11 Plus Exams Forum

Just looked at this:

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The school is at KT2 6RL.

This is thus KT2.

The neighbouring postcode areas are:

KT1
KT3
TW10
SW15
SW20

The top postcodes at Tiffin School are, with straight line distance:

KT3 (114 boys) 1 - 3 miles
KT2 (51 boys) 0 - 1.5 miles
TW3 (43 boys) 4 - 6 miles
KT10 (37 boys) 3 - 6 miles
TW7 (37 boys) 3.5 - 6 miles
KT5 (36) 1 - 2.5 miles
KT6 (30) 1 - 3 miles
TW5 (30) 5 - 7 miles
KT1 (28) 0 - 1 miles
KT8 (24) 2 - 4 miles
TW2 (23) 3 - 4 miles
SW15 (23) 2 - 5 miles
UB2 (19) 6 - 8 miles
SW20 (19) 2 - 4 miles
TW1 (18) 2 - 4 miles
TW12 (18) 3 - 4 miles
KT7 (17) 2 - 3 miles
TW11 (17) 1 - 3 miles
TW4 (15) 4 - 7 miles
SW19 (15) 3 - 6 miles
UB1 (14) 7 - 9 miles
W5 (14) 6 - 9 miles
UB3 (12) 7 - 10 miles
KT4 (11) 2 - 4 miles
KT9 (11) 3 - 4 miles
TW13 (10) 4 -6 miles
TW18 (10) 7 - 11 miles
SW14 (10) 3 - 4 miles

The are disproportionately many boys in:

TW3 (Hounslow, bus 281 or 111)
KT10 (Hinchley Wood bus service, cancelled by Surrey County Council in September 2011)
TW7 (Isleworth - not sure how you'd commute from here)
TW5 (bus 111)
UB2 (southall, not really sure how they do this journey, but it must take ages)
ub1 (southall, again)
ub3 (Hayes, again no idea how they would do this journey)

Noticeably under-represented:

KT1 (south central Kingston) - 28 boys
TW17 (Shepperton and Upper Haliford stations - 20 minutes by direct train from Kingston) - 5 boys
TW16 (Upper Haliford, Sunbury and Kempton Park stations - all under 20 minutes by direct train from Kingston) - 5 boys
SW18 (Earlsfield 15 minutes by direct train) - 7 boys
SW11 (Clapham Junction 19 minutes by direct train) - 5 boys

Obviously many of the brightest and best in the surrounding area never even apply, for whatever reason.

Only a tiny smattering from very distant postcodes:

SL0, 1, 3: 4 boys total (Slough)
GU22: 1 boy (Woking)

Here's a breakdown by Borough:

Kingston 31%
Hounslow 18%
Richmond 12%
Elmbridge 11%
Ealing 9%
Wandsworth 6% (or less)
Merton 3%
Spelthorne 3%
Epsom 1%
Hillingdon 1%
Sutton 1% (or less)
others 4%

Good work, twelveminus.

However, statistics are statistics and usually need to be looked at carefully. Some comments.

1. Tiffins statistics are not detailed enough to work out exactly about the children coming from Kingston Borough. Not all of KT1, KT3, KT4, KT6 are in Kingston borough. One can safely say that the figure for Kingston would be lower than 31% given above.

2. The stats given above are for 2007-2012. Year to year less and less of local children are getting in Tiffins. Situation is getting worse with every passing year and more children from long distances are coming to Tiffins.

3. TGS data also has shown the same trend over the years, with numbers of local children decreasing at much faster rate since 2010.

Boys in Isleworth and Southall could probably get a bus into Brentford and pick up the 65 bus from there direct into Kingston. No idea how much time that'd take though, probably far too long!I don't know if the 285 bus is an option picking it up at Feltham or somewhere en route?

From Hinchley Wood boys can get the K3 into Kingston.

lots of Tiffin girls come to school in mini buses, may be this applies to Tiffin boys as well

The low number from KT2 is quite surprising.

I really don't understand it.... there is nothing to stop anyone from applying so from an admissions point of view it absolutely is a level playing field.... however...

Could it just be that the distribution of talent is normally distributed (in the statistical sense) but that the numbers of candidates in areas is just very high? i.e. if boys apply for say 100 places from 100 areas then only the top 1/100th of each area get in... so it's really just a function of catchment. Tiffin has very good transport links... bus, train etc so you would expect the catchment to be large and the population of london as we know is vast, oversubscribed and ever increasing.

Basically if you live in London it's virtually impossible to get into a Grammar.

tiffinboys wrote:Good work, twelveminus.

However, statistics are statistics and usually need to be looked at carefully. Some comments.

1. Tiffins statistics are not detailed enough to work out exactly about the children coming from Kingston Borough. Not all of KT1, KT3, KT4, KT6 are in Kingston borough. One can safely say that the figure for Kingston would be lower than 31% given above.

Not quite.

