Calling parents from Kingston Borough and surrounding areas

[sgsgirl]

Sorry just to clarify my DS was one of 2 boys from his state school.

[Snowdaddy]

7. To prevent bright children in Brentford and Houslow from getting a grammar school education
8. To reduce the academic potential of Tiffins schools by reducing the ability of the intake
9. To give my child a better chance of getting a place

I'm still not convinced. It all depends on your definition of "local".

(Hint: I live 4.1 miles away)

Personally I wouldn't call 4 miles away unacceptable, Brentford has a direct bus the 65 anyway.

Maybe people further away should be pestering their local Council, and MP for grammar schools if they want them.

Re point 8, I think the ability reduction is marginal, yes the potential pool of kids is less so might start a few VR/NVR points lower, but this is likely to be offset by two factors (i) more alert children as they haven't spent an hour+ commuting each way so can learn faster because less tired (ii) the cost savings on holding such a big entrance exam allows more money to be used for interventions to assist anyone struggling.

[pudding34]

6. To raise house prices in Kingston
7. To prevent bright children in Brentford and Houslow from getting a grammar school education
8. To reduce the academic potential of Tiffins schools by reducing the ability of the intake
9. To give my child a better chance of getting a place

I'm still not convinced. It all depends on your definition of "local".

(Hint: I live 4.1 miles away)

Re point 6. Kingston house prices will not hinge on Tiffin distance criteria. They are already very high! Local Estate agents will list the local highly regarded schools in both the state and private sector. It is more likely to raise the prices of places further out that can claim to be in catchment for Tiffin.

[SunlampVexesEel]

Many eons ago I travelled 4 miles each way to secondary school and some of my friends travelled 12 miles each way (although they were pretty fed up with their journey!)

As a local parent (about 15 mins walk to both TS & TGS) I'm not convinced that distance is an appropriate criteria I'm afraid. Although our DD may not get a place I don't see the current system as unfair... it's simply a matter of getting the most correct answers.

Regards
SVE

[nvr star]

So is the local children percentage going down? and if so why?

Are fewer local kids applying, or are fewer local kids successful?

We don't have the data to answer this question on this forum, so we can all use our prejudice to hypothesize the answer.

[nvr star]

more alert children as they haven't spent an hour+ commuting each way so can learn faster because less tired

We don't have the data to answer this question on this forum.

Before making any decision, the Tiffin governors should look at the data. Is there a significant difference in the KS2 to GCSE progress of "local" kids versus those who commute "unacceptable distances"?

I commute to North London, my employer seems to be happy with that. They didn't want to hire a more alert local.

[nvr star]

1. To meet the aspiration of the local community.
2. To maintain the high standards of Tiffin Schools.
3. To alleviate secondary school place shortage in Kingston.
4. To reduce the number of children travelling from far distance to Kingston.
5. To reduce the cost and administrative burden of the School, as the number of candidates is now exceeding 2000.

OK ...

1. What are the aspirations of the local community, have you them? What if they aspire for Kingston to be the London centre of excellence for secondary education? And if the local community in Oxford aspire to have a university that serves the local population, then they too should have a 'distance criteria'.

2. How does reducing the talent pool maintain the standards? Have standards increased or decreased since 1993?

3. Not if Sutton takes a beggar my neighbour attitude and introduces a distance criteria that excludes Kingston kids.

4. Why would you want to do this? No one tell you how far you can travel to go to work.

5. Joining the screening exam with the Sutton schools would save money.

[tiffinboys]

If one likes to compare University admissions with 11+ secondary school admissions, their next demand would be for primary schools to be open selectives.

If Kingston had 810 grammar places like Sutton, then there would have been some justification for open selection policies (even then, Nonsuch/Wallington have 210 narrow (3-4 miles) catchment places out of 390). At the moment, Kingston has just 300 places and we are not proposing that these be kept for Kingston children only. If ability/distance criteria is adopted, as things stand now, my guess is that the admission area could be as much as 6 to 8 miles.

I could not locate league tables from 1993, so can't tell you exactly what was it like. But generally GCSE and A level grades have improved all over the country, so perhaps old data will not be comparable any way. What I can tell you though that even in 1980s and 1990s, Tiffins were considered 'outstanding' school in the region and were heavily over-subscribed. Remember that upto 1990, Tiffins were mostly Kingston borough catchment based schools.

Both Tiffins have released their admission data for 2007-2012. TS had even published it on its website. You will see from it that upto 2008, the school's intake was mostly from Kingston/Richmond and nearby areas and these schools were outstanding.

So there is no reason to believe that if Tiffins adopt ability based distance policy, its results would drop any significantly. On the other hand, as pointed out by Snowdaddy, these may even further improve. We note that Kingston and Richmond areas had the highest Level 6 SATs results in whole of England.

[999 mum]

We note that Kingston and Richmond areas had the highest Level 6 SATs results in whole of England.

So those local children will be able to go to the tiffins schools won't they? and as Kingston and Richmond have the highest SATs levels then the percentage of local pupils will be higher.

(Could it be that the parents of those children don't actually want their children to go to tiffins?)

[loopylou]

The "more alert children" argument was used recently by another grammar school when introducing a catchment areas for the first time. Was it KEGS (I get confused with other area's abbreviations)?


The other argument (KEGS?) used was experience shows there is little correlation between performance in the 11+ exam and performance in exams post 16. That may be specific to their exam format but they cited this as a reason also.

It sounds as if they had a situation similar to Tiffins: hundreds of children of essentially identical abilities sitting for one exam and having to find a way to split them into pass and fail categories. The whole notion of bright children in catchment blocking exceptionally bright children out of catchment was a bit of a stretch for them and is probably a bit of a stretch for Tiffins too. We all know there are a few fantastically bright children who sail through these tests and are leagues ahead of the others. The rest however are very much of the same (very high) ability. There are simply dozens of level 6 ability children in every area. I think these debates always overemphasise the difference between a child who passes by 5 marks and a child who fails by 10 and therefore overemphasises the case about who deserves a place and who is unfairly deprived.