Dartford Grammar School (DGS) New Admission Criteria

[Pincopalla]

Hi there, as some of you may know, DGS have recently changed their admission criteria to reduce the number of places allocated to OOC applicants (50) compared to IC Applicants (130 places).

Do you know if they considered adding the sibling priority rule during the consultation process? I seem to remember that most local grammars (WGS, WGSG, BGS, C&S, Beths, Townley) have this in their admission criteria, except for DGS and DGGS. Of course, siblings would need to pass the relevant 11+ entry test.

@Piggletta I appreciate your views but, as I said before, everyone's views are somewhat affected by their own personal circumstances and biased towards a favorable outcome for themselves and (in this case) their children.

Everyone would have a different definition of local community, but several people would agree that the one currently used by DGS is unfair.

As an example, in the case of DGS, if you live in Crayford or Bexley (on the West of the school, but outside the Kent border) you fall out of the catchment area despite being 1.5-2.0 miles away from the school (road distance). But if you live in, say, in New Barn (on the South-East of the the school, but in Kent) you are within the catchment area despite being 9.0 miles away from the school.

The difference in the cut-off at DGS is also currently about 20 marks, but this is going to increase significantly from the Sep 2025 intake, because of the increased number of places (140 out of 190) allocated to the Zone A applicants - probably this is going to be closer to 30 marks difference going forward, and I can guarantee you that this is a very significant difference in 'performance' when it comes to the 11+ Kent Test (please check the distribution score amongst all students taking the test - this is published by the Kent Council annually).

What's even more interesting (double whammy!) is that if you live in Dartford, you are not being discriminated by the Bexley LA when applying to a Bexley Grammar through their own 11+ Test: places are allocated (mostly) through distance, regardless of whether you live in or out of the Bexley LA.

So, like with everything, we may all share the same general principles and values, but the devil is in the details and the system is far from fair.

So I take it you are ooc with a child already at the school and one taking the test this year.

Admitting on score is fairer than admitting based on sibling.

@Pincopalla grammar or not, there is always a tension between sibling priority and distance priority. You can make an argument that either is more fair (or less fair !) and sometimes schools split the difference with a sibling in catchment coming higher than a sibling out of catchment.

That’s part the problem, schools aren’t distributed evenly. It isn’t fair for Crayford residents to have access to the Bexley and Dartford grammars when you’ve got Kent residents not able to access any because the places are being filled up with out of county. If you look at a map and where the schools are, you can see that Dartford and Wilmington are picking up grammar school students from a wide area as that’s they are the nearest grammar schools for those villages and towns. I only had those two as options growing up near Swanley, I would never have got into the Bexley or Gravesend from where I lived.
Lots of the superselectives have either priority areas where they rank by score for oversubscription which means they can’t introduce the sibling rule. Kendrick in Reading is the same. If they were a normal grammar they would be ranking the majority of their places by distance.

@MrsRobinsonsHandprints I love that you (as others before) are making assumptions about my personal circumstances, when all I am doing is pointing out (some of) the inconsistencies between admission criteria amongst schools very close to one-another and with very similar ethos / values.

@SheilaFentiman Completely agree with you: different people would have different views, based on their personal circumstances and personal sensitivities, that's why I think it is silly to argue whether a policy is fair (or unfair) in absolute terms.

But the inconsistencies I have raised are factual and some questions should be asked on why, for example, if you love in New Barn (9 miles away) you are deemed to be part of the local Dartford Community, but if you live in Crayford (1.5miles away) you are not.

Similarly with the sibling rule: one should not be able to claim that it is fair for WGS / WGSG / BG / C&S / Beths / Townley to have one but, at the same time, to claim that for DGS / DGSG it is fair not to have one.

Thanks for your views.

@Ionacat Sorry to be direct, but you are mis-informed.

All four Dartford grammars have catchment areas that favor 'local' applicants. In the case of DGS, almost 75% of places are ringfenced for Zone A applicants, hence your claim is factually wrong. And the schools, quite often, are not in the middle of the catchment area, which means that some applicant are (wrongly, in my view) penalized for living in the 'wrong' LA, although they are fairly local to the schools.

As pointed out by others above, there's no definition of 'super-selective' schools, but I would tend to exclude that, if a school uses distance as a criteria (or uses a catchment area to favor local applicants) can be defined as a 'super-selective' (all Bexley and Dartford grammars fall into this category). Please look at St Olaves as a true example of what a super-selective is like.

“Similarly with the sibling rule: one should not be able to claim that it is fair for WGS / WGSG / BG / C&S / Beths / Townley to have one but, at the same time, to claim that for DGS / DGSG it is fair not to have one.”

My understanding that, selective or not, schools can set admissions policy (within the rules) without reference to what nearby schools do.

I think sibling priority or catchment priority are both fair, in that they provide objective and reasonable ways to balance applications against each other.

@Pincopalla there is the detail, though, that if there aren't enough 'standard' in area applicants, the remaining places get added to the OOC pool. So the standard must be achievable by many.

I'm not unsympathetic. I think the grammar system must put hideous pressure on a child to 'succeed'. It's alien to me, though, because I live in an area where there is one school, just one, that children living here will be successful in applying for. We can show preference for 3 schools on the CAF, but in reality, nobody will get anything other than the one school in our area. I suppose there's nothing to stop us applying for a school that is undersubscribed and miles away, but I don't know why anyone would do that.

