Dame Alice Owen's School - sibling policy?

[GlassMatryoshka]

Dame Alice Owen's School (DAO) is very much an anomaly in many respects. Amongst other things, it seems quite odd to me that a secondary school with such a competitive intake, with a good number of students commuting in from some distance away, would also have a sibling policy.

So if I could have the temerity to ask: Should DAO rethink its sibling policy?

Before responding, may I please ask that you put yourself in the mind of someone responsible for high-level policy making decisions and NOT from the point of view of someone with a vested interest, i.e. a parent with multiple DCs. Of course parents with more than one child would say it needs to be kept for a host of individual reasons - this should be patently obvious.

If I could ask that this question is considered in the broadest possible terms - both for the longer term view and in the greater scheme of things.

So if I could have the temerity to ask: Should DAO rethink its sibling policy?

As PPs have said, it would be difficult for it to do so, because a sibling policy is a very common 'comprehensive school' policy and DAO is not a grammar school.

Like many things in Britain, you would never invent it if you were starting from here, but rubbing it out and starting again isn't going to happen.

I have no idea what you were trying to say in your first sentence or how it related to my comments.

DAO is a partially selective school - it is an established, thriving, highly in-demand school for which being partially selective is a core piece of what defines it and makes it successful. It is primarily intended to benefit students in particular areas seeking a partially selective school. People who want a pure comprehensive school or a pure grammar school are not key stakeholders for DAO in the same way that people who want Italian food aren't a priority voice for your local Indian restaurant. People living an hour away are also not key stakeholders in terms of this being their local school, so if they're campaigning for the school to be changed in order to meet their needs then those are simply not priority voices to be listened to. The idea that parents living an hour away from a school should be able to demand the school change a fundamental, longstanding aspect of its nature in order to make it easier for them to get their child in is extremely silly.

Herts has plenty of true comprehensives on offer to those wanting that, but the people who fight to get into DAO do so in large part because it is not a true comprehensive. Herts intentionally does not offer full grammars and it will not turn any of its schools into one, but parents living an hour away who want a school that is fully selective can pursue grammar spots in London or Berks.

I agree with others that it shouldn't be classified as a comprehensive in whatever rankings media orgs put out, but that's absolutely not a problem that needs to be fixed by changing their admissions criteria.

@GravyBoatWars

It is primarily intended to benefit students in particular areas seeking a partially selective school.

People who want a pure comprehensive school or a pure grammar school are not key stakeholders for DAO.... People living an hour away are also not key stakeholders in terms of this being their local school, so if they're campaigning for the school to be changed in order to meet their needs then those are simply not priority voices to be listened to.

What is so special about families in those specific areas who are seeking a partially selective school that justifies such unusual admissions criteria? The schools is funded by the state and, as such, is paid for by both the nearby residents who might want another choice of comprehensive and those who live within a feasible commuting distance who might want another opportunity for a super-selective. Why do you think their voices should not be listened to?

Some people want DAO to exist as it has been. Why should everyone else pay for this without input?

I think given it's academic results and the high ratings given by parents of pupils who attend they actually have a really good admissions policy.

@GravyBoatWars

People who want a pure comprehensive school or a pure grammar school are not key stakeholders for DAO.... People living an hour away are also not key stakeholders in terms of this being their local school, so if they're campaigning for the school to be changed in order to meet their needs then those are simply not priority voices to be listened to.

Your position seems to be that, in any discussion (or government consultation) about whether DAO should change its admissions policy, only those people who want to keep the status quo should be heard. That would be an echo chamber, not a consultation, resulting in a foregone conclusion.

Policymaking has to take into account the perspectives of individual stakeholders like that 23rd parent, but it needs to fit those individual perspectives into a far more complex picture.

I made the mistake of assuming that you were prepared to engage in a serious discussion of possibilities. My bad.

I'm going to respond once more.

