Weald of Kent Grammar School has recently offered a number of additional places to girls in the West Kent selective area, as places have become available. In addition Tonbridge Grammar School has offered further places, seeing its cut off off score falling to 412 (from 414) for Inner girls. This underlines the conundrum about the proposed Sevenoaks annex. Currently, there are some 50 boys in the area, found to be of grammar school ability, who have no grammar school place and probably no girls. However, any annex has to offer the same number of places for boys and girls. I cannot see Weald of Kent being supportive of a proposal that could take away many of its students, and in any case I am not convinced that parents living in Sevenoaks will choose an annex over the established and OFSTED Outstanding Weald of Kent Grammar, just a few miles away in Tonbridge.
Why the discrepancy?......
I now have official details of the pattern of children crossing the Kent and Medway boundaries to take up secondary school places, and it gives a very different picture from the more lurid headlines which greeted the initial figures released by Kent County Council on 1st March. I have divided the cross border movement into four sections below: North West Kent; West Kent; South Kent; and Medway. I don't have precise figures for which part of county children live in so some of these figures are best estimates. The headline figures are: 560 children from out of Kent are taking up places in Kent secondary schools, with 477 going the other way. But don't jump to conclusions. Read the following:...
In spite of my comments below, the Judd School is even more popular this year. The pass aggregate score has risen to 417 (from 414/415 at this stage) and, I am reliably informed, with a record number of boys having scored the maximum 420 points. However there is usually a fallout from those offered places, so don't be surprised if it falls to 415 by the time of the appeals. For Skinners the cut off has fallen this year from the 410 of 2010, to 407, although some 407s are missing out. This means that it has been overtaken by Dartford Grammar with (a pass score of 411) in the high scores stakes! These include 72 boys from out of county, mainly from Bexley, Bromley and Lewisham. Tonbridge Grammar is also well up on last year offering 410/411 for in area girls and 414 for out of area. Dartford Grammar School for Girls also takes high scorers after local girls have been offered places and this year the cut off score has jumped to 413 from 404. This has allowed 42 out of county girls through, nearly all from Bexley, Bromley and Lewisham.
The Rochester Grammar School cut off score, at 513, is only five points above the pass mark of 508. This is the lowest gap I can recall. The Medway Test uses a different scale to that in Kent, which is why the marks appear higher.
Please note that this page has been written to respond to controversy around Paul Carter's remarks of October 2009. It does not take on the fundamentally larger question of the rationale of the selective system in Kent, which is a political position not broadly challenged by Kent residents.
In a news report in the Independent newspaper, Paul Carter, Leader of Kent County Council, proposes an expansion of grammar school places in the West of the County, to be balanced by a reduction in places available in the East.
This article formed the basis for a Report in Kent on Sunday, July 2009, about the School Adjudicator's decsion not to order changes to the admission rules for the Judd and Skinners School for September 2010 entry. Ther has been a subsequent Report in October 2010.
You will be able to find both full Adjudicators decisions on this page.