Select Committee on Education and Skills Written Evidence


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 well—within a point or two—of 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 after—whether 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 areas—but 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 schools—even 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 abandoned—it 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 processes—we 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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