Tommies now not getting their extra places for 2011?
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Re: Tommies now not getting their extra places for 2011?
that doesn't make sense 
- if it's the girls that don't want single gender, then surely more would be applying and more not getting in.
- if it's the girls that don't want single gender, then surely more would be applying and more not getting in.Re: Tommies now not getting their extra places for 2011?
I was offering 2 hypotheses: 1 that parents don't want single gender for their girls; 2 that they don't want grammar school full stop. Or maybe the ones who do want grammar want Pates and then don't get in, but don't want D Rd. Or maybe they think they want certain schools and then change their mind (happened to some of the people I mentioned). Or maybe parents of boys will take either Pate's or Tommy's but parents of girls only want one or the other. Or maybe parents of girls are more prone to wavering.Milla wrote:that doesn't make sense
Oh, I don't know! Parent of a girl, after all.
Re: Tommies now not getting their extra places for 2011?
Well, speaking as parent of fairly bright one of each, and deleting the rant that I'd launched on, perhaps it's because a bright girl can be relied on to achieve good results more or less anywhere, whereas a bright boy is a little more influenced by his surroundings, so there's less sense of urgency about getting a girl into GS.
You can see this fairly starkly our side of B'ham where there are three pairs of single gender comps. There is a vast difference in achievement across each pair (and if we were close enough to be certain of getting our daughter into one of them I'd be a lot more relaxed about 11+).
Mike
You can see this fairly starkly our side of B'ham where there are three pairs of single gender comps. There is a vast difference in achievement across each pair (and if we were close enough to be certain of getting our daughter into one of them I'd be a lot more relaxed about 11+).
Mike
Re: Tommies now not getting their extra places for 2011?
Mike I fear is right.
I remember many moons ago when I had but two DSs and was living in the West Midlands of all places ( not to say that it is a Geographical thing) that the general consensus was that the brothers where shooed off to independent after failing to knuckle down where as the girlies did not pose such a problem. Unfortunately peer group pressure is what it is and as a society boys have to keep up this ner do well approach to life. Not helped now by the press and government reinforcing it by constantly adhering to the girls do better approach. I yet again stress the point that our primary was criticised by Ofsted for having a higher ratio of academic boys to girls ...durrr..
I remember many moons ago when I had but two DSs and was living in the West Midlands of all places ( not to say that it is a Geographical thing) that the general consensus was that the brothers where shooed off to independent after failing to knuckle down where as the girlies did not pose such a problem. Unfortunately peer group pressure is what it is and as a society boys have to keep up this ner do well approach to life. Not helped now by the press and government reinforcing it by constantly adhering to the girls do better approach. I yet again stress the point that our primary was criticised by Ofsted for having a higher ratio of academic boys to girls ...durrr..
Re: Tommies now not getting their extra places for 2011?
It was the open day for the new in-take at Tommy's yesterday and surprise, surprise they have 116 boys starting 
.
Having thought about it, it might be better for the admission number to stay at 108 as this will leave more space for children to get in on appeal. Whilst I agree that we do have to have a way of selecting that has some form of objectivity involved there will always be children who don't perform on the day for a variety of reasons and it is good to know that there is an opportunity for them to prove their ability and get a place via appeal. If the school admission number went up to a maximum capacity these appeals would become futile no matter how academically able the child was proven to be.
.Having thought about it, it might be better for the admission number to stay at 108 as this will leave more space for children to get in on appeal. Whilst I agree that we do have to have a way of selecting that has some form of objectivity involved there will always be children who don't perform on the day for a variety of reasons and it is good to know that there is an opportunity for them to prove their ability and get a place via appeal. If the school admission number went up to a maximum capacity these appeals would become futile no matter how academically able the child was proven to be.