Weald Grammar School

Eleven Plus (11+) in Kent

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marymay
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:53 pm

Post by marymay »

But the FT tables are subject to so many 'adjustments' and subjective judgements (what is a 'core subject' subject?) as to be meaningless. League tables created by newspapers are designed to sell newspapers and so are skewed towards attracting the target demographic. You will notice that in the FT tables 'traditional' public schools shoot to the top of the table above grammar schools, IB schools and other schools.

This leads to some very odd results. In Kent, for example, all of a sudden Tonbridge, the most 'traditional' public school in the county, emerges as head and shoulders above every other school in the county with a score of 4.67, 40% better than Judd's 3.38. Tonbridge is a perfectly good school but to rate it as that much better than Judd is bizarre. In another equally bizarre decision Sevenoaks simply does not appear on the table because it does not do 'traditional' A levels. This is despite the fact that there are standard measures that can be used to compare IB perform IB/A Level results. Given the move towards the IB or variants, the exclusion is indefensible.

At the end of the day I largely agree with the comments about league tables and inter-school comparisons. This is one of the reasons why I feel so strongly about Judd and Skinners manipulating their admissions procedures for no other reason than to push themselves a couple of meaningless places up one or other of the league tables with no regard to the social fallout directly consequential on that attempted grade manipulation.
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