad, but here is what I'm pretty sure the OP is moving away from ....
www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/137113

I had to go to a conference there once and decided to park my car right under the security cameras .....

They've not got the data for high, medium, low attainers on there yet, as it;'s only provisional data.

So whether 60% is amazing or 25% is appalling isn't really a judgement we can make, until we see it broken down and we can see what their intake is like.

Herne Bay's Progres8 looks a bit concerning. Mountford, what is the Progress8 for the school you are referring to?

Ta1kinPeece I don't doubt the op has reason to be looking at options. The problem in they seem to have latched on to high performing schools as the criteria rather than what would best suit their DC.