I counted

KT1 (28 boys)
KT2 (51 boys)
KT3 (114 boys)
KT5 (36 boys)
KT6 (30 boys)
KT9 (11 boys)

The KT1 postcode consists of 777 postcodes.

KT1 4, Hampton Wick, everything t'other side of the bridge, is only 78 postcodes, and is in Richmond-upon-Thames. So out of 28 boys probably only 3 are in Richmond.

Still in spitting distance of the school in any case.

KT3 consists of 770 postcodes these are in:

Beverley ward, Kingston (266)
St James, Kingston (173)
Coombe Vale, Kingston (153)
West Barnes, Merton (96)
Old Malden, Kingston (64)
Norbiton, Kingston (14)
Raynes Park, Merton (4)

So I guess around 10% of the KT3 boys are actually in Merton - around 11 boys.

KT6 consists of

Alexandra, Kingston 18 postcodes
Berrylands, Kingston 32 postcodes
Grove, Kingston 40 postcodes
Norbiton, Kingston 23 postcodes
St Mark's, Kingston 188 postcodes
Surbiton Hill, Kingston 229 postcodes
Tolworth, Kingston 130 postcodes
(660 total in Kingston)

Long Ditton, Elmbridge 90 postcodes

Again, probably about 10% of KT6 boys are not from Kingston borough - 3 boys here.

I didn't include KT4.

KT4 consists of:

Alexandra, Kingston - 4 postcodes
Old Malden, Kingston - 95 postcodes

Auriol, Epsom - 2 postcodes
Cuddlington, Epsom - 108 postcodes
Ewell Court, Epsom - 6 postcodes

Nonsuch, Sutton - 84 postcodes
Worcester Park, Sutton - 232 postcodes

I think the Kingston postodes here are the closest to the school, and the Sutton postcodes are more lilkely to go to Sutton schools. But I just allocated it all to Sutton.

So you could add maybe 4 boys to the Kingston total here.

So not 31%, perhaps, but still 30%.

2. The stats given above are for 2007-2012. Year to year less and less of local children are getting in Tiffins. Situation is getting worse with every passing year and more children from long distances are coming to Tiffins.

I had a look at this.

I took postcodes where the closest part of that postcode is less than 3 miles away.

Figures by year:

Y11: 103
Y10: 94
Y9: 75
Y8: 84
Y7: 75
new Y7: 69

Not a compelling trend.

And those where the closest part of the postcode is 6+ miles away:

Y11: 9
Y10: 22
Y9: 22
Y8: 16
Y7: 29
New Y7: 33

And again, not a compelling trend here either. Y11, looks more like an aberration than the start of a trend.

Sorted by distance, these postcodes are all over-represented.

TW7, TW3, TW4, TW5 (Hounslow all 3)
W5, UB1, UB2, UB3 (Ealing)
TW18 (Spelthorne)

There are 4 times more boys from TW5 (Heston, Cranford, Osterley) than in TW10 (Ham, Petersham, Richmond Hill).

The UB1, UB2 and UB3 area(s) are the only postcodes over 6 miles in a straight line, minimum, from the school, with more than 10 children at the school. Of other areas of such great distance, usually just 1 or 2 children come from each.

I suggest that the borough of Ealing and/or Hounslow look at building their own grammar school, as clearly many of their brightest children head off to Kingston, damaging the performance of their own boroughs.

3. TGS data also has shown the same trend over the years, with numbers of local children decreasing at much faster rate since 2010.

Trend isn't clear here.

@SVE

I have tried to look at this from many angles. May be this is due to new and aggressive tutors in Ealing/Slough?

@twelveminus

Some stats of intake in Tiffin Boys

Kingston borough post codes (even including parts of other boroughs)
KT1-6 and KT 9
2007: 58
2010: 51
2011: 43
2012: 36 ............. continuous decline

Kingston borough (as above) and surrounding areas
(TW1, 10, 11; SW14, 15, 20; KT7, 8, 10)

2007: 98
2010: 78
2011: 72
2012: 55 ................ continuous decline

Compare these with

Ealing/West London
2007: 4
2011: 3
2012 : 12

Southall/Greenford/Hillingdon etc (UB postcodes)
2007: 5
2011: 14
2012: 17

Hounslow (TW3, 4, 5)
2007: 7
2011: 16
2012: 23

TGS figures are also not different.

Re tw10 I have a theory, I checked rightmove. House prices over £1m generally. Only 5 under 500k for a 3 bed house. Highest was 18million.

In tw5 NO houses over 1 million, and 71 for under 500k.

It's safe to say that those buying in tw10 in most cases can afford private. In addition with many house conversions to flats, there are not as many family homes as in tw5, so fewer children to start with.

And probably the other options in tw10 are better as well.

Of course there are other areas, such as sunbury, with few children at tiffin, And a similar housing profile to tw5. But it's easy to see why tw10 residents might not bother with tiffin.

But still the secondary schools in Richmond remains over-subscribed. From this year, the link criteria also being removed. So the presumed very rich still in competition for the comprehensive places and I suppose, would be interested in grammars as well.