Email today from Kent 11+ team

[Guest55]

How can they do this though? They have rules and if someone qualifies then they have to be given the place.

[Sparklecat]

How can they do this though? They have rules and if someone qualifies then they have to be given the place.

How can they do what? Send an email some people don't like? Quite easily it seems. Nobody is denied a place they are entitled to.

[Guest55]

You queried why OOC get places - they have to give them that's what I meant. You can't stop people applying and if they get a place under the admission rules they have to be offered it.

[lapindebois]

Makes sense that the likes of Judd and Skinners have introduced local catchments.

[mystery]

I read that same email on here last year. I live in Kent and I am appalled they still send it. Completely ridiculous, particularly as KCC built a grammar school annex in Sevenoaks for girls which opened September 2017 and is not going to take on enough girls from within Kent only to be financially viable unless it starts to have quite an impact on girls' choice patterns for already existing schools.


It's going to put off people who really shouldn't be put off and it reads as a lot of blustering as there is no data to back up extravagant sounding claims about numbers entering, distance to test centre, difficulty of the test etc etc.

It would be interesting to read the data about record number of OOC children, where they do live, how many they do place in Canterbury etc for the test. And how many people back out when they receive this email.

"Many children will find the test difficult - check with the teacher etc etc." If they think this is an appropriate paragraph, they should put it at the start of the registration form for all candidates, not just OOC candidates.

And are they sending this same letter to people who live in Kent but have to use the Saturday test centre - eg. home-school children, Kent children who go to primary school over the border. Because if they don't, it's not right that they send an offputting letter to candidates who do not live in Kent but not send it to Saturday test centre candidates who do live in Kent.

This letter smacks of something some councillors might demand to see to satisfy themselves that Kent is doing something for the ever more popular call for "local schools for local children" whatever that means. If you want local schools, then don't have ones that select by test result is the answer to that. And what does local mean anyhow? As I've said a thousand times before, you can live over a border and have a shorter commute than a so -called local child, and you can live in Kent and have a long commute to any Kent school and a shorter one over the border to a non-Kent school.

If they really were concerned about children's welfare, commutes, families uprooting despite having a wonderful local school because they think that Kent grammar schools are the be all and end all, then it would not read like the snotty letter that it is that could put off a self-effacing parent and child who live outside Kent but deserve a place in Kent school just as much as someone who lives at a Kent address.

It's a horrible letter. Bin it.

[Sparklecat]

I doubt many of the M25 11+ tourists are "self-effacing". But yes, it's a rubbish email.

[Sorrel]

We got the letter last year (and my son will be going to a Kent school). On the day at least one other child from his school didn't turn up and the father of another said they were just doing Kent for practice. I think the letter's fair enough really - they could put some warmer words to reassure serious candidates. I'd hate to end up in a Canterbury test centre because the nearer ones were full of people using it as a mock though.

On the other hand, I know several people who did tests for Kent, Bexley and Bromley schools and put them all on their forms, with perfectly realistic chances of getting in to all of them. You can only be allotted one though, so if you get say St Olave's it doesn't mean you were a tourist taking the Kent test to qualify for Dartford or the Bexley one for Chis & Sid. No-one I know went round the M25 doing random tests.

Edited to add - about 20 children from his school did the test and I think the one who didn't turn up wasn't because they couldn't be bothered. But there were so many people there.

[thickasabrick]

All it needs is a few parents with deep enough pockets to launch a judicial review to challenge some of these schools which specifically exclude areas based solely on them falling in a different authority even if they are closer than 'local children'.

It is illegal and unfair and it wouldn't be the first time that schools don't know or pretend not to know that it is.

[Guest55]

thickasabrick - they are not excluding them just telling them about admission rules - read Sally-Anne's post too.

[Sorrel]

thickasabrick - they are not excluding them just telling them about admission rules - read Sally-Anne's post too.

I think thickasabrick is talking about the catchment areas/ preferred parishes, not the letter?