kent appeal advise needed

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anotherkentmum
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:35 pm

kent appeal advise needed

Post by anotherkentmum »

I am preparing an appeal against non qualification for my ds. He failed kent test his scores were VR 127 NVR 126 Maths 105.

Unfortunately in the first sections of the nvr exam he had to leave out 6 questions(he was expecting a 1 min warning). He came home very distressed about this and was convinced he had failed this test by missing out that many questions. As you can see he did well despite this mishap!

I know he completed all questions on the maths the next day and he has told me that he felt he had to rush to finish because of the previous days experience. I had an idea that his maths would be his lowest score because he tends to make silly mistakes when rushing(this is something i had been working on at home and it seemed to be sinking in!) but was not expecting his score to be that low. He was doing well in practice papers and has a june birthday which should have helped a bit! All those that had a similar score to him in the school practice test seem to have passed and they are older than him.

His head teacher has said they did not appeal for him because she felt there was not enough evidence of his ability in hs school work, however she is suupporting my parental appeal.

Does the lack of headteacher appeal in the first place mean i havent got a chance at all??

He was also unwell the day after the maths test and did not attend school that day. He had a bad head and was sick twice. I did not see a doctor it was not that serious and he was better by the afternoon. He returned to school the following day as he hates missing school. Can i mention this in an appeal? the only evidence i will have is the schools confirmation that he was not at school.

Sorry for waffling on but my ds really wants me to appeal so i feel i have to give him the best chance poss even tho i have warned him the chances of success are very small.

any help will be appreciated.
twinmum
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Mar 01, 2008 9:47 pm

Post by twinmum »

Hi i might not be able to help much but ill try.My twins took the kent test,one passed and one failed quite badly.
our headteacher did not appeal for her because the scores were what she considered to be low but she did write a supporting letter as did her actual teacher stating my daughter is a good candidate for grammar school and this is mainly based on her academic ability.

academic ability is the most important thing along with the fact that you must provide a mitigating circumstance as to why your child under achieved in the test if they are indeed of high ability.

our head teacher has also told us that even for pupils who were only a few points out her appeals were not sucsessful and that parent appeals are more often sucsessful than those from head teachers-she has told us this lots of times throughout the process.

do you have predictions? my daughter is a level 5,you need to really be predicted to have a child at level 5 in maths,english and science and obviously 5a is better than b or c but any 5 is good and you need that really.

you should mention anything you feel is relevant to an under achievement on the day,i cannot prove my daughters mitigating circumstances.to do that i woould have had to stopped her from entering the test anyway taken her to a doctor and asked him to examine her in a way that i am positively sure he would refuse to do as it was not an actual medical neccesity.

But of course you do need to include all of the evidence you can provide.

you have nothing to lose,like me your child has unfortunately failed the test and although the chances of sucsess are slim if you dont try you have no chance.my daughter really wants to try so i agreed,ive told her she has a very remote chance so shes prepared but its not impossible and i think where theres the smallest of chances if you and your family want to appeal you should.

now i have waffled on but thats me for you :) good luck,i posted our letters today (appealing to both first and second choices) and i know that it could take until june to get an answer and i feel sick with nerves already.
kentmum
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:42 pm

Post by kentmum »

To be honest when I saw our Headteacher's appeal last year I was embarrassed by the poor quality and not surprised it didn't succeed! She didn't get a single HT appeal through even one child with scores of 139,139 and 114 to an undersubcribed grammar! You know your child best and as long as she writes a good supporting letter for your appeal then go for it. The panel may ask if a HT appeal was made so be prepared with an answer. Some HT have a policy of never appealing leaving that to the parents.
Moscow
Posts: 47
Joined: Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:06 pm

Post by Moscow »

Hi anotherkentmum :lol: . Your case is very similar to that of my DS. Failed he Maths by 8 but scored highly in the other 2. On the day he missed out 15 maths questions as ran out of time even though we had been practising!

I have since heard that the maths paper was particularly hard this year and eveyone I have spoken to has confirmed this. Anyway, HT did appeal as DS was in top 10 for his CATs but it failed apparently on his standard of written work. However, we do intend to appeal and have gathered as much evidence as we can to back up our case. We have been lucky enogh to have the full support fo the school and have a strong letter of recommendation from the HT and class teacher.

We are appealing to both grammar school on our CAF and managed to pull out two VG reports from Years 4 and 5 which we are including as they mention his maths ability. We only have one mitigating circumstance which was the lack of a maths teacher for 6 mths and he was and still is in the top group.
My advice is find anything that proves they are a consistent high achiever. We have also included recent reading score results and attendance figures as he never has time off. Also on advice from the headteacher and other people I know who have had appeals, we hae added a statement as to why he put th school down initally, e.g. interest and aptiude in Science.

We are sending off all this evidence at once with the letter of appeal so that it is kept together and are now going to prepare our case. Wer also havea phtotcopy of everything we have sent to be able to refer to it during the appeal.

Incidentally, the HT advised us not to send in a copy of his appeal as they would then know it had failed! Very wise advice and so we just took information from it and added any additional evidence.

The HTappeal is really just part of the application process, not an actual appeal, so do not worry f it did not happen. Some schools do not even support the Kent test. Your appeal panel will ot know that the HT did not appeal.

Anyway good luck and keep posting! Lets hope we are both not going for the same school place!
Moscow
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