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

PS
On the tables, if you go to "absence and pupil population" there is a drop down box to bring up "pupil population" stats ...... interesting.

cantkeepawayforever my comment was based purely on DownstairsMixUp post.

mumtrying
Maybe she has, but I'm just comparing Everest with YobCentral and frankly the school I avoided looks MUCH better !!!!!!!

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/136377

+. 42 is the progress 8 score so nearly half a grade improvement on entry level predictions.

Bertrand was referencing this school which she wrongly placed in 'Telford' Note Telford is in Shropshire not Greater Manchester.

"They've not got the data for high, medium, low attainers on there yet, as it;'s only provisional data
They''ll have last year's. They don't change much. As I said, I think HBH usually has about 15% high attainers.

Shropshire though does have one of the best Girls School in the country Newport Girls High. But perhaps of more importance the school of ' Dear' leader .

Adams Grammar.

Sorry, Telford was a typo. I meant Trafford.

Where do the low attaining and disadvantaged children go? Because they don't appear to be in that school!

If you look through most of Trafford's non selective schools , you see relatively low numbers of low attaining students.

Which is odd because parts of Stretford/Partington are very deprived, yet even Stretford high school (next to Stretford Grammar) probably has less than 35% low attaining pupils.

Perhaps the Primary schools are doing an excellent job.

This is perhaps one school where many such kids go .

However, it is doing a very good job and still got 54% at level 4 .
www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/138124?tab=absence-and-pupil-population

but neither Trafford nor Telford are relevant to the OP's query.

She is comparing Hampshire and Kent

This Comprehensive uses the 14+ .
www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/138002

www.compare-school-
performance.service.gov.uk/school/140813

Despite separating the cohort the 'Ethelburger' way it still only equals the Modern School at level 5 (The Modern being the one 30 years ago that parents were so desperate to avoid and send their children here ).

Message received .. Still the subject is interesting ...

mountford
When people ask about Trafford, then you can tell them about Trafford

but the observations are irrelevant to the bulk of Grammar school threads because Trafford only covers 41 square miles and has porous borders
Kent covers 1260 square miles and the border on three sides is rather damp

Trafford Population 234,700

Kent population 1.5 Millon excluding Medway.

perhaps a more realistic comparison would be Medway and Trafford.

but still irrelevant

I would argue that the idea "non-grammar schools in grammar counties lose the top-25% of pupils" is simply not true.

When I was 11, there was a grammar school in the area. Not one person in my class elected to take the entrance exam, even those who were 'smart enough' to take it. Nobody wanted to go to grammar school. Even those who were in in top-sets in primary chose to go to a normal secondary school. My parents said I could take the entrance exam if I wanted to but I refused because I wanted to go to the same school as my friends.

I'm certain not every child that has the potential for grammar-school takes up a place?

However, this is only my individual experience and was probably swayed by the fact that the area had excellent non-grammars anyway. I can see how it could vary by area.

*'Top-students'. Don't know where 25% came from

Haxelette,

i think it depends on the county, and whether the 11+ is 'opt in' - ie child entered by parents, test taken outside school, often at a weekend - or 'opt out / universal', where children sit their 11+ tests in their primary schools.

I live in an 'opt in' county with residual grammar schools, which have no catchment areas. In general, whether you take the test depends on
a) Your alternative school.
b) The density of grammars in your micro environment - they are not spread equally, with some towns having several and some 1 or none.
c) Your parents.

The non-grammars vary from almost-comprehensives with very very good results, to almost-comprehensives with very high levels of deprivation and less good results to definite secondary moderns with less good results.

Families close to, or fairly close to, the almost-comprehensives with very good results tend not to enter their children for the 11+, or have their children take the 11+ and then place the grammar as a 'guaranteed' choice second or third on the form.

'Opt out / universal' counties (Kent and Bucks think, but I may be wrong) are very different in dynamic.

I like this level 5 grade change. There is nowhere to hide for coasting schools. OK i know that is controversial , but schools that were achieving better than C grades are able to highlight their superiority over other schools.

Boston High : A girls Grammar 65% at level 5 Maths/English PATHETIC !

Haxelette, I agree with previous poster who explains that fully selective areas lies Kent and Bucks - and we are discussing Kent specifically - are different to what you suggest.
These are areas where the top 25 or 30% across the county get a grammar place. In Bucks, the kids sit the exam on a school day with their classmates. You can opt out, but most sit it. Some have prepared for a long period and some have done absolutely nothing an sometimes the parents are barely aware it will be happening.