@Lougle There will always be enough IC applicants, hence your scenario is just hypothetical but not a real one. These are all highly desirable schools and there is no way that any of the ringfenced places for IC applicants are not filled in.

@Pincopalla fair enough. I think you have your answer though. They aren't allowed to give sibling priority. So the only way to be sure of a place (if your child is of standard) is to live in the catchment area.

Surely by secondary there doesn't need to be a sibling preference. It makes sense in primary as we don't expect under 11's to be bale to make their own way to school, but your average secondary age kid will be fine to.

Depends a lot on area and whether it has to be parent-taxi after a sports/drama club because the school bus runs only twice a day. Plus, good to have hand-me-down uniform etc.

Sibling priority is common but not universal.

@SprigatitoYouAndIKnow Surely the same argument could be used to support the idea that there doesn't need to be any preference for local kids!?

I'm making assumptions because no one would care about this unless it affected them someway

Not really, there needs to be a distance cut off at some point, or kids from Manchester or Aberdeen might get places. I wouldn't suggest that is a reasonable commute. I would suggest that having 2 secondary kids travel half an hour in different directions by themselves is reasonable though.

@MrsRobinsonsHandprints You are making assumptions again. It is so sad we can't have a sensible conversation without having to point fingers!

I am finding it hard to follow the argument. If they allow a sibling in at just a pass, then surely that will include siblings in the IC numbers too? So then it no longer is about score. And those siblings would they go into the places for IC or OOC?

Also, neither Judd nor Skinners, which are much more like Dartford Grammar admit siblings?

And Judd is taking another 25 into Sixth Form. And Judd is offering via Atom Learning free access for FSM.

I think Bexley is conceptually very different, because all the Bexley Grammars are based on pass and distance. There is just an overriding exception that those in the top 180 can choose the Bexley grammar they want and in theory, they could all go to Bexley Grammar or Sid&Chis in one year and fill most the places. But in reality, that never happens. And lots of the kids who make the 180 get eg St Olave’s or Judd or Newstead or TOGs or whatever other superselective, maybe even Tiffin (if it is the type of parent who moves once the kid got a place).

At least one school I know (not in the area under discussion) is entirely distance blind and offers purely on ranked score. If you live 200 miles away when you reply, it's your responsibility to live within a reasonable distance by the time you attend the school.

I think that you have deliberately ignored the fact that they CANNOT chose to add the sibling criteria to their admissions code because within their 2 categories (IC and OOC) they do select by rank.

They are legally bound by that code, and if they use rank at all within their selection procedures, then they are not allowed to add siblings in.

You are repeating several times that they are not allocating by rank because they split their intake into IC and OOC, but within those groups, they do choose by rank, and therefore are not allowed to use sibling criteria.

I am from a different grammar area, which now takes a vast amount of OOC children. My own children have benefitted, but I am very sympathetic to the families who live locally and cannot get into the grammar schools any more. Particulary as there is not a good comp alternative for many.

To be honest I think in this context siblings are a red herring, the big issue is how much you restrict to IC children. It is an interesting discussion.

@SheilaFentiman There are plenty of grammars like that, they are commonly known as super-selective (I think!), as the best ranking kids get an offer regardless of where they live (St Olaves, QE, Henrietta, etc.).

@steppemum I am not convinced that DGS / DGSG cannot, hence I have posted the question in this forum in the first place. The schools above (St Olaves, QE, Henrietta) of course cannot, but they don't give any priority applicants based on distance / catchment area, hence para 1.9 j) might only apply to those schools above. Btw, I agree with you that the debate the amount of places ringfenced for IC applicants is probably the more interesting one.

@Araminta1003 I think you are missing a point here.

In DGS 130 out of 180 places (72% of the total) are currently ringfenced for IC applicants. The remaining 50 places are offered to the best scorers, regardless of where they live.

In the four Bexley Grammars, 180 out of 720 places (180 x 4) are offered to the best scorers, regardless of where they live. The remaining places are offered to local applicants (based on where they live).

The admission criteria are of course different, but even if just 50% of the top scorers at the Bexley Test take a place in one of their four grammars, the final outcome is not very different from DGS (i.e. something close to a quarter of the places are allocated by score only, not distance). Plus, don't forget that you have the sibling rule in all the four Bexley grammars but not in DGS.

I agree with @steppemum - everyone who has answered the "question you posed in the forum in the first place" doesn't agree that DGS/DGSG would be allowed to have a sibling priority.

For ease, I paste that here:
1.9 It is for admission authorities to formulate their admission arrangements, but they must not:

j) in designated grammar schools that rank all children according to a pre-determined pass mark and then allocate places to those who score highest, give priority to siblings of current or former pupils

The policy that you would like DGS/DGSG to have is clearly not allowed, because it would give sibling priority. It doesn't matter that IC/OOC is more influential on the outcome. The code explicitly rules out sibling priority AT ALL.

@SheilaFentiman Ok, thanks. I will seek an official view from the relevant authorities, just to make sure.

I will stop replying now. Thank you all for your contributions.

It’s important to keep in mind that local authorities are responsible for ensuring sufficient school places in their area.