Judd / Skinners 2010 admissions
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pheasantchick
- Posts: 2439
- Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2009 10:28 pm
In the selection adjudication it noted the following :
"Introducing catchment areas would ‘create a barrier to
children from lower income families’, particularly in terms of a possible
need to buy houses in an area of ‘inevitably inflated house prices’,
which ‘could lead to the exclusion . . . of pupils whose families had a
limited income’"
with direct reference to the shrinking catchment of TWGGS, this could indeed be true bearing in mind how many parents move to get into the catchment area (or pretend to - but thats another debate) just to get access to the school.
"Introducing catchment areas would ‘create a barrier to
children from lower income families’, particularly in terms of a possible
need to buy houses in an area of ‘inevitably inflated house prices’,
which ‘could lead to the exclusion . . . of pupils whose families had a
limited income’"
with direct reference to the shrinking catchment of TWGGS, this could indeed be true bearing in mind how many parents move to get into the catchment area (or pretend to - but thats another debate) just to get access to the school.
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pheasantchick
- Posts: 2439
- Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2009 10:28 pm
Then we've got a catch 22 situation. ie. no catchment areas means non-local children get in, but catchment areas could also exclude people, who are bright enough to go there (and live in the locality), but who's parents may not have the means to live in the immediate area of the school due to inflated house prices!
What a dilemma!
What a dilemma!
As someone has already said above, I do not think having a catchment area would help children in Sevenoaks (which is the area I think most affected by children being offfered GS places miles away), as Skinners is on the edge of the Kent border, so children in out in East Sussex will still have more chance of being offered a place at Skinners.
I also have the class list for Skinners for Y7 for Sept 2009, and can confirm what Just1-2go says, that only 16 boys are from what I would consider 'out of area'.
I first looked at the prospectus' (or should that be prospecti?) for Judd and Skinners in 2005, but was always under the impression (from 3 or 4 years previoulsy) that the only thing that you needed to get into this schools was a high school and that they did not offer places on distance.
I first looked at the prospectus' (or should that be prospecti?) for Judd and Skinners in 2005, but was always under the impression (from 3 or 4 years previoulsy) that the only thing that you needed to get into this schools was a high school and that they did not offer places on distance.
This house price thing is a complete red herring. Nobody had a problem with the catchment area causing rising house prices up to 2006 when Judd and Skinners had a catchment area. So all of a sudden when they have dropped a catchment area, catchment areas cause 'rising house prices'. The bare-faced hypocrisy leaves me speechless.
Reading the adjudicators judgement it seems that this was a desperate line thrown in by the schools which the adjudicator bizarrely took up. The whole judgment, anyway, was weird. It was full of double negatives and hopes rather than directions. The judgement is lazy and badly-reasoned. The adjudicator accepted that there was a crisis in the area and, through a series of tortured double negatives, that Judd and Skinners were part of the problem but he refused to do anything about it?
Instead he asks KCC and Judd and Skinners to go away and to paraphrase 'have a chat about it'. In the meantime, on current trends, by 2011 there will be over a thousand children a day travelling to and from Dover, Hastings and Sittingbourne from West Kent because there are no local places for them. I think that this all calls for a little more urgency than the adjudicator seems to suggest.
It seems quite clear to me that in 2006/2007 Judd and Skinners took a deliberate decision to move from admissions based on a local catchment area with a few children from out of the area admitted by special arrangement to admissions from anywhere. The only logical explanation for this can be that they thought that they thought that this change would push them a few places up the league tables. But when the schools made the change they would have fully understood that the result would have been fewer local children being awarded places in the schools and they would have fully understood that there were no other grammar places for those children locally.
In short, they deliberately, off their own back, took the decision to reduce the number of grammar school places available in the area. In 2006 is would have been around 850 places. This year (2009) it was 540, a 35% drop in grammar school places over three years. In 2010 it could drop to 300 places available locally. I can only describe this as a deliberate act of educational larceny.
Reading the adjudicators judgement it seems that this was a desperate line thrown in by the schools which the adjudicator bizarrely took up. The whole judgment, anyway, was weird. It was full of double negatives and hopes rather than directions. The judgement is lazy and badly-reasoned. The adjudicator accepted that there was a crisis in the area and, through a series of tortured double negatives, that Judd and Skinners were part of the problem but he refused to do anything about it?
