2017 Gloucestershire allocations ranks/scores Entry 2018

[jearund]

Not all parents tick for all the possible schools - for instance, some may only want a girls school, not mixed, so would not tick for Pate's or Crypt. Anther family may not want to travel to Stroud from the north of the county so only choose Pate's & Gloucester schools.

So each school has a different cohort and the standardisation is done based on each individual schools cohort.

Gloucestershire CC has nothing to do with the standardisation. They send the school a list of pupils who have ticked for that individual school. The school will then send them back the same list, sorted by rank order (also with 'not qualifieds' marked as some parents tick even if the child didn't reach the pass mark). GCC then will allocate the highest preference school that the child is ranked for, if there is space available.

So GCC sends the schools the raw marks and the schools apply the standardisation? That's really interesting, I didn't know that. I assumed the standardisation was absolute (i.e. an algorithm applied to your raw mark to adjust it according to your age when you took the test) but if I have understood you correctly, the algorithm is relative (your age in relation to the other people sharing their results with the school in question). I suppose it's academic really (pardon the pun!) as we never learn the raw or standardised score, just the rank for each school.

Once they've applied the standardisation, how do they rank candidates who have exactly the same score? Is it based on distance from school? Or something else? Or does that also depend on the school? I seem to remember on Pate's website it said the 150th place would be determined geographically in case of a tie, but what about other schools? And the waiting lists?

[capers123]

So GCC sends the schools the raw marks and the schools apply the standardisation?

No. GCC have nothing to do with the raw scores.

Immediately after the test, the papers are handed to a local company who will mark the papers (twice electronically, using two different types of machine so if -say- one machine picks up a faint tick and the other doesn't, then an error is flagged and the paper marked manually). This company marks the papers for all the schools in Gloucestershire, then sends the results to CEM. CEM have the lists of which child has asked for their results to be shared for which school, and will take all the raw scores for an individual school, standardise them against each other, then rank them.

The standardisation is for age, down to the exact day of birth. It is very unusual, but not impossible, for twho children to have the same standardised score as I think it goes to two decimal places. However, if there are two, then each schools admissions policy gives the criteria of which gets a higher rank, e.g. distance from school.

CEM then sends the ranked order back to the schools, who will never see the raw scores or answer papers once they have been collected from the pupils on test day.

The school will then send parents the letter saying how they did in the test (met standard or not), so they can fill in the GCC schools preference form.

Later, the LEA will send each school a list of all the children who have expressed a preference for the school (irrespective of what the preference was), which the school will then put into rank order and send back.

Before Allocation Day, GCC will go through starting, I suspect, with the top ranking child at Pate's, then work their way down, allocating up to PAN of the 1st preferences for each school. As soon as a 1st preference for a child is unavailable (say they were number 121 for Pate's), their second preference becomes their new 1st preference as if it had been 1st all along.

Just before Allocation Day, each school will be given a list of the pupils allocated so they can send out a 'welcome' letter to arrive just after GCC tells the parents.

[jearund]

Capers, thanks for taking the time to explain this in such detail. It's busted a few myths! I feel your post would be good somewhere more prominent like a sticky as it's such a good explanation of how the process works.

[capers123]

Capers, thanks for taking the time to explain this in such detail. It's busted a few myths! I feel your post would be good somewhere more prominent like a sticky as it's such a good explanation of how the process works.

I've put an amended version in the Glos 'Factual Info' post.

There are a lot of myths floating around, be it sourced through playground chatter, primary schools not knowing (or not wanting to get involved), people from outside the county or who had children who went through the process some years ago before the CEM test, and private tutors/tuition centres. This forum is quite a good place to get the correct info - someone will know!

[ToadMum]

Asking to have results shared with and formally applying to a school by naming it on one's CAF are two separate things. Ranking candidates by distance is applying oversubscription criteria - something that can only be used to rank applicants, surely?

[jearund]

My friend's daughter has just been offered a place at Ribston from the waiting list - she ranked 536.

Should we update the main page? I'm not sure if those are intended to be Allocation Day rankings or final rankings.