11 Plus Exams Forum

Just curious and wondered if schools will have submitted their lists of offers of places by now to the LEA or is it a last minute rush? (Shouldn't be, considering how long we have all had to wait!!). How long does it really take to mark all these papers?

Well I don't know exactly but I guess that the papers would have been marked long long ago. It's not the marking that takes a long time - it's the allocation of the places.

Say school X has 1000 applications and 200 places - remember the school does not know in what order the child has ranked them. They rank every child who applied against the entrance criteria & therefore work out the 200 children with the top claim on those places - whether this is sibling / test / distance etc. They send that list to the LEA who then compare it to each child's CAF form. Say 100 of those children ranked school X first but the rest ranked another school - for which they also qualified - higher. The LEA goes back to school X & says "send us the next 100 children who are top of your list now". School X does this, & the LEA again compares the list with the CAF forms of those children. Anyone ranking another school higher - again for which the child has qualified - is discounted. Now the LEA has to ask school X for the names of another lot of children & so on & so on....no wonder it takes so long!

Gosh, I've not explained it very well & it's probably much more complicated than this. But as allocation day is only next week I'm sure it's been sorted out by now!

The school send the whole list in one go - all ranked down to 1000 or however many applicants they have.

Yes, I imagine that the LEA must have the complete list as I don't see them going back to the schools for 'part 2' etc. and people will just have to hope that their cross-referencing is very accurate esp. for siblings, twins, triplets etc. Would be interested to know if people have discovered that errors have been made in this process.

Yes, there's a list for each criterion: distance, music score, test score. The same applicant may occur on more than one list, and if they qualify under more than one criterion the school's rules specify which one they should be counted under.

Parents can request audit reports after allocation, and maladministration is grounds for appeal, but it seems very few such cases have occurred in recent years.

Thanks to Guest55 & WP for correcting me! Although the waiting is dreadful, I can understand why the process takes so long though.

We were told by Mrs Stevens at Parmiters that all papers were marked within a week of the test.

Cross referencing for twins by county seems to be non existent as we were told by Queens' that County don't tie up the two applications - hence my twins being offered different schools last year.

This, despite the dact we were careful to note that each child had a twin on the top of the form.

Good luck to all waiting this year - I remember the sleepless nights well!

Don't forget that you can go on the waiting lists for any school, not just the ones you ranked should you not be happy with what you are offered.

Why oh Why then could they not notify us of schools sooner

toony wrote:Don't forget that you can go on the waiting lists for any school, not just the ones you ranked should you not be happy with what you are offered.

Yes, but there is another change this year: if you get a waiting list place you'll be deemed to have accepted it (without being asked), and your original place will be re-allocated. That's for schools whose admissions are managed by the county; it's unclear what happens with VA and foundation schools. So don't go on a waiting list unless you mean it.

The allocation has to be across County boundaries so it is not just up to one county to sort themselves out!

There are still Bucks selection appeals going on - delayed because of the snow - so the information won't be 'swapped' until Wednesday!