The Rochester Grammar School (RGS) is proposing a radical change to its admission rules from September 2020. This follows the government decision to award some £3 million to each of 16 grammar schools including RGS, to enable them to expand on condition that these schools have plans to improve access for pupils on Pupil Premium and to undertake effective partnerships with local primary schools and non-selective secondary schools, to contribute to improved educational outcomes across the wider system.
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The school, which is part of the Thinking Schools Academy Trust (TSAT), has gone out to Consultation to scrap its current academic super-selective status which sees the great majority of its pupils selected through high scores. It plans to become a school that gives admission priority to girls on Pupil Premium from 2020. Then, after several smaller categories (below) it will prioritise local children who have passed the Medway Test no matter what their scores. Given that the Trust runs two Medway grammar schools and has proposed identical admission criteria for both, except that the other school, Holcombe Grammar, is to give no priority whatever to Pupil Premium, so this does not appear a principled decision,
I look at wider aspects of local implications of the grammar school expansions in a separate article.
The proposal is very similar to the new rules already adopted by Rainham Mark Grammar last year, who may therefore have ruled themselves out of the new scheme, being unsuccessful bidders on this occasion. As a result, there will be no element of super-selection anywhere in Medway grammar schools, with local children having priority for the greater proportion of places.
I am delighted to learn of this proposal, having frequently criticised RGS for its elitist image in the past and successfully challenged the 2019 proposals which headed off in a completely different direction. They gave no indication of this sudden turnabout less than a year later, suggesting it has been led by the financial rewards more than a complete change of heart. This government approach by carrot rather than stick may of course have been the intention.
I remain puzzled by the funding to ‘expand the school’ for the intake of 205 will have been the same as in the past two years. Presumably government has accepted that because the formal Published Admission Number has remained at 175 it is indeed a technical expansion.
For 2018 entry, 81 of the 205 places offered went to girls from outside Medway, 47 of them from Kent. For several years to come, siblings of these girls will have priority, but this number will diminish annually.
There has been a surplus of grammar school places for girls in Medway for some years, so there is no need for expansion. Two of the schools, Fort Pitt and RGS are both considerably oversubscribed, as is the mixed grammar Rainham Mark. The gap is at Chatham Grammar for Girls (CGSG) where there were 60 vacancies for its 142 places on allocation last March. However, by the October census this had shrunk to 27 vacancies due to successful appeals and late applications including some from out of county.
The new RGS criteria are going to see the out of county numbers fall sharply, except for girls living nearby in Kent, to the west and south of Medway possibly expanding to villages such as Higham, Shorne and Wouldham. This would be in parallel with the also heavily oversubscribed neighbouring boys school, Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School. It would, however, hit CGSG badly except that the school is likely to be compensated by some of the displaced RGS pupils from Kent and London and one can see the school’s admission strategy adjusting to tackle this.
However, the biggest challenge may be the current ethos and reputation of RGS. The most recent criteria for 2019 make no mention whatever of disadvantage, and there will be much to do to change from chasing high performance from the ablest pupils with those unable to meet the school’s high standards too often casualties of the school. It is indicative that 24 girls left the school at the end of Year 11 this summer, although the eight that left at the end of Year 12 is a much lower number than before I exposed the scandal of illegal academic expulsion in 2016, when 24 left half way through the Rochester Grammar A Level course*. The school is now committed to supporting all girls who have passed the Medway Test or qualified through the Medway Review, including those with social disadvantage and I hope it will be ready for this. For some years to come, there will be two very different cohorts working through and the school ethos will come under considerable stress. This is no criticism of the proposal as such, merely pointing out the stresses that will need to be managed.
Holcombe Grammar has now published its own consultation on oversubscription criteria for 2021. After the multiple blunders for 2019 entry, which I exposed in a series of articles earlier this year, the Thinking Schools Academy Trust has decided to play safe and has simply copied the RGS criteria over for Holcombe, but with one exception. If TSAT was serious about supporting disadvantaged children, surely they would want the same rules in both their grammar schools, but the proposed criteria for Holcombe contain no mention whatever of priority for children with Pupil Premium!