Eleven Plus or Kent Test Week.

I guess most of my blog readers who are either ten years old or parents of ten year olds will be aware that this exam will be sat this week.

Regardless of your views about selective education, this is what we actually have in Kent at the moment, for example here in Ramsgate the secondary school options are 

 ChathamHouse Grammar School

 ClarendonHouse Grammar School

The Ellington and Hereson School

 The Marlowe Academy

The links above, click on the name of the school, take you to the Ofsted reports for those schools.

Eleven plus papers are very difficult to find online in a format that is similar to the one being used here in Kent, for those of you interested the following link leads to a few papers with answer sheets that you may wish to try, to see how you will or would do in the exam.

http://freeexampapers.com/past_papers.php?l=Past_Papers/11+Plus/

The pass mark is in the region of 60%

The picture above is of a Chatham House School dramatic production, for the rest of the series of pictures follow this link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/chathamhouse/

I would guess, if like me you have attempted some of the papers, you can see the whole business of whether you wind up in an outstanding school or one in special measures is a bit of a bagatelle. Some of the local primary schools appear to be doing everything they can to get their students to pass the exam, while others are much more focused on the results of stats tests, which appear to benefit the schools much more than the pupils.   

Ramsgate’s schools

WW1 bomb damage at Chatham House School

Ramsgate’s schools are back in the local papers again this week, the problem being that there is money available for rebuilding schools and some of our politicians want to use it to further their own particular brand of political idealism.

There are all sorts quirky aspects like most of the Labor politicians involved being grammar school educated, or one of the Labor politicians teaching in one of the grammar schools, or some of the Conservatives wanting to maintain single sex status for the grammar schools but get rid of it in the non grammar schools.

Now most of the ordinary people I speak to every day want to maintain the status quo as we have good and improving schools in Ramsgate and they don’t want them either unsexed or ungrammared.
I have tried to group together all of the opinions I can find in one place click here to read them.