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.

There is no point for OOC to do the Kent test anymore really as there are now such few places overall. It is a waste of a child’s time unless the parents tend to then move in by the December deadline (or before that).

Just to explain, if you drop 2 or 3 marks in Maths (out of 25 or 16) or 2 or 3 in English (out of 25 or 26) and more than 5 in reasoning (out of 80) you basically cannot get in. So you need to achieve near 100 per cent in Maths and English to get scores of 410 plus especially if you are autumn born.

Kent should either allow more OOC or just do away with OOC altogether. Under 20 at Judd now, no top scores at Skinners and only 45 at Dartford now makes the whole thing a waste of time for both the Council in terms of resources and the kids taking the test.

However, once the out of country goes the true superselective nature goes completely and the schools will drop down the league tables to be more like Bexley schools. At the top will remain the Wilsons/Olaves/Henrietta Barnet’s of this world. At Wilsons 61% of GCSE grades were 9s. A level results phenomenal as well. The top kids produce the top results.

Dartford Grammar does IB. IB is hard. They would be badly advised to let in siblings who have just passed the Kent test. They need to keep it superselective or those kids may struggle with the IB. Just because there is a lower superselective score for locals - well it is still superselective, just not based on top ranks overall. They can decide the score appropriate for children to be able to access what the school has to offer and they do need to bear in mind the IB.

I have a couple of friends who teach at DGS and my understanding (which is gossip and Chinese whispers based) is that the admissions was changed because the LA and KCC didn't see that the school was sufficiently serving Kent children and pressured the school to make the changes.

Also anecdotally apparently due to the high proportion of students commuting in from a wide distance there is a lack of community and parental support for extracurricular activities.

As a school that is located in and funded by Kent, I think it's reasonable that children in Kent wards are given priority, the same as Wilmington does - and I say this as someone based in Bexley who is geographically closer to Wilmington than I am to Bexley Grammar or Chis and Sid.

Helpful post @MavisTheMonkey

If I'm reading it right the fact they rank within the categories (which my local grammar also does) means they are excluded from being able to apply the sibling priority. Mine is catchment schools group a, catchment schools group b then everyone else but a, b and c are all ranked within those categories and it's that ranking which means sibling priority is not allowed.

They don't have to have one. They could choose to if there isn't the ranking that would make it illegal, but presumably this school wants to recruit the brightest in the area over and above less able younger siblings.

@MavisTheMonkey Schools are funded centrally by the Government (out of general taxation), not by Local Authorities, out of Council Tax. Anyone paying taxes in the UK is (indirectly) funding schools in Kent, or elsewhere in the country.

@BaronessEllarawrosaurus I disagree with this conclusion. This is what some people in this forum are claiming, but as far as I can see in the School Admissions Code, it is just the schools that use as ONLY criterion the test score (i.e. St Olave's) that are not allowed to use the sibling priority rule. DGS has catchment area, too, which means that they can use the sibling rule,

@NeverDropYourMooncup Of course they don't have to, but they chose to. DGS could also choose to allow the sibling rule. If they wanted the brightest students, they would have not reduced the OOC intake from 90 to 50 places.

@Pincopalla re the funding, I think the key word in your argument is indirectly.

As far as I am aware the govt uses the national funding formula to distribute the funds to the local authority so for all practical purposes the LA are the body that the school needs to work with re funding.

Re your issue with the admissions criteria- have you discussed it with the school? I had an issue with Beths criteria a couple of years ago and discussed it with the head of admissions. In that case they admitted they had made a mistake and revised the criteria.

The thing is though that all children are admitted via rankings even if they assign certain numbers to different sections, within that section they are ranked so distance isn't a category for oversubscripton that is solely on ranking

If the admissions code meant 'only' or 'purely' wouldn't it say so?

"This is what some people in this forum are claiming"

I don't think it's "some" people, OP: no one who has replied to you agrees with your interpretation of the Code.

OP when you are asking about sibling criteria do you actually think anyone passing the Kent test should get into Dartford? What do you actually mean?

Because I can tell you that a pass alone will find IB a struggle. So if the school has been run with kids with 380 plus scores for a number of years and many with 395 plus OOC, the standard would drop if “pass” alone were let in. They may even have to reintroduce A levels. A state school can probably unlikely afford to run both A levels and IB at the same time.

OP considers anyone speculating on his/her individual interest in DGS to be committing a personal attack. So this is not about OP, but a theoretical Mrs X.

Mrs X has two sons, one already in secondary and one, let's say, in Year 5. She does not live in Kent but on the Bexley side of the border. At the time DS1 applied to DGS, there was no sibling preference but the OOC number of places was equal to the Kent number of places, so DS1 did well and got in.

Now things have changed, DS2 has a lower chance of getting in with fewer OOC places and now Mrs X thinks there should be a sibling preference inserted to the criteria (one assumes Mrs X wasn't campaigning for this beforehand, but perhaps one is unfair).

Failing that, Mrs X wants the criteria going back towards more OOC places, or the catchment area to be redrawn to the better advantage of the Bexley area.

Any similarities between Mrs X and persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

@Araminta1003 DGS have already introduced last year a higher threshold for students in Category A, i.e.:

Score – an eligible boy’s ability as indicated by his total score of at least 40 points higher than the Kent Test threshold score.

If this threshold is deemed to be appropriate for Category A students (to be 'bright' enough to study the IB), surely the same threshold could be used for Siblings, i.e. they don't 'just' need to pass the Kent test, but need to score 40 marks higher than the pass score...

@TeenToTwenties DGS has a test pass mark and oversubscription criteria rather than ranking applicants by test score (unlike St Olave's, QE, Henrietta, etc.). This is the main point...

Oh, have I misunderstood?
I got the impression they divided into catchment and out of catchment then ordered according to test score within those 2 groups.

Yes they do, but they have introduced a 'floor' as of this year (Sep 2025), probably because they were concerned that allocating so many places to Zone A applicants (from 90 to 140) would lower the bar too much...

You are right, @TeenToTwenties - from DGS admissions doc:

In the case of over-subscription, places are allocated in the order set out below. Within each section below, students are ranked according to the applicant’s total test score in the Kent Test. Please note that in the case of tied scores*, preference is given to the applicant living nearest to the school.

The two sections are:
CATEGORY 1 – Priority Area (130 places)
dress. CATEGORY 2 – All Applicants Regardless of Address (50 places)

This
Is
Still
Allocating
By
Rank.

@Pincopalla - so you are arguing for sibling priority for siblings of OOC candidates? So older brother got 415 and younger brother may “only” get 395? Well you have been able to try and appeal that for years. Just get him doing Japanese on DuoLingo and prove to the panel why he needs a place. You do not need the school change all their criteria.

Also, go study the 2024 results. As usual, far more OOC/Kent independent with the very top scores and note that for 2024 there are overall fewer top scorers than 2023. So who knows what the OOC benchmark will be this year despite fewer places.
The Kent private school kids and OOC applicants have as a group far more top scores than the Kent mainstream kids (majority taking the test).

I disagree with your assessment of the admissions code. It very clearly state that if the pupils are ranked by score, they can't give sibling priority. Within each zone, the pupils are ranked by score.