| REMEMBER TO REGISTER FOR THE KENT TEST BY 1ST JULY |
Kent County Education Officers have still not yet released details of the Kent Test arrangements for 2020, but I have a proposal that appears to cover the key issues. Quite simply:
1) The Kent Test goes ahead as normal on September 10th for Kent Primary School Pupils and September 12th for those attending Out of County schools. I am confident that even if there is a second wave of Coronavirus, a high proportion of those registered for the Kent Test will wish and be able to take part under the prevailing safety regulations with schools making every effort to facilitate this. However, instead of the pass scores set to select the normal 20% of pupils in the cohort, my proposal is to reduce this possibly to as low as 12.5%.
2) Expand the procedure for Headteacher Assessment to identify a further 12.5% of the cohort, who registered for the test, whether or not they took it, bringing the selective pass rate back to its normal 25%. Place greater responsibility on primary school headteachers. For example, as I have suggested previously, give them an indicative figure for their school, based on the average number of pupils found selective by both routes over the previous three years. The HTA Panel should then rely strongly on these recommendations in the light of the limited evidence that will be available in most cases to support a case. It is possible that they could simply be contained in a ranking order.
This procedure has the strong advantage that it broadly follows the current regulations and so could be introduced without too much difficulty. It also caters for the up to 5,000 out of county children who usually take the Kent Test. They can qualify via the direct route, or else, and less likely, also use the HTA procedure with the support of their headteachers.
Please note that this proposal is specific to the Kent Test with its Head Teacher Assessment (HTA) which is different to the Review process operated by many other Admission and Local Authorities such as Medway (see below).
You will find a comprehensive survey of grammar school selection in Kent in normal times here, and a survey of Pupil Premium numbers in Kent and Medway grammar schools here, which sets the background for these major issues to do with academic selection . You will find my previous article on the Kent Test and Coronavirus here.
To consider the two stages in more detail:
Children will have wildly differing experiences of preparation for the Test, ranging from those who have been tutored heavily to children who have had no schooling for the previous six months and come from backgrounds unable to give them support. It is a nonsense to suggest that preparation is unimportant, especially since the test was changed in 2014 to give more focus to curriculum English and maths.
The choice of a pass rate which is fixed to allow a percentage of the Kent state school cohort to be automatically selected is in the hands of KCC and my suggestion is to fix it low enough to enable children less well prepared or who simply were unable to take the test to be considered as fairly as possible. In recent years this has varied between 18-20%, apparently to try and anticipate the success rate at HTA.
There is likely to be a major logistical issue if the number of Out of County candidates is anywhere near the 5000 of recent years. Some centres are not offering their sites for testing for various reasons.
My proposal rests on the professionalism of primary school headteachers who know the pupils best. I am aware that a small minority who do not have the pupils best interests at heart may buck the system in different ways, and that the prejudices of others may be unfair, but the heart of the principle assumes this will be carried out in an objective manner.
I have floated a straightforward ranking idea before (as was applied to me in the Kent 11 plus over sixty years ago), but it still allows the HTA Panel to mediate using their own professional judgement and local knowledge. Whether primary headteachers are asked to supply additional evidence would need further thought, as do other aspects of this proposal.
I have not considered the situation of Out of County candidates with regard to HTAs, but I am sure an appropriate formula can be devised. For 2019, there were 4795 children who sat the test, 269 who had HTAs submitted, mainly from Bexley and Medway, but in the end just 408 were offered places.
I cannot see how a similar process would work in Medway, bound in as it is by the useless Medway Review process, which explicitly forbids consideration of any factors extraneous to submitted schoolwork and test scores.
For families who are unhappy with the outcomes of this process the Independent Appeal process will still exist. For 2019 this saw an additional 570 children offered grammar school places.
I finalised this proposal after a positive discussion with Paul Carter, CBE, previous leader of KCC which was very helpful