33. Memorandum submitted by STEP (Stop
the Eleven Plus in Kent) (DP 51)
DO KENT
PARENTS WANT
SELECTIVE EDUCATION?
1. The petition and ballot regulations on
selection for grammar schools are so unworkable that there will
never be a ballot to end selection in Kent. Meanwhile parents
are making their preferences clearer and clearer, according to
a document released by KCC in Maidstone.
2. The paper shows the numbers of first
and second preference applications for each of the 28 secondary
schools in the Mid-Kent area. It shows that there are 19% more
places available than there are first preference applicants. The
surplus places vary between 11% in Ashford to 24% in Maidstone
and between schools. With a built in surplus of places, to become
oversubscribed a school must attract sufficient applicants to
fill the oversupply of places, and then some.
3. The paper reveals a clear preference
for Kent's comprehensive schools, even though they tend to be
severely "creamed" by the grammar schools. In total
Mid Kent's comprehensive schools were oversubscribed with first
preference applications by 17.5%. The grammar schools were undersubscribed
by over 20% and the high schools (Kent's term for secondary moderns)
by 15%.
4. Within these totals there are variations.
There are two undersubscribed comprehensives (by an average of
2.1%), two grammar schools are oversubscribed by 2.3% and seven
high schools by 10%.
5. Much noise has been made by KCC about
some schools operating a conditional entry policy (where priority
is given to first preference applicants who do not also enter
the 11+ test for entry to grammar school.) Schools operating conditional
admission arrangements are 11% oversubscribed while the rest of
the Mid-Kent area's schools are 12.3% undersubscribed.
6. It is clear from these figures that Kent
parents prefer comprehensive schools, whatever their entry policy,
to the alternatives of grammar and high schools.
7. While KCC persist in attempts to undermine
the comprehensive schools and protect the grammar schools by constant
changes to the admissions process, parents are increasingly aware
that it is these comprehensive schools that are responsible for
keeping Kent's position in the league tables relatively respectable.
The grammar and high schools have improved their GCSE pass rate
by some 30% over the last 10 years, but Kent's comprehensives
have improved at very nearly twice that rate.
8. Parents may also be more aware of the
failures of Kent's selective education system once children leave
school. The Learning and Skills Council for Kent and Medway published
a context document in April 2002 highlighting the shortcomings.
Kent does reasonably wellwithin a point or twoof
the rest of the South East region at GCSE and A level but, when
they leave only 37% of Kent's children go on to university compared
to 47% in the rest of the region.
9. STEP believes that Kent's system makes
it very hard for families with no educational tradition to break
the cycle. Most of the children where parents have done well through
education are in grammar schools, those without this tradition
are also concentrated in schools where they will find few with
this advantage. At the same time many of these children, whoever
aspirant their families, will have a door shut firmly in their
faces when the 11+ told them that their futures were not academic.
We do not have the resources to confirm this hypothesis (by, for
example) comparing the university entrance rates for children
from grammar schools and from secondary moderns who had achieved
the same levels at KS2, KS3 or GCSE. It is significant that the
LEA has, despite repeated entreaties, made no response to this
April LSC report.
10. Meanwhile Kent education faces another
Spring and Summer of uncertainty as they attempt yet another set
of changes to the admission arrangements for secondary schools
that seem doomed to keep the adjudicator busy. It will also absorb
a large number of LEA officer days and push the real problems
Kent faces further down their worry list. The main problem is
the rigid hierarchy of schools that is inevitable when 30% of
the schools, the grammar schools, command 95% of the prestige.
From this flows an immense tail of low achieving schools: at GCSE
in 2001, 48 of Kent's 103 secondary schools achieved less than
the lowest achieving school in Cornwall, an LEA than is significantly
more deprived than Kent.
11. Kent's Key Stage 2 results, just published,
are again very poor for a shire county. We agree with the previous
Director of Kent Education, who stated that the preparation for
the 11+ ate significantly into learning time in year 6 and led
to a lack of concentration on school work while results were awaited
and afterwhether the result was positive or not.
12. KCC is about to reveal research results
showing Kent secondary schools make more progress from KS2 to
KS4 than in comprehensive areasbut we also believe that
the artificial depression of results at KS2 by the concentration
on the 11+ will account for much, if not all, of the supposed
gain by KS4.
13. Kent is proposing to end selection by
the 11+ and substitute continuous assessment throughout the primary
years. This has been uniformly rejected by primary and secondary
schoolseven Stop The Eleven Plus has publicly begged KCC
to retain the 11+ rather than blight each and every primary year
with testing. This scheme was tried 30 years ago and quickly abandonedit
subjected the primary schools to continuous pressure from aspirant
parents and to mountains of paperwork. KCC are required by Ofsted
to make the 11+ process more transparent and standard. Continuous
assessment cannot deliver either without much more formal testing
than the current diagnostic testing that is part of the arsenal
of a good teaching.
14. The primary motivation for such a crazy
scheme is to evade the conclusions of the Adjudicator for Schools
in adjudications not just in Kent but also in Torbay and Wirral,
conclusions that now form part of the Code of Practice on Admissions
laid before Parliament in November, that there shall be no selection
before parents have expressed their preferences.
15. The inclusion agenda is badly affected
by selective admission processeswe have a very unequal
division of children with special or additional needs: grammar
schools average less than two statemented children per school,
the rest 19 times as many, and for many schools this creates educational
problems they lack the means to solve. It is generally agreed
that educating children with special needs costs more than it
brings in income and a financial inequity in favour of the grammar
schools is created. KCC research a few years ago identified a
further inequity. Grammar schools employ fewer teachers per pupil
than the high schools and an AWPU led formula will always favour
grammar schools at the expense of the rest.
16. STEP will continue to campaign to end
selection and parents will continue to vote with their feet by
applying to Kent's comprehensives but there is no doubt that the
future of all England's grammar schools was made more secure by
the Ballot Regulations introduced in 1998.
December 2002
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