As the partially-selective school it is and has long been DAO has roughly 5 applicants queuing up for every place available and is serving its pupils incredibly well. This specific offering is wildly in demand and performing its aims at an impressive level and different offerings are already available for area students who want something else. You ask what if more nearby parents want pure comps instead of DAO's partially selective option but this question is entirely moot - local families simply are not finding themselves stuck with DAO when what they really wanted was a pure comp, and DAO has no unused places representing underutilized resources. So how would you justify taking away the wildly in-demand, highly successful offering from the queue of families who seek it out?

DAO is consistently justifying its existence in its current form through its success and the sky-high demand for places there. For as long as that continues to be true, someone wants to get rid of DAO as it exists now or turn it into something else would need to demonstrate that DAO's existence is actually causing enough harm to outweigh that demand and success. If you want to argue scarcity of resources and a specific unmet need in the area that you think should be prioritized over all of the students who desire this option and the clear benefits to its students that DAO provides then identify it, because that's what would need to happen to force DAO to change its core approach.

To be clear, DAO can't be turned into a super selective under current laws (nor can new grammars be created and there is no widespread political movement to change that), but any families who desperately want a grammar over DAO's model can (and do) seek that out elsewhere.

Why should everyone else pay for this without input?
As a general taxpayer you get input on law and policy (at the national level and for your own LA). Campaign for the expansion or restriction of academically selective schools in accordance with what you want your tax dollars to go to and DAO will have to follow that along with all other schools.

I really wish I had seen this before spending time on a respectful, thoughtful discussion. What a bizarre mischaracterization of everything what I've written.

@user149799568 why so snarky?

As it is not possible to create new grammars/super selectives, there won't be a change to the DAO criteria which allow ranking by score for pupils who live an hour away. Therefore PP is right to say that these aren't key stakeholders for DAO.

The things that might be consulted on are removing the Islington link and removing the 'aptitude' places. I assume that, as with church schools, there are historic/endowment matters that make the former tricky.

The latter would make DAO 'just another local comprehensive' - there's certainly a philosophical case that all schools should become comprehensives. I'm not clear from your posts if that is your view. - ?

@SheilaFentiman

there's certainly a philosophical case that all schools should become comprehensives. I'm not clear from your posts if that is your view. - ?

To the extent that I have an idea of an "ideal state school" right now, it would be a comprehensive school large enough to support multiple sets to differentiate ability levels. In a dense environment such as London, there would be large, overlapping formal catchments, perhaps designed to limit commutes to an hour by public transport, with places allocated by ballot within the catchment in case of oversubscription.

My bias is against explicit selection because any form of selection generally gives the option for parents to segregate their children and the flip side of selecting for a group of like-minded parents and their children is selecting against others. Furthermore, the empirical evidence I have seen about academic selection in state schools is, at best, inconclusive about any benefits either to the students or to society, particularly if you account for the socioeconomic stratification that usually accompanies the academic stratification.

However, I am willing to engage in a discussion about how the system might be improved. I do not find "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" to be a mindset conducive to improvement. I will also point out that it tends to be the beneficiaries, or those who see themselves as potential beneficiaries, of the status quo who make that argument.

Thanks @user149799568

IMO, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is a mischaracterisation of the prior discussion.

However, I think the randomisation is something similar to what happens in Brighton (I’m hazy on the details) and results in children criss crossing each other on the way to school and additional transport miles/tiring commutes. If every comp is as good as every other comp (the dream!) then I don’t see the benefit of increasing travel times in a ballot system, as rested children with plenty of time to do homework will do better.

I appreciate that you identified London - would you see the distance/catchment criteria working differently in areas with limited public transport?

I am most familiar with London so have little to add about the difficulties of transport in rural areas beyond that, on a theoretical level, I can see that such an approach might be impractical in an area where, hypothetically, there are only enough students in a 15 mile radius to support one good sized state school.

