Half of Bucks pupils receive first choice secondary school place (From Bucks Free Press)

So half of Bucks children DID NOT get their first choice. Is that really choice?

Expect an even greater number of appeals this year (not just eleven plus appeals), a very large proportion of which will not be upheld, but will have cost us taxpayers thousands and thousands.

One of the reasons there are so many appeals is that there are schools that parents are desperate to avoid. The idea of "choice" gives the impression that they will be able to avoid these schools ... unfortuately they cannot. It is a pity that more cannot be done by the LEA to improve the very unpopular schools.

Next year is going to be even more fun when parents can start suing poorly performing primary schools (and the council as they alocate the places) if their child "fails" the new tutor proof eleven plus exam!

The problem will get even worse when the grammar school heads get their way and start allowing hundreds of children from outside Buckinghamshire as long as they pass the eleven plus exam.

geoffW wrote:
So half of Bucks children DID NOT get their first choice. Is that really choice?

Expect an even greater number of appeals this year (not just eleven plus appeals), a very large proportion of which will not be upheld, but will have cost us taxpayers thousands and thousands.

One of the reasons there are so many appeals is that there are schools that parents are desperate to avoid. The idea of "choice" gives the impression that they will be able to avoid these schools ... unfortuately they cannot. It is a pity that more cannot be done by the LEA to improve the very unpopular schools.

Next year is going to be even more fun when parents can start suing poorly performing primary schools (and the council as they alocate the places) if their child "fails" the new tutor proof eleven plus exam!

The problem will get even worse when the grammar school heads get their way and start allowing hundreds of children from outside Buckinghamshire as long as they pass the eleven plus exam.

So right!

It's a great system that can trip it's self up but separating the chaff from the wheat works... tables don't hide a thing.

(speaks a parent very near highcrest told to ship his offspring to cressex... It didn't happen!)

It's a great system that can trip it's self up but separating the chaff from the wheat works... tables don't hide a thing.

What does that MEAN?

geoffW wrote:
So half of Bucks children DID NOT get their first choice. Is that really choice?

Expect an even greater number of appeals this year (not just eleven plus appeals), a very large proportion of which will not be upheld, but will have cost us taxpayers thousands and thousands.

One of the reasons there are so many appeals is that there are schools that parents are desperate to avoid. The idea of "choice" gives the impression that they will be able to avoid these schools ... unfortuately they cannot. It is a pity that more cannot be done by the LEA to improve the very unpopular schools.

Next year is going to be even more fun when parents can start suing poorly performing primary schools (and the council as they alocate the places) if their child "fails" the new tutor proof eleven plus exam!

The problem will get even worse when the grammar school heads get their way and start allowing hundreds of children from outside Buckinghamshire as long as they pass the eleven plus exam.

Aren't you just proud of having a system that generates such excellence?

Just above half got their 1st choice!! Really?? That's terriable!! I'm now dreading when my children get to that age :(

Firstly, most parents will put a grammar school as their first choice. Therefore if their child does not achieve the necessary mark to obtain a grammar school place then they obviously won't get their first choice! I think 50% is therefore pretty good. Secondly, I have a child who obtained a grammar school place and one who did not. I get really fed up of people slating out school system in Bucks. My personal opinion and experience is that the 11+ "selection process" has enabled both my children to attend the most appropriate school for them. Both are thriving and love going to school. It makes me wonder what the reasoning behind the distain is?

5 is too many wrote:
Firstly, most parents will put a grammar school as their first choice. Therefore if their child does not achieve the necessary mark to obtain a grammar school place then they obviously won't get their first choice! I think 50% is therefore pretty good. Secondly, I have a child who obtained a grammar school place and one who did not. I get really fed up of people slating out school system in Bucks. My personal opinion and experience is that the 11+ "selection process" has enabled both my children to attend the most appropriate school for them. Both are thriving and love going to school. It makes me wonder what the reasoning behind the distain is?

Maybe delusional parents are behind the disdain?

You say:

Firstly, most parents will put a grammar school as their first choice. Therefore if their child does not achieve the necessary mark to obtain a grammar school place then they obviously won't get their first choice! I think 50% is therefore pretty good.

I took the article to refer to parents whose children failed the 11+ being unable to get into the secondary modern school of their choice – why do you think that parents of 11+ failures are swelling the figures by being bad losers?

Secondly, I have a child who obtained a grammar school place and one who did not. I get really fed up of people slating out school system in Bucks.

What – you didn’t walk into a room where both your children were sitting and tell the one who passed the 11+ that s/he had been ‘has enabled … to attend the most appropriate school for them’ and ignore the other child – you told them both that they had done equally well in different ways? Parents who have had to put their children through the great obstacle race called ‘selection’ in this county can hardly fail to do other than to justify ‘selection’ by saying that it somehow met the individual needs of each child. To do otherwise would be to say that their child was intelligent enough to have benefitted from a grammar school education but was thrown away educationally aged ten, or to tacitly suggest any child of theirs who has failed the 11+ was too stupid to have benefitted from a grammar school education. (The idiotic Colin Baker gravely nods approval at this and says his children learnt ‘at a different pace’ - the end result was apparently the same – they took GCSE exams at the same age but they had somehow been travelling at different paces to get to the same destination.)

My personal opinion and experience is that the 11+ "selection process" has enabled both my children to attend the most appropriate school for them. Both are thriving and love going to school. It makes me wonder what the reasoning behind the distain is?

You will never know though ‘5 is too many’, what the child who was an 11+ failure might have done, as they will never get the same opportunities as their sibling who was a success at the exam. Why couldn’t they both have achieved their potential in a comprehensive school – ‘selection’ has been abolished in most of the rest of the country and except in the deliriously ideological hinterlands of the Conservative Party no one has suggested restoring it, yet people in safe conservative counties that have abolished the 11+ seem to be content and to have successful and well-educated children.
Maybe the reasoning behind the ‘distain’ is the fact that 70% of children are regarded as being goats and 30% as sheep and people are annoyed when their children don’t even go the goat pen of their parents’ choice. Somebody elsewhere here has pointed out that now the grammar schools are able to accept pupils from other areas – another step on the road to becoming what the RGS has wanted to be for a long time – a semi private school. You are paying for this through your rates ‘5 is too many’.
(I see in today’s ‘Telegraph’ (I think) that Buckinghamshire has one of the very lowest levels of parent satisfaction in the country in the field of secondary modern placements.)

5 is too many wrote:
Firstly, most parents will put a grammar school as their first choice. Therefore if their child does not achieve the necessary mark to obtain a grammar school place then they obviously won't get their first choice! I think 50% is therefore pretty good. Secondly, I have a child who obtained a grammar school place and one who did not. I get really fed up of people slating out school system in Bucks. My personal opinion and experience is that the 11+ "selection process" has enabled both my children to attend the most appropriate school for them. Both are thriving and love going to school. It makes me wonder what the reasoning behind the distain is?

I take it that is s reference to my comments.

How did you know my comments were meant in a spirit of 'distain' - what I have said is the standard justification for grammar schools for the minority - is it because arguments based on 'excellence' and 'choice' have long been recognised for the laughable bull excrement they are and you realised I could only be using them in a spirit of irony?