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.

@GlassMatryoshka why & when did it change from the successful non selective school it once was? It seems off to me that ex pupils can’t routinely send their own children (?)

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.

I'm honestly proud of myself for making it this far into your pontificating before I nearly spit out my coffee.

Yes, those 11 year-olds living in lifelong ignominy for [checks notes] going to the same secondary school as their older siblings via a well-trod sibling criteria just like 60% of your year. Woe! How shall they ever rebuild their tattered public reputations from this disgrace?

For all that waffle you seem to have left out your proposal for fixing this injustice. Do you think the problems you've spotted are best solved by having 65 selective spots and then everyone else gets in on distance? Or is it the selective criteria that should be disposed of entirely to save the souls of all involved? Or shall DAO be closed entirely?

And for FWIW, no highly oversubscribed school can hope to prevent parents moving to the area just to gain a place. But DAO currently has one of the strictest approaches I've seen. If a family has moved to the address they apply from within three years of the October application close then they have to have actually sold their prior residence or the new address is disregarded. If a child moves from their application address before 31 Dec of the year they actually start they lose the place. Primaries are also routinely contacted, an application address more than 3 miles from the primary can trigger an admissions council investigation, multiple years of council tax records are often requested, and snitching on fellow families is actively encouraged. There comes a point where schools and LA's have to let families have the places they've gone through extreme lengths to obtain within the letter of the rules.

https://damealiceowens.herts.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2025/02/FINAL-DETERMINED-ADDRESS-GUIDANCE-DOCUMENT-2026-27.pdf

And @PinkPanther57 DAO has had both selective places and a sibling criteria for at least 30 years if not longer. What's changed is the level of competition for those places.

I live in east Herts and there are several partially selective schools near me. They all have a sibling policy too. The difference with DAO is that the selection percentage is higher than usual (it's 10% for the schools near me), but otherwise it's a very normal Herts policy.

It’s always been a popular school & a very good one with excellent resources getting good results. It was sending kids to great Universities back in the 80s.

What’s changed is that you used to be able to send below average & average ability kids who lived in Potters Bar & local area. It served the community & local primaries were a general feeder. A true comprehensive..It seems to have done this until early 90s I think. Certainly in late 80s this is what happened. What drove the policy change I wonder? Just curious. Was it increasing popularity meaning they needed more of a filter & could become more selective? I met a local couple & their friends, yes some years back, who attended & loved it but hadn’t been able to send children. Seemed a shame.

Dear goddess, @GlassMatryoshka, you certainly have Thoughts!

Gordon’s, which is a state day and boarding school, has a very small catchment for its day places and it helps avoid the “address Houdini” by splitting sibling priority, such that siblings beyond a certain distance are lower down the stack than non-siblings within that distance. (Effectively, you can’t move away until you’ve got all your kids in). It isn’t selective though so everyone is already very close (even those who move away are likely to be less than a couple of miles away)

It’s nonsense for you to talk about ignominy for siblings in the same essay that you note siblings are the biggest group. The majority of DAO pupils get in on location or siblings. A sizeable minority get in on aptitude. No ignominy!

While - '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' - seems a bit bonkers, I have seen slightly weird dynamics play out in the families I know where the older one has got into the school and younger siblings follow as a result.

I think people also need to remember that while the results appear impressive, a LOT of tutoring goes on behind the scenes.

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?

I am not sure it would be lawful for a state school to do this.

Ultimately, people sometimes have to move. Death, divorce, loss of income meaning downsizing, landlord selling up etc etc. AFAIK no state school can (or should) bind pupils to stay "local" beyond a limited time window after starting at the school.

ETA oh, and the policy of making pupils stay at the application address until 31/12 has the - no doubt somewhat intentional - effect of making it harder for Dastardly Businessmen to string together lease after lease in an unbroken chain, as the next family wanting a yr 7 place can't then be in the very nearby house by the application deadline of 31/10 in yr 6.

According to the 2002 Ofsted report, the number of academic aptitude places went down from 90 to 65 in 1999.

Totally irrelevant to this post but Gary Kemp, founder of Spandau Ballet, went to DAO when it was a state grammar school under the control of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) when the school was still based in the London Borough of Islington

I wonder why it didn’t stay a Grammar school when it moved to PB? Poss not a Herts policy? Maybe if that was always in its DNA over arching objective to shift back that way? Interesting on Gary…

A one point in 80s to 90s (?) you could be almost certain you’d get your child in from 5 miles away & they’d thrive even if no chance of passing a selective school exam. They streamed.

@GravyBoatWars and @SheilaFentiman Would I be correct in sensing that you both speak with some degree of obliviousness with regard to the test-based places?