Closer to central London, where the population is more dense, an hour by public transport may be unnecessarily large for a catchment; I mentioned that figure because it's not unusual for children who gain specialist places, e.g., music, language or straight out academic (HBS, QE, DAO from Islington), to be willing to travel that far. Perhaps restrict catchments to no more than 20-30 minutes by public transport or walking for oversubscription ballot based places but retain no restrictions for specialist places (if such places are deemed desirable in our dream land). The details can vary but I would aim to avoid selection by house price. I would hope that a system that reduces these forms of selection gets closer to the dream.

Appreciate this isn't really the point, and apologies if this seems like a derail, but in a way this thread illustrates what I'm about to say - the London state schooling system seems pretty broken right now. Kids travelling for miles and miles to get in to a decent school, and sharp-elbowed parents doing whatever they can to get their kids in. Wealthier families have a clear advantage because they have the means to tutor and buy houses in catchment areas. Meanwhile, less desirable schools get even less desirable - because they won't have the level of involved parents that the sought-after schools do....

I grew up in London and 30 years ago it simply wasn't like this. Of course there were 'better' schools than others back then, but generally - most kids went to their most local secondary and everyone did just fine.

Equally, because private schools weren't so astronomically expensive and there was the assisted place scheme - there was a broader mix of kids in private schools - and I wonder, if that meant that there was LESS competition for state school places, because there weren't so many priced out of private?

Either way, it's not a great state of affairs and I really hope this (and future) governments can get London state schools back to a better place.

All you can do is put a challenge into the OSA.

It doesn’t matter what we think. The Adjudicator will decide.

Whatever the criteria, they need to be objective. So a fixed catchment or a direct line distance are (generally) preferred to shortest walking route etc, as there’s more room to argue the latter. As public transport is subject to change outside of the school system control (bus routes change, trains have more stops at peak time, slowing them down etc) then that might result in more appeals.

People tend to be willing to let their children travel when they are invested and choose that themselves, for their child, based on what they see as a good fit for their own child. Not when the Nanny State tells them to.
Nobody has the right to piggyback of the free will involvement of some state school parents, in both their own DC’s education, and that of the school they attend. The State has no right to this extra time investment made by parents on behalf of their own children. It is quasi charitable investment.

For the next two years, all grammars and partially selective schools will be dominating the league tables and the green-eyed monster will be alive and kicking. This is because there is no Progress 8, just Attainment 8, because KS2 SATS were cancelled in 2020 and 2021. Predictably, there will be a backlash against all these high attaining state schools.
Some people will jump on this unique situation regarding reporting of stats to further their own agenda.

Well it worked very well in that context until the early 90s/late 80s. They took anyone and had an upper and lower band.

Just a reminder that this poll closes tomorrow.

If you have any experience with or knowledge of DAO, please vote and let us know how you feel about their sibling policy.

One group I forgot to mention was past alumni. If you went to DAO as a student and are happy to share, I'd really love to hear.

It makes sense and brings DAO in line with all of the other semi-selective schools in Hertfordshire (Watford Grammar, Parmiters and the rest of the consortium schools). None of these schools are pure grammar schools, in fact a minority of the places are aptitude based, so it would be odd, in my opinion, if there was not a sibling policy. I understand why pure grammar schools don't have one, but that isn't the case here. For context I am a parent with a child who has scored highly enough for a place at DAO & the consortium schools next year (and am delighted there is a sibling policy so I never have to go through the 11+ drama again!)

Thank you to all who replied.

It has now been a week and the poll has closed. As limited and imperfect as it may have been, it helps to know how the MN community feels about this. For the record, I did not vote, nor did I speak up much, as I didn't want to sway things while it was open.

If it is ok, I'll use the next couple of posts to discuss further.

Before getting into it, I think it would be useful to establish as close a picture as possible to what this school is today in reality.

