I wrote in a previous article, back in January, about Sixth Form Staying on Rates into Grammar Schools and expressed my long held view that there needs to be a healthy transition from non-selective to grammar schools at Sixth Form Level, to allow for late development. Possibly as a result of this article, an FOI request was made to KCC through the 'What Do They Know' website asking for the full data on post sixteen destinations from non-selective schools.
This shows that 513 young people from non-selective schools transferred into grammar Sixth Forms, an average of 16 into each of the 32 Kent grammars, surely a very healthy number. Another 4880 stayed on in non-selective sixth forms whilst 4889 progressed to Further Education Colleges or other Training situations. That left at most 6.5% of the cohort of 11151 young people to become, using the horrible term NEETS, not in Education, Employment or Training, exactly the national average......
Interestingly, 2.5% of Pupil Premium students in non-selective schools move across at 16+, as part of the 4.6% overall population trnaferring, a higher proportion than I would have expected.
Of course very few of these children will have transferred to the wholly super-selectives, and a break down by individual school would have been more helpful to show those grammar schools embracing the concept of wider accessibility into the sixth form, compared with those adopting a more insular approach.
However, my previous article suggests the schools most likely to encourage transfer of ‘late developers’, include: Simon Langton Boys in Canterbury; Chatham & Clarendon, and Dane Court, both in Thanet; Highworth and Norton Knatchbull in Ashford; Gravesend and Mayfield in Gravesham; and Wilmington Girls and Boys in Dartford.
There may be others disguised by a lower staying on rate of their own students and I have submitted my own FOI request to try and determine this.