SenecaPliny, you need some sauce for that chip on your shoulder. I personally posted that I support efforts to help PP kids. The outreach programme and having some priority places are all positive. However, there are plenty of kids who are not PP who also face hardship, received little tutoring and who achieve high scores against the odds. Likewise there are PP kids who achieve very high scores and those who were on PP several years ago but who subsequently received lots of tutoring. It’s not all black and white and PP is not some trophy that automatically makes someone more deserving of a place.

I have no chip on my shoulder (especially as my PP child is excelling at a super-selective Grammar, not in your area). But, as a regular to this forum, I found it abhorrent that - several days ago - a poster had posited that there should be a cap on PP places and no one had thought/could be bothered to challenge this. Let’s face it, I read all the petitions about the changes to admissions for the Birmingham Grammars recently, plus the letters to the editors in the national press, and so on. I think it’s clear - even from the responses in The Timed, for example - that the parents who actioned and responded to these petitions and letters and campaigns etc do not emerge with much credit,

I hadn't realised that Yorskshire was another area with no catchment, to be honest, or that the GS there were classed as superselectives - hermanmunster is our local Yorkshire resident and the forums there are relatively quiet, compared with the Midlands. My main area is Warwickshire, and that keeps me busy enough!

With regards to nobody challenging the post you saw a couple of days ago - with all due respect, the forum has been especially busy the last few weeks - the volunteers who monitor the site have been popping up wherever they can, but cannot possibly see and respond to every comment - did you reply to it? We all have a responsibility to challenge things we are not happy with. And, yes, the forum is populated with parents who advocate for their children to get into a GS - some at any cost - but some others are in a situation where schools exist in their area, at the detriment to others, and, as long as the system exists, they will use it - they can still acknowledge the flaws in the system. The overt antigonism in Birmingham, especally recently, has been in part because the system as it was, very much played to the pointy elbowed, well tutored - but now it doesn't - for many families, that means that where they thought their child would go - where their siblings go - they are no longer allowed to - they haven't moved, the school policies have changed - and in a transition year, this causes a lot of upset - and even I, as someone who sees that actually all GS are unfair, can see and recognise that.

Whilst the press may have reported predominantly on those parents who wrote against changing the scheme, there were very many who wrote to the KES Foundation applauding their efforts. All GS have a responsibility to widen participation - PP is the measure they use but it is in itself flawed and the difference between a child who had free school meals 4 years ago but is now in a better situation and one who never met the cusp for FSM, by possibly a penny, but is just as bright, but for the lack of the PP "badge" doesn't get a place, is difficult - I am supportive of the measure, though, because it is a step in the right direction.

You suggest all non PP kids come from wealthy over privileged backgrounds and that such kids are all heavily tutored by wealthy parents with sharp elbows etc. Of course this is true for some kids. However, non PP applicants include the children of taxi drivers, nurses, shop workers, factory workers who maintain employment. They are not all super wealthy elites and to suggest that their children should always come second to PP for every place is to their parents just as “unfair” as a cap on the number of lower score PP placements. So yes you do have a chip, as you see humble low paid working folk as a wealthy elite with over privileged kids. Anyhow you’re not even from this catchment (as previously stated) so clearly you’re only here to stir and derail the thread.

I agree. Please can we keep this on topic. If SenacaPliny and Kenyancowgirl would like to continue debating pupil premium, perhaps they could start their own thread!

What is more audacious?
The advantaged treating the disadvantaged with disdain.
OR
The disadvantaged assuming another disadvantaged as advantaged, and treating them with disdain.

Divide and rule.

Wow that is some journey to school !

Do the schools ask for evidence of how long people have lived at an address and when they moved there, surely such underhand tactics should be stopped, I'm amazed at the lengths some parents will go to get there kids in KECH and KEFW.