Instead he asks KCC and Judd and Skinners to go away and to paraphrase 'have a chat about it'. In the meantime, on current trends, by 2011 there will be over a thousand children a day travelling to and from Dover, Hastings and Sittingbourne from West Kent because there are no local places for them. I think that this all calls for a little more urgency than the adjudicator seems to suggest.
It seems quite clear to me that in 2006/2007 Judd and Skinners took a deliberate decision to move from admissions based on a local catchment area with a few children from out of the area admitted by special arrangement to admissions from anywhere. The only logical explanation for this can be that they thought that they thought that this change would push them a few places up the league tables. But when the schools made the change they would have fully understood that the result would have been fewer local children being awarded places in the schools and they would have fully understood that there were no other grammar places for those children locally.
In short, they deliberately, off their own back, took the decision to reduce the number of grammar school places available in the area. In 2006 is would have been around 850 places. This year (2009) it was 540, a 35% drop in grammar school places over three years. In 2010 it could drop to 300 places available locally. I can only describe this as a deliberate act of educational larceny.
I don't know how other years work but this year, as I said in an earlier post, there are only 16-20 out of area children at Skinners, that is less than they take at TOGS and only 4-6 more than the Governors places offered to out-of-area girls at TWGGS.
On this basis an admissions policy with a catchment area, and a certain number of out-of-area places wouldn't make much difference to the overall picture if this is a typical year (but i'm sure someone on this forum said it was a particularly big cohort this year - Not sure whether I have this right
).
On this basis an admissions policy with a catchment area, and a certain number of out-of-area places wouldn't make much difference to the overall picture if this is a typical year (but i'm sure someone on this forum said it was a particularly big cohort this year - Not sure whether I have this right
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Villagedad
- Posts: 526
- Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2008 5:22 pm
- Location: Tonbridge & Tunbridge Wells
Look the reality is the government isn't going to build anymore grammar schools in the country, never mind the West Kent area full stop...
Therefore the best way to solve this is to step up efforts in a coordinated way for Judd/Skinners to adopt some form of admissions by catchment, as it used to do (did Skinners by the way?)...
By catchment I believe this should be the West Kent area. Does such a place / boundary exist? If so could someone point the rest towards a map or list of towns/villages included.
With regards to next steps, it has to be coordinated effort as no single voice will be heard. It would also make things faster as this debate has been going on for ages, and the longer it goes on fewer and fewer places will be available for West Kent children.
Any concerted effort would also need a lawyer as part of the team to exam the raft of gobble-de-gook coming out from the schools themselves.
Thoughts anyone...?
Therefore the best way to solve this is to step up efforts in a coordinated way for Judd/Skinners to adopt some form of admissions by catchment, as it used to do (did Skinners by the way?)...
By catchment I believe this should be the West Kent area. Does such a place / boundary exist? If so could someone point the rest towards a map or list of towns/villages included.
With regards to next steps, it has to be coordinated effort as no single voice will be heard. It would also make things faster as this debate has been going on for ages, and the longer it goes on fewer and fewer places will be available for West Kent children.
Any concerted effort would also need a lawyer as part of the team to exam the raft of gobble-de-gook coming out from the schools themselves.
Thoughts anyone...?
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Villagedad
- Posts: 526
- Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2008 5:22 pm
- Location: Tonbridge & Tunbridge Wells
Grammar schools: parents could face new application restrictions
Interesting article to add to the debate, based on a ruling by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (the admissions watchdog), which has ruled that three grammars in Rugby (Warwickshire) cannot take pupils from nearby Northamptonshire because it would undermine comprehensives in that county:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... tions.html
Wonder how this would affect the situation in West kent if it was adopted..?
Regards
Villagedad
Interesting article to add to the debate, based on a ruling by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (the admissions watchdog), which has ruled that three grammars in Rugby (Warwickshire) cannot take pupils from nearby Northamptonshire because it would undermine comprehensives in that county:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... tions.html
Wonder how this would affect the situation in West kent if it was adopted..?
Regards
Villagedad
