Further analysis of Kent test results for Admission September 2018

 My previous article on initial outcomes contains links to many relevant items, and comments on related issues, notably pressure on grammar school places across the county.  

There is a 21% target of automatic passes across the county, although the pass marks this year gave 19.9%. There is also a target of an additional 4% of children to found selective by Head Teacher Assessment (HTA) which looks at children’s work, previous test results, headteacher recommendation and pass mark. Further details here. The actual outcome for HTAs was 6.4% of the total cohort found selective, arriving at a total of 15.4%, very close to the target of 25%.

In the table of District Performance below, I have separated three of the KCC  Districts into component parts, as these each have a distinct profile of grammar school success. So: Sevenoaks Town and Sevenoaks rural; Tonbridge and Malling; and Tunbridge Wells and Cranbrook & Weald.

This highlights Sevenoaks Town as having by far the highest proportion of grammar school success, with 46% of all pupils being assessed selective. Next are Tunbridge Wells and surprisingly for many, Canterbury (see below), although this should come as no surprise for those who have followed this theme on the website before. 

At the foot of the table come Dover, Shepway and Swale all with a 20% pass rate. However, the alternative locals test for the Dover and Shepway grammar schools, and Highsted Grammar in Sittingbourne will considerably inflate these figures. Last year, these passes provided over half of the pupils offered places at the two Dover grammar schools and Folkestone School for Girls, so the pass rates would more accurately be around 40% in each District.  

Once again approximately 11.5% of all Kent automatic passes have gone to children in the private sector, but just 4% of the upheld HTAs, resulting in overall 10% of selective assessments being for children at private schools. The data calculations can only consider those children who took the Test, so the total numbers in each school year group are not known. However, a considerable proportion of these successes will not take up grammar school places, preferring to remain private.

Head Teacher Assessments

Recent changes in admission policy at the two Wilmington Grammars and the Judd School to favour Kent children is further inhibiting supply of places for out of county children, but certainly not demand. For 2017 admissions, of the 2165 (2002 in 2016) ooc Kent Test passes, just 454 (up from 412 in 2016, but almost identical to 2015) were offered places in March, over half at the four Dartford and Wilmington grammars, with this number likely to have fallen further before entry in September.

Of course this large proportion of speculative test sittings, in some cases merely provides free practice for grammar schools in other parts of the country for many as can be seen by the high number of enquiries on 11 plus forums from parents in possession of a selective assessment for their child. Many of these don’t even know where the Kent grammar schools are!

But of course, it is not free for Kent taxpayers, as the costs of administration, materials and provision of test venues falls on them. Sadly, there appears no way of recovering the costs, which surely run into tens of thousands of pounds, from those parents who have no Kent connections.