Trafford19 wrote:
kenyancowgirl wrote:
why should a very bright child who does not have access to every single advantage (including a parent who is spending time to prepare them for the entrance exam) be given a helping hand - arguably, if they get 10 marks lower than your child with literally no help at all, they are "brighter" and more deserving than your child who has had all the help. Give them a step up and see whether they fly - the child who misses out despite all the parental help isn't suddenly going to lose that parental help - they will still have that, whether they attend the GS or not. Don't think about it as that child having snatched the place away from yours - think about it as two lists, and unfortunately your child was at the bottom of the non PP list - in that sense you can see that is completely fair.
I do accept positive discrimination, as you call it - I think it should go further.
I don't think it's as simplistic as you are trying to suggest.
In a hypothetical situation ,lets say a child has scored 370 and is living within the catchment area, perhaps at distance 3 miles or so and can't get in because a child on PP gets in despite scoring a lot less and lives further away -
it makes it very difficult to accept this, both from a parent's & child's perspective.No it doesn't. The child simply feeds off the parent, for one! You simply explain to them that some children didn't have all the advantages they did and, because of that the system allows them to do not as well in the test (in the same way that age standardisation smooths out any advantages/disadvantages). Or you say nothing and just say, bad luck you didn't get in this time but you will do well wherever you go because you are hard working and we will always support you.
If your child is lower down the scoring, they "might" (and it is a big might - there are VERY few PP children actually in GS) not get a place. (But then even if there was no allowance for PP they might not get a place). Or, with the help you are offering they will do well enough to not be bothered by anything going on around the cut off. In our area Warwickshire and Birmingham, a neighbouring area, many PP candidates score well enough to get in, in their own right, so in a sense are not displacing your child anyway.
If you take the example where there might be 10% of children in an average year group who are PP - say 10 out of 100. So your child effectively has to do as well as the top 90 children - if they don't, they don't get a seat - take the PP out of the equation in that sense - (the two lists I referred to earlier).
Ultimately, selection at age 11 is inherently unfair anyway - you cannot accept those bits of it and then cry foul when you see an apparent disadvantage....