In the interests of disclosure, my DC will be trying for a place. Our prospective route will be via the academic test, for which we live in one of the catchment areas. My DC is an only child.

I bear no ill will to parents with multiple DCs, as they are only going by what the system allows. I also bear no ill will to those who live near the school. In fact, I do support the need for a school like DAO to be integrated with its community, as I hope my posts would have conveyed.

Whilst my choice of the word "ignominy" was perhaps ill-advised, (even though I tried softening it and highlighting it as my own personal sentiment,) I do stand by it. My reference to this was purely from the POV of a family who put their older DC through the test-based routes. I only said it in the post about the academic coat-tail rider scenario - please take this with context.

If I was a younger sibling, knowing my older sibling worked their butt off to get in, I really wouldn't feel it was right that I shouldn't have to carry my own weight to get in as well. Especially when one considers the value of an education here with the benefit of all the money this school gets.

@GlassMatryoshka the problem is your basis seems to be that DAO (which I don’t know but looks v similar to a school near me in Sutton (not one of the grammars) has unfair criteria in a world where admissions is fair.

Because the school admissions process is always fundamentally unfair. Those who are advantaged academically, musically and crucially financially are always going to get the schools they want over those that aren’t

DD passed both the grammar and the similar school academic test and was borderline for a musical place but didn’t help DS! That said he went to the school that suited him

and that is the issue isn’t it - not that the policy exists but sometimes parents (and the child themselves) ignore the fact that just because the school works for sibling(s) doesn’t mean it works for them.

DS would have gone to the school he goes to no matter what DD had done and DD would never have gone to the school DS is at because different schools suit them but that is up to parents to realise

DDs good friend did go through on sibling policy on the back of her sister academic prowess and I think she did struggle a little with that but I think she struggled with being in her sisters academic shadow no matter what and the school did suit other elements of their personality

Would I be correct in sensing that you both speak with some degree of obliviousness with regard to the test-based places?

I mean.. that's quite a rude phrase, so I wouldn't agree with it, nope!

I used to live in the area, my parents considered DAO for me, I have moved away and my kids go otherwhere, close family members have sat the test.

I am interested in admissions generally (AS me on education boards, if you wish) and have read the DAO policy... and have been interested enough to contribute repeatedly to this thread and even to google historic Ofsted reports for DAO.

So I would consider myself pretty well informed and not "oblivious". Cheers for that.

My apologies @SheilaFentiman . I didn't mean to insinuate anything.
And I very much welcome your discussion.

If you don't want to "insinuate" anything, you might consider adjusting the words you select... ignominy, obliviousness etc are strong words.

Hi PP57, as DAO was selective in Islington before the move, and you think it wasn't selective in the 80s/early 90s, do you know when it changed? The Ofsted report indicated 90 selective places up until 1999, so presumably it was selective for at least some of the 90s. I have googled but can't find the answer.

It’s better to have siblings at the same school.
It means there’s more variation between kids - you know like the real world.
I don’t think it’s for you to tell them about their admissions policy OP!

Anyone can comment on an admissions policy - either formally, through consultation, or informally.

Admissions in england are a bit of a mish mash, with church schools being one of the largest "you wouldn't invent them if you had a blank sheet of paper" areas - but education policy is of interest to discuss on a forum aimed largely at parents.

Gary was a bright boy who passed the 11+. By the time Martin joined the school in 1972, it was the first year of comprehensive schooling in most London boroughs, where the school you went to was determined by catchment area

Definitely wasn’t selective pre GCSE in 88/89. Some pupils didn’t do O level at all only CSE. Forms were divided into: D,O,W - upper band & E,N,S - lower band. They apparently reversed this every year to prevent any stigma. Pupils knew of course but good intent.

It seems this has all been forgotten & seems to have been a much fairer system? At least you could be virtually sure of a place if your child wanted to go & attended a local primary whatever their ability. I thought a real shame & unfair those who attended themselves often couldn’t get own kids in apparently.

I know of Goffs School - a comp in Goffs Oak, not far away, was once a Grammar & forced via Govt legislation to change to fully comp in late (?) 70s approx. Poss pre Thatcher Govt. Popular with Local families as still had the reputation & results of a Grammar for a good few years & dined out on that.

I wonder if Owens was forced to go fully comp on relocation to PB & keen to revert back to a Grammar eventually in all but name? If it had stayed fully Comp all these concerns of OP null & void. It was once simply a fab Comp that served its community.

thanks!

@PinkPanther57 looks like it was introduced between 1993 and 1997 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partiallyselectiveschool(England)

And that DAO may have been a tripartite/bilateral (i.e. banded) school before that, from how you describe it.