DAO is not some kind of idyllic neighbourhood comprehensive by any means. I believe this is now fairly understood by this thread. But for anyone tempted to think that it is or should be a comp, I would ask to consider the following:

• Over the course of centuries since its founding, the arc of it being located in Potters Bar is a relatively shorter phenomenon (49 years out of 412 total). It is a historically transplanted school. As such, the relationship of organism to host must and continue to be carefully considered and managed. And their particular and unique history has had some far ranging impacts, which I'd like to get to in a bit.

• Whilst it is technically not a grammar per se, it is highly "selective" - and I'd like to use that term liberally. As PPs have pointed out and explained, the cohort there are in fact heavily influenced by a form of pre-screening, and this reflects on the results they get. There are those who will say that DAO is, in effect, almost like a grammar without the name. Going by the stats of their aptitude test, many other kids who attend grammars in other parts of the country which are in all-grammar areas, would not likely get in. This would probably qualify the academic places at DAO to be comparable to the so-called "super-selectives". The current head is known for drum beating that they are "unapologetically academic," with the hint to prospective parents of not sending your kid here if this is not the right school for them.

• DAO may have a catchment area, but this stretches from Islington to Welwyn Garden City. One cannot think of this as being "local". This is not some quaint 3 mile radius, it can in places be up to 4 times that.

• It is also not a primary school. Plenty of DAO parents each year, seem perfectly content to send their YR7 child (particularly with regard to DC1s), at the tender age of 11, schelping their way there across Hertfordshire and North London by whatever means. The level of hand-holding necessary in primary school is naturally lessened when secondary begins. But given the distances many DAO kids travel, it can be argued they are made to grow up sooner than others.

• It's the money, isn't it? While DAO's time in Potters Bar may be relatively short compared to the time it was in Islington, it is all intrinsically related to and a product of gradual land development, as well as being a beneficiary of the property boom. Enter the Dame Alice Owen Foundation and The Worshipful Company of Brewers... How many state schools have a benefactor regularly gifting it well over £1m in grants and bursaries on top of normal government funding? In a similar way to which DAO is not technically a grammar, but quite grammar-like, it may not be a private school, although it certainly has private-like benefits. I sometimes question whether this money is a burden as much as it has been a boon. But for better or worse, one cannot go back in time to undo it, the turkey has been pumped into what it is today. Leaving us lot, drawn as we are, like leeches at the gate of an estate of a recently deceased heiress, with whom we have a tenuous relationship at best, to listen to the reading of her will. When I consider this, I often find myself wondering what Dame Alice herself would be thinking about it all.

This is no typical or ordinary school. And I think understanding this is critical before getting back on topic.

For reference, I am paraphrasing DAO's admissions policy:

DAO admissions criteria for their 200 places, in order of preference:

1. Looked after kids.
2. Closest 22 in distance.
3. Siblings. (There doesn't appear to be a fixed number to this, so in theory it could vacillate hugely? But based on the last 5+ years, this has consistently been the largest category.)
4. Musical Test (up to 10).
5. Academic Test (up to 65).
6. Kids of staff.
7. The remaining distance kids.

I hope this is clear and correct. Please let me know if not and I'll edit.

With the admissions criteria clear for us all to see, if I could expound -

For criterias 1 (looked after) and 6 (staff kids) - I would consider these to be "understandably sympathetic." No point to argue with really.

For criterias 4 (music) and 5 (academic) - It is undeniable that these places were earned, very competitively one must add.

For criterias 2 and 7 (distance) - With the exception of families who genuinely have deep roots in the area (and thus rightfully deserving), one could say these places were also "earned", albeit in a wholly different way than the academic/music places.

Now we come to criteria 3 (siblings) - How can anyone say these places were earned? Strictly on their own, they are not. They are not at all like criteria 4/5 or 2/7. Are they like 1/6? On this, and in the context of the kind of school that DAO is, I am struggling to consider them as "understandably sympathetic."

