11 Plus Exams Forum

I was curious to know whether there were statistics of how many children at Grammar Schools are from the state sector and how many from private?

newgirl wrote:I was curious to know whether there were statistics of how many children at Grammar Schools are from the state sector and how many from private?

Round here state greatly outweighs private, but then our primaries are good.

Each school will be different.

Same applies here in Barnet ( Herts).
Also to secondary schools - very few children go to independent secondaries, mind you there are fantastic state selective secondaries.
QE Boys, Henrietta Barnett and Dame Alice Owen's just to name a few.

Some very rough stats for Bucks are that 17% of children living in the county and who pass the 11+ are from prep schools.

We don't know how many of those actually took up a GS place, and nor do we have figures for children from outside Bucks broken down by state/private, but I suspect that the balance there would be more in favour of state schools.

If you believe Wikipedia, the percentage of children being privately educated country-wide is 7% (at all ages), so the Bucks figure is disproportionately high compared with that.

I would imagine it is probably one of the highest in the country, because our GS system is county-wide, and a lot of parents choosing prep school education are doing so entirely in the hope that the child will have a higher chance of getting a GS place.

I think Bucks may be high because the GS schools, in my opinion, are as good or better than the senior independent day options in that area - apart from possibly Wycombe Abbey.

I wonder what the stats for London is?

Sally-Anne wrote:Some very rough stats for Bucks are that 17% of children living in the county and who pass the 11+ are from prep schools.

If you believe Wikipedia, the percentage of children being privately educated country-wide is 7% (at all ages), so the Bucks figure is disproportionately high compared with that.

Was told by a very reliable source that 40% of Salisbury GS places go to children from prep schools!

T.i.p.s.y wrote:I think Bucks may be high because the GS schools, in my opinion, are as good or better than the senior independent day options in that area - apart from possibly Wycombe Abbey.

The grammars are so good that there are hardly any senior independent schools in the county.

It varies in different parts of Bucks - I would say in North Bucks the % of private school children in GS is smaller than the south. This is probably because the south is much wealthier and the north more rural and there are fewer prep schools.

Guest55 wrote:It varies in different parts of Bucks - I would say in North Bucks the % of private school children in GS is smaller than the south. This is probably because the south is much wealthier and the north more rural and there are fewer prep schools.

Absolutely - there were 173 passes in south Bucks in 2007, compared to 43 in Wycombe area and only 12 in the Aylesbury Vale area.

The numbers passing from state schools are usually fairly evenly spread across all 3 areas, with only a slight bias to the south.

I think it is the "Challoners effect" (not forgetting Beaconsfield High) - both schools are so high in the league tables that they outperform all but the very best independents, so parents will pay for Prep schools to get in to them.

Also in the past places in these 'top' schools were allocated on VR score so only top scores got in .... it is more of an even playing field now.