Can anyone help us?
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:55 pm
Pretty sure the situation is hopeless but have read lots of good advice on here, so here goes.....
Our catchment area includes two grammar schools ( one boys, one girls) and a secondary modern school which has just come out of special measures.
Local parents tend to prefer another secondary modern school which is about nine miles away, and some send their children to the nearest comprehensive which is about five or six miles away (both out of area)
My DD looked around all schools and made the decision that the comprehensive was the best school for her. I asked the head what were the chances of her gaining a place there, and he said very high, as long as we put the school first on the list.
All through DDs primary school she has had exemplary reports and seemed to be a very high achiever. We persuaded her to take the eleven plus in order for her to make a decision based upon all the information available to her. However, when we saw DDs new teacher at the beginning of October, she seemed not to think so highly of her, and suggested that she was very weak in Maths. She also stated that her reading age had "gone backwards" We (somewhat naively , with hindsight) accepted this judgement and thought that maybe we had overestimated her ability.
When the results came through later in October, our DD had not passed the test, but had not failed by many either. So, given what the teacher at Primary had told us, and what the Head teacher from the comp said, we duly put the comp first. This basically excluded us from appealing to the Grammar, but at the time ,this seemed OK. We put the rural secondary modern second and the local school third. We had three criteria for selecting the schools:
1 DD has suffered from emotional and social developmental delay and
has had intervention from psychs etc for three years. Thankfully, she
has improved so much that she has now been discharged but we do not
want her to become so anxious again. Therefore we had to choose the
school which she felt was right ( we do have written documentation for
this)
2 OH is half German and wants kids to learn German - Comp is the only
place they can do this outside the Grammars
3 We want our children to go to a school where they will be stretched and
feel challenged by the work
(According to these criteria the grammar would have been second - but we couldn't put it on the form as mentioned above)
So we now come to allocation day. DD has been offered third choice school on the list ( fourth if you include Grammar.) We are very disappointed and asked primary school for a letter of support and her educational statistics so that we could appeal to get her into the comp. This is where I started to feel very sick about the whole situation.
Contrary to what we'd been told at the last parents' evening we find that our DD has a reading age of 15.1 years, excels across the curriculum, and has no area of weakness ( no mention of maths). Her year end standardised scores exceed those of her brother year on year from Y2-Y6. DS is actually a high flyer at the local boys GS.
We feel terrible.........
Had we known that there was actually no chance of her getting a place at the comp, we wouldn't have even put it on the form, and given that she was actually a high achiever, we would have chosen to appeal to the Grammar school. We have been told that there is virtually no chance of winning an appeal to go to the comp, but we are going to try.
Does anyone know anything that could help us. I'm pretty sure there isn't. Thank you for reading this any way, I think it has helped to get it off my chest.
Our catchment area includes two grammar schools ( one boys, one girls) and a secondary modern school which has just come out of special measures.
Local parents tend to prefer another secondary modern school which is about nine miles away, and some send their children to the nearest comprehensive which is about five or six miles away (both out of area)
My DD looked around all schools and made the decision that the comprehensive was the best school for her. I asked the head what were the chances of her gaining a place there, and he said very high, as long as we put the school first on the list.
All through DDs primary school she has had exemplary reports and seemed to be a very high achiever. We persuaded her to take the eleven plus in order for her to make a decision based upon all the information available to her. However, when we saw DDs new teacher at the beginning of October, she seemed not to think so highly of her, and suggested that she was very weak in Maths. She also stated that her reading age had "gone backwards" We (somewhat naively , with hindsight) accepted this judgement and thought that maybe we had overestimated her ability.
When the results came through later in October, our DD had not passed the test, but had not failed by many either. So, given what the teacher at Primary had told us, and what the Head teacher from the comp said, we duly put the comp first. This basically excluded us from appealing to the Grammar, but at the time ,this seemed OK. We put the rural secondary modern second and the local school third. We had three criteria for selecting the schools:
1 DD has suffered from emotional and social developmental delay and
has had intervention from psychs etc for three years. Thankfully, she
has improved so much that she has now been discharged but we do not
want her to become so anxious again. Therefore we had to choose the
school which she felt was right ( we do have written documentation for
this)
2 OH is half German and wants kids to learn German - Comp is the only
place they can do this outside the Grammars
3 We want our children to go to a school where they will be stretched and
feel challenged by the work
(According to these criteria the grammar would have been second - but we couldn't put it on the form as mentioned above)
So we now come to allocation day. DD has been offered third choice school on the list ( fourth if you include Grammar.) We are very disappointed and asked primary school for a letter of support and her educational statistics so that we could appeal to get her into the comp. This is where I started to feel very sick about the whole situation.
Contrary to what we'd been told at the last parents' evening we find that our DD has a reading age of 15.1 years, excels across the curriculum, and has no area of weakness ( no mention of maths). Her year end standardised scores exceed those of her brother year on year from Y2-Y6. DS is actually a high flyer at the local boys GS.
We feel terrible.........
Had we known that there was actually no chance of her getting a place at the comp, we wouldn't have even put it on the form, and given that she was actually a high achiever, we would have chosen to appeal to the Grammar school. We have been told that there is virtually no chance of winning an appeal to go to the comp, but we are going to try.
Does anyone know anything that could help us. I'm pretty sure there isn't. Thank you for reading this any way, I think it has helped to get it off my chest.