11 Plus Exams Forum

I was chatting to a member of staff yesterday at Ribston. She said that last year Ribston was full on allocation day, and HSG had a lot of vacancies. This year the reverse has happened.

I'm curious as to why. I know that HSG has changed the pass level from having to get 105 in both exams to scoring a total of 210 in both. But I can't see that that would explain the spaces at Ribston. I wonder if parents heard on the grapevine that last year there were loads of spare places at HSG, so put that as their first choice. Very strange.

Maybe one year there will be a uniform scoring method for all the grammars in Glos.

Do you think it has something to do with the pass mark set by Ribston?

Presumably if it is based on previous years then it is set a little too high as more pupils will have got into Denmark road directly this year, leaving less for Ribston.

Some of those Denmark places last year will have been filled by appeals' for girls that didn't pass the exam, especially I should think from parents living in the Cheltenham area who may not want to go the extra mile or so to Ribston if they have a good alternative closer to home.

My daughter has been accepted into Denmark Rd. I've had her results and passed over the 210 mark, but she would not have qualified last year by the scores she had. The letter did say 216 passed but only 114 places. I wonder how many, if any, were declined a place this year.

alisonc wrote:My daughter has been accepted into Denmark Rd. I've had her results and passed over the 210 mark, but she would not have qualified last year by the scores she had. The letter did say 216 passed but only 114 places. I wonder how many, if any, were declined a place this year.

From what I've heard, out of 6 on the waiting list who scored 210, 2 got places and the other 4 are the waiting list.

Out of interest, do you know if they just scored 210, or higher?

alisonc wrote:Out of interest, do you know if they just scored 210, or higher?

I'm fairly sure that those 2 had scored 210, as have the other 4 left on the waiting list.

Amazing what you hear through the grapevine, and amazing how many parents we know whose children took the 11+ last November. For instance, my DD will know at least 25 other children starting Stroud High through school, music, youth & dance clubs and even from Nursery, as well as a fair few children higher up the school. The day of the 11+ there were just to many parents I'd not seen for ages who I wanted to natter to.

The way the system is organised in Gloucs means that this is more likely to happen, Capers. Quite a small percentage of children in this area sit the test. However my boys' violin teacher was telling us that many of her pupils go to the grammar schools, at least one will be joining my DS in Tommy's this year.

Interesting that only 2 out of 6 were given places though. When that happened at Tommy's a couple of years back they had to let all the boys in who had te same score regardless of going over their admission no. How have they justified it as I thought the two schools had the same admissions criterea?

Edit

Looked up admissions because I was curious about above. I don't know if this has been added since the above case but it says.

In the event of a tie between two or more children when applying criterion 3 (i.e. children obtaining the same score) where there are not enough places available to offer all children a place at the school, a process of random allocation will be followed by the Local Authority.

Would love to know how this 'random' approach is orchestrated as if my child was one of those 6 I would be expecting a high degree of accountability to prove that there had been no bias toward certain pupils at the expense of mine.