11 Plus Exams Forum

So my DD managed 120/119. Absolutely gutted of course because everybody expected her to pass.
Naturally we are appealing.
Her school reports are excellent. Ditto predicted SATS, Head's report - graded her 1;2.
So, all those kinds of things have gone into the appeal and the advice on this site has been very useful to us in preparing it.

I have a specific question that I cannot see much about on the site.
We have our hearing in the next couple of weeks and today we got back our appeal pack which revealed some interesting if not disturbing stats:
Of DD's classmates only ~15% passed and only 50% of those the head graded as 1. This is compared to the school's pass rate of 30 - 50% in recent years.

It could be one of those statistical anomalies or symptomatic of a particular problem with this particular year group which may or may not go away next year. We can point to a poor OFSTED report from 2009 at the beginning of DD's Y4 (not quite special measures time, but a disturbing number of 3's). Also frequently changing teachers of variable quality in Y3/4.

My question is this: Is there any mileage in blaming the school?
I can imagine that the official line might be that the VR test is blind to that sort of thing. I can't really understand that because so much VR depends on vocabulary and good spelling, but I don't want to get into that because you can't win that kind of argument.
OTOH might the panel look at the stats and say: 'Yes, there does seem to a particular problem in this particular school this year and perhaps we should look more kindly upon marginal cases, compared to say the next door school who scored all 1s on its latest OFSTED report and achieved a 50%+ pass rate?'
There again, they might look at the head's ratings and say: 'Only 50% of those that the head rated 1 passed, so we're not going to put much credence in the 1 she gave our DD.'

Advice please. Should be bring it up at all? Or should we rely on the academic evidence combined with the incredibly narrow non-pass margin? If the appeal were unsuccessful, it would be awful to think we left this particular stone unturned!

Welcome!

My question is this: Is there any mileage in blaming the school?

No, I don't think so, because you have little need of extenuating circumstances with scores of 120/119.

I have absolutely no doubt your case will simply depend on sufficient academic evidence of high ability.
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... cation#b11" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

However, I agree there's a risk that the '1' recommendations may look 'devalued', so I suggest you tackle this head on by referring very briefly to the fact that the school has been through a difficult period. "Of DD's classmates only ~15% passed and only 50% of those the head graded as 1. This is compared to the school's pass rate of 30 - 50% in recent years."

You could make that a little stronger by quoting the actual pass rates (if this is a Bucks state school, that is). The 2010 results on in a post from Dad40 on this thread, and there is a link in my post above it that takes you to the 2009 results.

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... st#p203091" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sally-Anne wrote:You could make that a little stronger by quoting the actual pass rates (if this is a Bucks state school, that is). The 2010 results on in a post from Dad40 on this thread, and there is a link in my post above it that takes you to the 2009 results.

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... st#p203091" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Very useful thanks. I think those are actually the 2009 & 2008 results. And indeed DD's school achieved a pass rate roughly double that of 2011. Can I find the 2010 results somewhere?

They are on the Bucks county council website - a bit hard to unearth but they are there. I'm on my phone at the moment but if so
someone doesn't get there first I'll try and post a link later. I think a lot do vary year on year (ours does).

Etienne wrote:Welcome!

My question is this: Is there any mileage in blaming the school?

No, I don't think so, because you have little need of extenuating circumstances with scores of 120/119.

I have absolutely no doubt your case will simply depend on sufficient academic evidence of high ability.
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... cation#b11" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

However, I agree there's a risk that the '1' recommendations may look 'devalued', so I suggest you tackle this head on by referring very briefly to the fact that the school has been through a difficult period. "Of DD's classmates only ~15% passed and only 50% of those the head graded as 1. This is compared to the school's pass rate of 30 - 50% in recent years."

I got the numbers slightly wrong yesterday: Of the 1,1 recommendations the head made only 50% passed, none of the 1,2s (inc DD) none of the 2,1's and one 2,2.

scary mum wrote:They are on the Bucks county council website - a bit hard to unearth but they are there. I'm on my phone at the moment but if so
someone doesn't get there first I'll try and post a link later. I think a lot do vary year on year (ours does).

Found it thanks:
http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/bcc/schools/a ... sults.page" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;?

We had our appeal on Tuesday and got the letter this morning.
Bad news!
Feeling gutted, far worse than when we got the original result.
Can't figure out what went wrong. The hearing itself went pretty well. Said all we wanted to and had anticipated all the questions they asked. Took your advice about not blaming the school, just raised the pass rate issue at the end. I got the feeling they weren't very interested at the time.
I thought we had enough academic evidence and some extenuating circumstances, enough to make at least one point's difference anyway.

So sorry to hear the news - can i ask what were your sat's also what there the cats for year 5

I do feel for you, especially with such respectable 11+ scores.

It's difficult to know what influenced the panel, but more often than not the problem is with the academic evidence. You might possibly find out a bit more if you wanted to pay for a copy of the clerk's notes. See D4b:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeals/ombudsman#d4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bucks are very obliging if you write to the Appeals Team. See E14b:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... aneous#e14" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;