How many qualified?

[2Socks]

Someone queried why Crypt qualified so many kids. It's not at all surprising if you look at the rankings that they've gone to over the past few years. I think they admitted (1 March) to rank 790 last year, so qualifying any less than 800 would likely leave them below PAN, if not on offer day, then possibly after reconsideration. Crypt is actually harder to get in to than the girls schools if you look at the ratio of qualifiers to test sitters. I think that because 800 is a bigger number than 450 we assume that it's easier to qualify, forgetting that it's a mixed school.
Pates, Stroud and Ribston also cut it fine last year (not sure about the others) so again, I'm not surprised that Pates have qualified more. Don't forget that in Gloucestershire approximately 2400 kids take the test and there are about 1050 grammar places, so compared to a lot of other super-selective areas the chance of a grammar place is significantly higher.
If you are interested in why last year may not be representative then have a look through some old posts. Essentially, because of the uncertainty of filling out the CAF before receiving results many people didn't 'risk' putting down as many grammars as they would have done if they'd known the results ahead of time.

[RedMaple]

In the first year that the Crypt went co-ed (2018 entry so 2017 test) they only qualified the first 600 (but gave everyone a ranking much like Pates do). On Allocations day, they were only able to fill half their places so were 75 short. After a delay of about 5 weeks, and just as the appeals deadline was approaching, they then quickly qualified those ranking between 600 and 800 and were able to fill their places. Needless to say, there was a lot of movement that year; there'd been a huge knock on effect on other students This is likely to explain why they rank to 800.

[Polgara_Glos]

Outside of Gloucestershire you only have three choices. This impacted on whether people were willing to risk a CAF space for the most difficult to get into school.

[sktttttt]

Outside of Gloucestershire you only have three choices. This impacted on whether people were willing to risk a CAF space for the most difficult to get into school.

OK - this makes a lot of sense. Essentially you're saying there were people ranked in the top 200 who hadn't put Pates as a first choice (or any choice at all), even though they had shared their results. Far from people taking a punt, it was actually an abundance of caution... which makes sense if their choices were limited.

[starcrazy]

This happened every year; some probably choose to go private, or live out of county and decide the travel isn’t worth it (probably more so last year, as a bus bubble bursting meant all the children had to isolate until recently.) Also in the mix since last year is the new school in Leckhampton which is run by the same trust as Balcarras.