Tutored?

[capers123]

Caper123, I am not sure of where you have the idea that I am a tutor, indeed I am a poorly paid public servant and the only interest I have in education is that of my own children.

Sorry - my mistake. I was looking at the Gloucestershire forum & confused you with another person there. In future, maybe I shouldn't type late at night.

I am not prepared to answer your first question as I am not qualified to do so, but I still find the notion that you use tutoring/non-tutoring as a selection criteria is quite distasteful.

My question 'who should be chosen, given 2 equal scores, reasons for appeal yet one child tutored & the other definitely not' is open to anyone to answer - qualified or not. To me it's a no-brainer. I did have this discussion once with a woman who funds her 2nd home in Spain by tutoring, and she got very defensive, and said 'obviously the child who was tutored'.

To me, the tutored child is less able than the non-tutored child - after all, they needed tutoring to bump their scores up to the level of the other child - and if the other child had received tutoring, then their score would have beaten the first.

Now to assume that all parents are telling the truth when they say theat their child has NOT been tutored is naive .

We look at things like predicted KS2 SAT scores (KS1 scores are of interest but not much more than that), school reports, letters from teachers & the head So if a child 'has not been tutored', got a reasonable score in the exam, yet is expected to get 4's for all SATS, and has had consitantly average reports (''meets the expectations for her age" rather than "exceeds expectations") & the head's report says some averages, some above averages, we would wonder it they would cope at the school, and unless there was a good reason that was all average (as well as not passing the 11+), then that appeal would probably fail.

So even if that parent had lied about tutoring, the appeal would still have failed.

[capers123]

A hamster's death, however regretable and painful it may prove for a child, can not be verified and hence it is not accepted.

We have yet to have a mummified pet produced in evidence.

Or grandparent.

[sj355]

A hamster's death, however regretable and painful it may prove for a child, can not be verified and hence it is not accepted.

We have yet to have a mummified pet produced in evidence.

Or grandparent.

All the best,

[capers123]

Unless lie detector machines are introduced into the process I think that an appeal panel should only rely on strictly verifiable facts, because yes some parents do lie.

In which case, we would have to rule out any notes from teachers & predicted SAT results, as they are not verifiable.

From 2003 Code of practice: It may not always be possible to establish all the facts in full: for example, where evidence given is "hearsay" concerning a person who is not present at the hearing ... some evidence may be unreliable and should be treated with caution ... Where there is a conflict of evidence which can not be resolved, panels will have to rely on their assessment of the reliability and credibility of the person giving evidence

[Sally-Anne]

We have yet to have a mummified pet produced in evidence.

Or grandparent.

I have heard a tale that someone took Granny's or Grandpa's death certificate to an Appeal!

[capers123]

I have heard a tale that someone took Granny's or Grandpa's death certificate to an Appeal!

Yes, that has happened. And if there's evidence that the child was affected badly (letters from psychotherapist / school nurse) that would help towards why the child was upset. But it does depend on how far before the exam granny died. So if you can persuade the keep hospital to them alive for a few months until the day before the exam, and then switch off the life support two nights before the exam...

All joking apart, having to decide to withdraw treatment from a relative, especially your child, is not fun.

[Etienne]

I have heard a tale that someone took Granny's or Grandpa's death certificate to an Appeal!

I was presented with a grandparent's death certificate on more than one occasion! I would have been much more interested in a letter from the school stating that "little Johnnie seemed very unsettled following his grandparent's death in the lead up to the 11+, and there was a decline in the standard of his work ........" It's not the event so much as the effect on the child that is the issue here.

It's quite correct that a panel is entitled to form a view about the credibility of the parents and can take what they say on trust, but I think a case is usually more compelling if supported with evidence wherever possible.

Unless lie detector machines are introduced into the process I think that an appeal panel should only rely on strictly verifiable facts, because yes some parents do lie.

From a legal point of view, a panel does not have to be satisfied "beyond all reasonable doubt". The legal test is "the balance of probability".

[ThursdaysGirl]

Etienne,

Would a parent’s statement of, 'Little Jimmy seemed very unsettled following his grandparent's death in the lead up to the 11+ and there has been a decline in his standard of his work.' Not be considered as important as a Head Teachers?

Do panels become hardened over the years? If this is so... surely they should, themselves, or their thinking be questioned? Emotion, or the suffering of, should never be taken lightly in any walk of life or considered more probable from a quarter that panels feel more knowing!

Sorry, your statement leads to so many questions, not least that it encourages me to think the system with a panel of those who think they have the right to judge outside of the box they are listening to, like most, make mistakes endlessly.

[Etienne]

Would a parent’s statement of, 'Little Jimmy seemed very unsettled following his grandparent's death in the lead up to the 11+ and there has been a decline in his standard of his work.' Not be considered as important as a Head Teachers?

Not in my view. Call me case-hardened if you like! - but I don't believe that my view changed in any way over the years. The experience of many hundreds of appeals just confirmed for me what I had always thought about the importance of independent evidence.

Countless times I heard parents attributing their child's performance to the death of a grandparent. I'm not talking about an event the night before the 11+. It was usually several weeks, or a month or two beforehand (on one occasion it was more than five years before!!!). In the vast majority of cases the school observed no decline whatsoever in the standard of work.

I never sat on a panel that treated emotion or suffering lightly. Our task, however, was to try and look objectively at the effect on performance.

[Concerned]

Just thought I'd add to this (now slightly old) thread about death of Grandparent being used at Appeal as mitigating circumstance and the implication that this is sometimes used unethically.

We were unable to attend Appeal due to issues arising from unexpected death of Grandparent, and sent a copy of the death certificate when asking Appeal to be heard in our absence. There was then a maladministration and we were offered, and accepted, a rehearing.

At that second Appeal (which we were able to attend), the panel were very concerned to check whether the Grandparent's death had affected our son's performance. We stated, quite honestly, that it had not.

We won the Appeal.

Not all panels (and panel members) are as cynical as some of those posting to this thread.