Interesting stats....so many scored under 121
https://www.thebucksgrammarschools.org/test-data

um, that’s normal.
Bucks 11 plus is a cohort exam: each year the top 30% receive a “pass” mark of 121 or over. they set the “121” pass requirement to ensure a consistent proportion of entrants pass each year.

So if only 3000 Einsteins enter, 30% will “be eligible for grammar” and 70% will get below 121.

if the next year only 3000 cavemen enter, 30% of them will STILL be “elegible”, even though as a group their general achievement is way lower than the previous year’s Einsteins.

And yes, this means there will be some less able kids who pass when more capable children in a different cohort may not have passed.
It’s also why folks overtutor, their child will not be any more clever, but they may slightly up their achievement enough to scrape a pass (and a naturally more capable child may not get that place).

Gotta love this system.

The numbers I find most interesting are how many sitting the exams are out of county. What percentage of these do have a realistic chance of a place?

3583 qualified in total, 1431 of these were in Bucks.

I'm saying this as an out of county family, we do live in catchment for a Buckinghamshire grammar and those living near do have a good chance of getting into 3-5 Bucks grammars depending on year, so realise there are outliers but the numbers seem huge.

Looks like 23% of allocated places went to out of county last year.

I was just about to say that it looks like the number of pupils sitting the exams out of county in each area seems to have dropped. Which it sort of has.. except the Other/non-geocode category has increased by what is probably the missing amount! I wonder what this category actually is? Anyone know? Nobody ever seems to get places from it (or the location gets "resolved") from looking at the allocations data.

Also interesting - last year it was 34% automatic qualification. This year it is 36%. I wonder what that is all about. The average score is 112, same as last year, but for the three years before that it has been 100. Again, I wonder what that is all about!

The most depressing stat is how Greater London has double the qualification rate of Bucks county. Last year just 24 children from Greater London had a place, almost certainly siblings. Out of 770 qualifiers - 52% qualified.

Qualification rates are usually higher for hot-housed exam tourists!

Yes, remember that within Bucks, it is opt-out, so most children sit it. Those who choose to from outside the county will presumably be those who might expect to pass. The Bucks Free Press usually runs a scare story along the same lines every year - disgraceful how the OOC children have a much higher pass rate etc etc.

Oh yep, not disputing why they're higher qualifying rates - it's pretty obvious as to the why for the reasons you state. It's just that the statistic of 770 Greater London qualifiers with only 24 taking up a place. That's almost 750 children out of the 3518 (last year's) pushing the raw pass mark up who almost certainly never stood a chance of (or wanted to have) a place; around 20% of the total who qualified. And that's just London; I'm quite sure there are probably hundreds more out of county who are too far out to even have a hope of getting a place. It's a bit different for those who want to give it a go as in previous years they might have got in on distance, but we all know that a huge number are simply tourists for whatever reason - "practice", bragging rights, idiocy..

This isn't just a small number shifting the raw score a little; it's massively significant. I know about the Greenwich agreement and why they have to make applications open to all, but this is silly. It presumably means a lot more children (and their parents) need to go through the pain of selection review than would otherwise need to.

We did, and this year lots of my friends are having to go through reviews, many live in Bucks and were expected to qualify but fell short by a few marks. The children are really upset and parents having sleepless nights.

Meanwhile these selfish parents just carry on without a thought for these families who now have to suffer until February.

I agree, this is not some 'scare story'. It is a very real situation for many Bucks residents, this year and every year, and until the schools do something to change the residency cut-off dates in the same way that DCGS did, the tourists will carry on coming.
London, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey...all miraculously ready to up sticks and move into closest catchment possible, as soon as the results are announced. Having to pull their children out of schools last minute, with no place secured for the remainder of their last year, seemingly doesn't phase them either. Perhaps because these children don't have much of a childhood existence beyond their relentless grammar schools pursuit; leaving their home & friends behind to go on some waiting list in a rented flat somewhere, is just a mere inconvenience.
It's interesting to scan the lists of past STTS at pupil level, all the ridiculously high scores are seemingly OOC, and most required grammar places...

It is frustrating - I think Bucks should look at how they set the passmark - as mentioned above it gets enhanced by OOC tourists who may never intend to take up a place, thereby pushing out locals who end up at review.

In North Yorks (well Ermysted's / Ripon these days ) the pass mark is set at the score attained by 28% of the in-area pupils. OOC pupils have to achieve this score to get a place on distance but the score will not be enhanced by pupils with OOC addresses