25 to 30% get in across the county. Bin the more affluent areas, perhaps 40% pass and in the less affluent areas it will be much less - an indication of how raw ability doesn't always cut it, but parental ability to prep children or pay for tuition plays a role too. The non-grammars in the affluent areas still do better than the non-grammars in the seprived areas, because the interested parents allow the children to do well. The non grammars in the less affluent areas are often very poor and the schools people fear in the grammar counties - the top ability children are missing, and the school is left with a lower ability range than a comp in a deprived area, plus the parents of the deprived area - it's the worst of all worlds for those children. At least in a Comp in a deprived area, there will be a broader range of ability.

WHat Haxellette describes is what often happens in areas with a super selective grammar or two. These are the grammars with no distance or catchment and often one or two amongst a huge number of other schools. The superselective S usually draw from a huge geographical area and are highly competitive because of the lack of catchment. Few local children or children from any one area get in - so the drain of higher ability children on the other schools is much less than in full grammar areas. The non-selective schools could be called almost Comps. They aren't quite, because perhaps the top 5% have been creamed off, but there is still a broad ability range. And because of this, the non selectives, particularly in affluent areas often do really well, like good Comps and parents can be be very happy to use them.

Perhaps OP should consider moving to area where a super selective grammar is an option, but there are also great non-selectives too which have almost the full range of ability. This won't be Kent as its a fully selective area. Although the the chances of getting a super selective place are low, they do exist, plus the alternatives can be good too. Houses with these kind of options tend to be very expensive though!

However, they have 39% middle attainers and 1% lower attainers, which is perhaps high for a grammar school.

I have compared it with a girls' grammar elsewhere, and tbh the results are quite interesting:

• Girls' grammar 1: c95% high attainers, c95% on the 5+ measure
• Boston: c. 60% high attainers, 65% on the 5+ measure

So Boston's 'low' results may simply be a reflection of their intake. However, interestingly again,

• Very good comp 1: 40% high attainers, 77% on 5+ measure

which would suggest that the comp is actually being the most successful in terms of adding value.

Chocolate & CantKeep

Thanks for explaining the difference for me, I understand better now. I wasn't entirely sure on the types of grammar-schools.

It's a shame really as I was hoping to move to Kent to be nearer to family but this is off-putting.

@MumTryingHerBest: As I said earlier, I am not 100% sure if he will like it or not but I am laying down the plan (and seems quite evident that grammars do perform better) and when it will come to DS to perform in the grammar, I will not put extreme pressure on him but will support only if he wants to go...but I want to be ready for him so I would not regret that I could do better for him.
That's it...

and seems quite evident that grammars do perform better
No
No they do not.
They select kids who will do better
Not the same thing at all
Grammar schools only improve the results of the kids who attend them by around 1/3 of an old GCSE grade

The top sets in most of the Hampshire comps get the same grades as kids at selective and private schools.

My kids each got AAA* AAA AAA AAA
and were not the top of their year groups at their comp
(DD was about 30th, DS around 25th)

duh, text formating !!!
A* x 3 and A x 10

vik, I think the best way to think about the potential for fallacy in the 'grammars perform better' statement is at a pupil by pupil level.

Each pupil at a grammar school that has, say, a Progress8 of 0.5 for 'high attainers' gets, on average, half a GCSE grade better than the average pupil from the broad-brush 'high attaining cohort' nationwide.

However, each high attaining pupil at any OTHER school with a Progress 8 of 0.5 [the vast majority of which are comprehensive] ALSO gets half a grade at GCSE higher than the average pupil from that 'high attaining cohort'.

A grammar school will get better 'raw' results, because it collects together a higher percentage of these higher attaining pupils - but at a pupil by pupil level, each pupil will do exactly as they would at a comprehensive with exactly the same Progress8.

So using the examples that I gave above, in the girls' grammar with 95% high prior attainment, 95% get %+ in Maths & English GCSEs. In the base of Boston High, 5% more reach this benchmark than their % of previous high attainers. on the other hand, a comprehensive with 'only' 40% high attainers gets 77% to this benchmark - so not only gets the 40% high attainers to where they are expected to be, but 37% of other children to.

The first Girls' Grammar gets the higher raw results - but only because of the high prior attainment. The comprehensive would enable those children to get the same results, but also teaches the middle attainers so as to get the results too. Which is, at a pupil by pupil level, performing better? The comp has the best overall progress 8 of the 3, by quite a margin, even including the margins of error in each figure.