Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

silvercar

Schools: We live about a mile away from the Herts/ London border. There is a super selective grammar school just over the border that DS1 went to. That (and the girls equiv a few miles away) are the only pure grammar school for miles, so the standard is high. It also adjusts for age (over adjusts I would say as in DS1's year there were a very large number of summer born kids). Over half the applicants use the test as practice for the private schools that are in abundance locally.

There are a few faith schools (jewish & catholic) within travelling distance. There are selective schools (with I think some combination of sibling/ catchment within the selection or additional to it also within travelling distance). For local non-faith schools there is only one and it is not that good.
There are a steady stream of school buses taking children out of the area each day.

zagubov

Our borough has grammar schools; DD went to one, and recently DS attended the local comp which is first-rate. Both were walking distance.

London schools have improved a lot since I first moved here in the 80s. But if you want to be sure your kids get into half-decent schools you don't half have to do some homework of your own.

LydiaJ

DD is at a super-selective grammar. This is selection partly by academic ability and partly by parental ability to pay for tutoring (before the entrance test), school bus, etc.

DS is at an excellent comp. This is selection by parental ability to pay the house prices within the catchment.

I find it hard to know which I am supposed to feel more guilty about. Whatever reservations one may have about academic selection for education, it is not clear that selection by ability to afford to live in the right area is any fairer.

Doozergirl wrote: »

Interesting stuff, Lydia.

Thanks

Doozergirl wrote: »

We have a three choice form in County but thankfully test results are issued before the forms are due in. We also have a three tier system so could put down all 'over the border' grammars without worrying about non-selective schools.

Glad it worked well for you. I was lucky with timing - LNE's life insurance payout arrived when DS was in Y4. It took me just over a year before I bought a house with it, so that meant I was moving when he was half way through Y5, so I was able to choose the school first and the house such that it would guarantee him a place at it.

Legally requiring the test results to be issued before the form is due in was one of the reforms of the admissions regulations of ~10 years ago. I agree - "thankfully" is the word I'd use about it too!

Doozergirl wrote: »

Ivyleaf, my one piece of advice would be to practice the format of the test. We weren't putting big pressure on DD but the test paper is separate to the answer sheet up here and it's a multiple choice computer read object.

I think it's terrible as any child is as likely as another to start marking in the wrong boxes as there is no immediate visual differentiation of which question you're answering on the sheet.

Skip one question and you can easily end up with several correct answers in the wrong rows as a result. Lots of rubbing out ensues - if the child realises!

Good advice.

ivyleaf wrote: »

DGS has had a brilliant year at the primary school he moved to :j The best sentence in his report was "He is polite, kind, and sensible, and has made many friends."

Well done him! :T:T:T

SingleSue

Mine all went to state school, including one which went from being quite decent to one that needed improvement.

Youngest is now at an excellent 6th form college, rated the best in the county with huge competition to get in as their results (and I am not just talking about paper results) are amazing. We got lucky with youngest as there was slightly less competition to get in at the time and because the person we were talking to on results day could see something in youngest that could make him a very special student to have.

I don't think we have grammar schools here but we do have a few fee paying ones.

LydiaJ

SingleSue wrote: »

Mine all went to state school, including one which went from being quite decent to one that needed improvement.

Youngest is now at an excellent 6th form college, rated the best in the county with huge competition to get in as their results (and I am not just talking about paper results) are amazing. We got lucky with youngest as there was slightly less competition to get in at the time and because the person we were talking to on results day could see something in youngest that could make him a very special student to have.

I don't think we have grammar schools here but we do have a few fee paying ones.

After everything your youngest went through with his previous school, and all the times we NP got angry on your behalf about the way the school was treating him, it is such a delight that the 6th form college is so great - in general and for him specifically.

With DS at a comp, DD at a state grammar, and me teaching at an independent school, our little family has all the main options represented. Until I moved here I had no idea state grammars still existed anywhere other than Kent - which for some reason I had heard about. There certainly weren't any where I grew up (Bristol) or spent my twenties (Oxford).

SingleSue

It's so good that they have had to increase the buses from this town to cope with the extra people. Those who haven't been able to get in there go to other ones in other towns and the demand is so great, that they also run specific buses too.

5 years ago, the majority of those students would have gone to the local 6th form which was very much a decent 6th form at the time. To give a measure of how many students they have been losing, the amount of students taking A2/level 3 qualifications this past year is a third of the amount who took A2/level 3 qualifications the year James did.

Youngest's college is now so over subscribed that there are a fair few disappointed students this year who didn't manage to get in. Their requirments for level 3 study is higher than for most other colleges/6th forms, hence why youngest had to repeat year 11 at the college and obtain A or B (he got A* A's) in those qualifications before commencing level 3...at his previous school, he met the requirements for going straight onto level 3.

Youngest has said that was the making of him and although he was gutted/upset at the time, it has turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.

silvercar

Legally requiring the test results to be issued before the form is due in was one of the reforms of the admissions regulations of ~10 years ago. I agree - "thankfully" is the word I'd use about it too!

Doesn't happen at the super-selective near here. You need to wait until school allocation day to find out if your score was high enough to be given a place straight away or are placed on the fast moving waiting list.

Chicken and egg with the house prices vs decent schools. Over subscribed schools push house prices up. Bar a few headliners, you don't have many excellent schools in cheap areas. If you do, they don't stay cheap for long.

Doozergirl

michaels wrote: »

I am not really in favour of grammar schools, in the past they may have been a route for bright but poor youngsters to progress but now they are all about parental spending on tutoring. I also think we should educate our children with all their peers (including no public schools please) with streaming and setting within schools to manage different abilities.

It has been a mega solar month 127% of expected

Don't do amazon prime, I think it is a brilliant piece of marketing tho!

All very noble, until you send your child to the local school where you don't have to pay to be in catchment and discover they don't have a completed piece of work in their book!

ivyleaf

Our CAF has room to put up to six schools, and parents are urged to put down as many as possible. I remember reading a forum post last year from a mother in our borough whose child had been confidently expected to pass, but somehow didn't, and she was sitting with the CAF in front of her and said (or rather, typed) despairingly "I'm supposed to put six schools on this form, and I don't want him to go to b****y any of them!"

DGS's cousin is extremely clever and is doing the test for a boys' super-selective in the next-door borough. Their entrance test is in two parts; everyone takes the first part, then they have to be "invited" to take the second part, and the CAF has to be in before the result is out IYSWIM.

Doozergirl Thank you He's had lots of practice. Perhaps the child I mentioned above did what you warned against and ended up putting his answers in the wrong places!

michaels

Doozergirl wrote: »

All very noble, until you send your child to the local school where you don't have to pay to be in catchment and discover they don't have a completed piece of work in their book!

But any form of selection is about 'I have won means someone else has lost' plus rather than being at school with the whole of society you only mix with 'people like us'