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.

.

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 Schools Adjudicator, responsible for deciding on school admission policy disputes, has ruled that the determined admission arrangements for 2019 for these three schools are in breach of the Schools Admissions Code and ordered them to be changed. This will ensure that the new rules are fairer to local children or, in the case of The Rochester Grammar School, that more appropriately qualified girls are admitted.

Three other schools acknowledged the validity of my complaint at an early stage and withdrew their proposals. These were: Brompton Academy, Hundred of Hoo Academy and Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School.

Medway Council, with oversight of school admission rules published on its website, neither took action to block the unlawful proposals (if indeed they noticed them), nor bothered to express a view on their legality to the Schools Adjudicator when invited. There has been just one complaint about a Kent school's proposals since 2012 (relating to In-Year Admissions), as KCC monitors proposed changes. 

To look at the decisions in detail follow the links: Fort Pitt; Holcombe Grammar; The Rochester Grammar, with my analysis below.

I have described in previous articles how twelve boys who appealed for places at Holcombe Grammar School in Medway, and were found to be of grammar school ability by the Appeal Panel,were neither awarded places nor allowed on the waiting list as would have happened in Kent. They have today learned that they can now be placed on the school waiting list, after a month of contradictory and confusing information from Medway Council. 

Unfortunately, this does not get them a place at the school even now, but I anticipate that a few spaces are still likely to arise over the summer holiday, to be awarded to those living nearest, and so likely to be from these twelve.

The information comes in a letter from the school, which throws a new light on the whole situation. This shows that responsibility for the foul up lies squarely with Medway Council which was blocking this decision, even as late as yesterday.

Update Friday: Holcombe Grammar School has written to the 12 families whose sons were denied places on the waiting list by Medway Council, and invited them to join the list. This is explained in a further article published today (Friday 20th July).    

Over a month on from the Holcombe Grammar school appeals, and two days from the end of the school year, distressed families whose sons were found of selective ability by the Holcombe Appeal Panel are still waiting to learn if they are to be placed on the waiting list. This follows eight months of worry leading up to the appeal process. I have worked with many families in the past waiting and planning for school admission appeals, and know the enormous stress this places on them, as they believe their child's future depends on their performance at appeal. This extra and unnecessary dragging out of the decision, with the mistakes, misinformation  and  confusion that surround it, can only pile the pressure on.  

The mystery of why and how Holcombe Grammar misrepresented Medway Test scores in its case to the Appeal Panel is no clearer in spite of an FOI by me asking these two questions, and an Internal Review into the process whose outcome also fails to answer the questions, itself offering a response that is clearly untrue. Along the line the school has put in writing repeated demonstrable falsehoods, as explained below, most of which it has not even acknowledged. I now have copies of the appeal notes of a number of the appeal cases that confirm the parental version of events, proving the school’s versions in its role as Admission Authority are false. 

I look at two of the central issues below, events up to this point having been explored in two previous articles, most recently here. 

Update: Further updated article here 18th July 

This article looks at the situation where families have gone to appeal for a grammar school place for a child who was initially non-selective, the child has been found of grammar school ability, but then been told by the Independent Appeal Panel that there is no room. In most cases, the family can then ask for the child to be placed on the school waiting list.

After the debacle of the 2018 appeals for places at Holcombe Grammar School (previously Chatham Grammar School) in Medway described previously, the article then considers the ongoing shambles of waiting list mismanagement for places at the school. The cast of this story also includes Medway Council and an Appeal Panel provided by KCC. 

This follows my previous article which made clear the proposals were unlawful (together with an objection lodged with TSAT), which is likely to have led to the change of policy. 

However, RGS and Holcombe have retained a section offering priority to siblings of any child in a secondary academy of the Trust, rather than their own school which appears equally unlawful, as does Brompton Academy. 

The Rochester Grammar School is proposing to make considerable  changes to its oversubscription criteria for entry in 2019, giving priority to girls who attend one of the Trust’s four local primary schools and those with siblings who attend one of the Trust’s three local secondary schools. 

These categories will now rank above the previous priority of high scorers irrespective of residence, and so will no doubt displace some of the high scoring out of county girls, 76  of whom were allocated places at the school last March, in a welcome change of direction supporting local children.

This reflects the considerable change in attitude across most other oversubscribed Thames side grammar schools, with the two Wilmingtons', Gravesend Grammar and Rainham Mark Grammar all having tackled what they consider an excess of London children taking up places by different strategies.

It would also further undermine the Trust’s Holcombe Grammar proposal to change from a boys’ school to become co-educational for 2019.  This been under consideration for nearly a year by the Regional Schools Commissioner with no sign of a decision yet, hopefully to be turned down for the reasons I have set out in previous articles.

I am looking at proposed changes in admission criteria for other secondary schools across Kent and Medway, and will publish these in a separate article to follow. …

The DfE has now ruled, as I forecast in my article entitled ‘Shame on Holcombe Grammar School and Medway Council’, that actions such as those of the Thinking Schools Academy Trust (TSAT) in placing pupils registered with Holcombe Grammar School at another school for their education are unlawful.  This illegality has been supported by Medway Council in yet another failure by them.

As a result, the pupils are now being placed back at Holcombe, but not until Term Two, although they have known of the decision for over a week already and could surely have been moved much earlier if the pupils’ interests were any sort of priority.

This is the third such case relating to school admissions locally in less than a year, where the DFE, and in one case the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO), has ruled the schools’ practices unlawful; but sadly the arrogance of these institutions has seen no semblance of apology from any. It is clear that the extent of accountability only covers ensuring that wrongdoing no longer happens to other children, and damages confidence in the large majority of reputable schools.

This article focuses primarily on events at Holcombe/Invicta Academy, but also looks at Maidstone Grammar School for Girls’ response to the LGO finding of their unlawful actions, and consequences of the Invicta/St Olave’s scandal.