To illustrate why this niggles at me, I'll give some examples:

SCENARIO 1: The "Coat-tail Rider"

When it comes to kids who get in via a test (academic or musical), DAO is known for taking the cream of the cream. So a DC who falls just short of the cut-off at number 66 on the academic criteria, is highly likely to be a very able child. On its own, this is not a problem, "Sorry, but a line had to be drawn somewhere." Parents of academic child 66 would have no reason to feel injustice. But... because of the sibling policy, it is not so simple and straight cut.

As PPs have pointed out and explained, the number of academically "selective families" getting in each year are, by virtue of the sibling policy, generally greater than 65. There are younger siblings among the academic-route families for whom it is completely unknown whether they would have scored higher than academic child 66. Especially since younger siblings aren't even allowed to take any entrance tests (as the sibling criteria is above the test-based places). Given the prevalence of parents overloading their older DCs so their younger DCs could get a free ride on older DCs coat-tails, (and could you blame the parents if the system allows it,) I suspect there would be a good number of younger siblings of previous older academic place DCs who would otherwise have easily been beaten by academic child 66 in a fair contest. How would you feel if you were the parent of academic child 66?

On the other hand, it is also without doubt that many families who have an older academic DC at DAO, would be able to produce a younger DC who would likewise be able to get in via the academic criteria. So, why not let this happen properly? Younger DCs who can get in on their merits are being denied the legitimacy that comes with earning their place fair and square. As PPs have shared, if I was a younger DC, I also would not want the quiet cloud of personal ignominy hovering over me for the rest of my life. And what of some of these poor older DCs, being thus burdened with flying the family flag. If parents are happy to do this for DC1, shouldn't they also for DC2?

Should the purpose of a school like DAO really be to make the lives of parents with multiple DCs easier? Nevermind the potential long-term repercussions? (Probably a separate post there.)

SCENARIO 2: The "Address Houdini"

This is obviously not directed at families with long-standing roots in the immediate area. I also have no issue with families who manage to secure one of the distance places by moving into the tiny area that is necessary to do so, provided they actually stay there for the full duration of their DCs time at DAO and are thus "local". This happens everywhere (and you can't blame people for having money and using it as they see fit).

But I'm sure you all know what is meant by the "Address Houdini". They move in by whatever means in time to secure a distance place, stay for the minimum time to be beyond official reproach, then are free to move wherever else that may suit them better. When I trawled through DAO's website, I've seen references to the school checking in to verify the address up to December of the first term, but I couldn't find anything conclusive about any continually sustained effort to ensure a local place stays as being used by a local resident for the full duration of the DCs time there? Please correct me if I am wrong.

Assuming Houdini-behaviour is possible at DAO, with a catchment stretching as far as over 12 miles, it would be pretty easy to conceal this to other parents. Now, if one were to do this at DAO for a single DC, that would be dastardly enough. Fine, you did the dirty, so be it. But... how about that sibling policy again?

The Address Houdini at this point is now no longer local, and yet, with one DC firmly entrenched at DAO, they now have a perennial pass for however many more successive DCs they have. Is it really right that a "local" family who is no longer local should have a back door route? The sibling rule not only makes this possible, it sanctifies it.

And how about this as a darker variation: A cynical businessperson could use their maximum leverage to buy up any and all available homes which may be within the 22 closest to the school, then rent them out at extortionate prices. The tenant families, who would probably only want to stay for as long as it is needed to ensure their DC1's place is secure, can then later move somewhere cheaper, in the safe knowledge that their younger DCs would get in via sibling places. Get in the next family, rinse and repeat. What would be so local about any of this?

I cannot help feeling that the effect of DAO's sibling policy (and perhaps those of other similar partially selective schools,) allows, and in fact encourages, the creation of a slew of miniature dynasties-by-default, by automatically conferring them with monopolistic advantage. When you consider what is at stake with this particular school, is this really fair?

While sibling policies are rightly expected in a happy-go-lucky local/neighbourhood comp, DAO does not seem to me to fall within this category.