Schools Admissions Appeals.
Having been through the traumatic experience of trying to get my daugther into the school where I thought she would do the best, I wrote a paper on my experience as part of a course at Oxford Brookes University
The essay covers:
The schools Appeal procedure
Writing the Appeals procedure
Attending the Appeal
Challenging the Appeal decision
Appealing for a Grammar School place in selective LEA’s
Appealing for children with a learning disability
I have been working with parents locally on schools admission appeals for the last four years and have learnt a huge amount about the stress and confusion that surrounds this extremely important part of a child’s education.
While there are no guarantees, and two thirds of appeals fail, those who are the best prepared are those who seem to do the best!
And yes, we were successful in our appeal, and my daughter last year won the school award for the outstanding scientist in her year, even though no-one had ever been admitted to the this selective Grammar school with a score further away from the pass mark!
Consultancy.
Having been through it, I know how daunting the process of writing the Appeals documentation can be.
I therefore offer a consultancy service for those who think the process is too difficult.
For £50 I will look through the documentation for your case and advise you on how to lay out your arguments.
For a further £100 (making a total of £150) I will write the Appeal letter for you, highlighting the areas you might want to bring up in the Appeal hearing. Please contact me if this is of interest to you.
Eleven Plus Tuition
Buckinghamshire has selective secondary education and allocation to secondary schools is based upon verbal reasoning tests taken in the Autumn term of Yr6.
The importance of these selection tests in the education of the young people of Buckinghamshire can be demonstrated by looking at the BBC league table for 2008. These figures show the percentage of pupils gaining 5 GCSEs including English and Maths. The Government has identified some 140 school in England and Wales in which less than 30% of pupils achieve these 5 GCSEs. Four of these schools are in Buckinghamshire. Three of the four are in Aylesbury!
Grammar Schools
Aylesbury Grammar School
99
Sir Henry Floyd 93
Upper Schools
The Grange 29
The Mandeville School 28
Quarrendon School 21
I have been involved in preparing children for this selection process since my daughter went through the test in 2002. Since that time I have helped over 100 children with the techniques to do their best in this important exam.
I have also advised and worked directly with schools who are preparing children for the 11+.
Sessions usually take place at my home in Aylesbury and cost £25 for an hour.
Tutoring works - It's official!
So we have it, tutoring for the 11 plus really does work. Professor Brendan Bunting, an educational psychologist from the University of Belfast, has shown evidence that there is a relationship between intensive coaching and success in 11 plus verbal reason tests. Bunting said two studies he carried out showed that children who are coached for nine months or more improve their 11-plus scores by 30 to 40%.
In other words, a child who would get 50 out of the 80 questions on the test without tutoring, might be able to score 70 with tutoring. A 20 point increase that would make all the difference between failing and clearly passing.
544 parents from 26 grammar schools completed a BBC questionnaire.
The questionnaire, although not representative of every parent from the 164 grammar schools in England, showed that 443 of the parents who responded, had either paid professional tutors to coach their children or had provided extra help themselves.
So, of the 544 respondents, a massive 81% had had some form of tutoring.
