@CheerfulMuddler What happened on the day remains a mystery. All we know is that his maths score was well, well below every maths score he has ever had in six years of primary school. Had he been even close to a "normal" performance he would have breezed through. My current theory is that, hurrying along in his usual determined way, he failed to read a question properly at the start of a section and then dropped the next six marks as a result. But we'll never know for sure, which in many ways is more frustrating. We don't have any extenuating circumstances to speak of, and most of the online guidance suggests that it doesn't make a great deal of difference unless the child's dad dropped dead the night before or something.
@Magnificentkitteh Yeah, once you get away from those who just missed the cut (the 120s and 119s) the raw number of successful reviews drops off pretty evenly. But again, wasting time on Excel when I should be doing all the work i didn't do last Friday, the head's ranking really does seem to carry quite a lot of weight. Anything other than a 1:1 and the odds are very much against you, but if you get the top ranking you're in a with a shot. Head is going to predict greater depth across the board in Y6 and we've got five years of reports and tests to prove that's a reasonable expectation, so there's not a lot more we can do other than cross our fingers.
Other options are thin on the ground. We looked at our local-ish private schools and there's no universe in which we could afford to send him even if they were 20% cheaper. Looked over the border into Herts where there's a decent comp but he'd have to cycle four miles along hilly, dark, twisty 60mph roads to get there, and in most of the past decade we've been too far away to get a place anyway. As for the Bucks state options at which we could realistically expect to get a place, our local is the best of a generally uninspiring bunch.
He'll be fine there, it's not a hive of scum and villainy or anything like that, we're not worried about him getting stabbed, he'll get to walk to school and be close to all his current friends. Someone we know who was in a similar situation last year said their DS is loving being top of the class in everything. And of course GCSE pass rates etc are about averages rather than individuals. Just because less than half of children got grade five or above in English and maths, it doesn't mean that nobody got a a dozen grade nines. It's just that, if you'll forgive me the parental rose-tinted specs for a moment, everyone who has ever met him or taught him says he's exactly the kind of kid that grammars were originally created to serve. State-educated, hard-working, academically able. If we're going to have this stupid system, he should at least benefit from it.