Wednesday, January 11, 2012
A Sevenoaks Grammar School please for Tonbridge's sake!...
You can tell which papers I tend to read online most days can't you?! There's a very interesting article in the Telegraph today, which I just happened to stumble across, about the plan to set up a grammar school in Sevenoaks. It talks about the situation at the moment whereby the poor, pushy parents of Sevenoaks have to cram their boys with of hours of personal tutoring to enable them to get top marks in the 11+ exam in order that they'll get a place at the super selective Judd School. It doesn't mention the current knock on effect of Tonbridge boys being displaced by Judd and having to go to schools in Tunbridge Wells if they happen to drop a couple of points on the 11+ paper. So yes I personally hope that that Sevenoaks gets its own grammar so that yet more young boys in their smart new blazers aren't forced to endure seven years of journey's on that car park that is the St. Johns road into Tunbridge Wells every morning....
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5 comments:
Isn't it about time they did away with the 11 plus thing and started actually taking note of a child's overall progress throughout a school year? How many bright kids are condemned to a second rate education simply because they fail a single exam at the end of their primary school years? It's a crime.
TB you have left out the girls. If a school is set up in Sevenoaks it needs to cater for all. But such a school will not solve all the problems. The Judd will still super select even if the Judd runs the Sevenoaks school(s) and children from Sevenoaks and elsewhere will still come to Tonbridge. And those that the Judd rejects from Tonbridge will then have the choice of travelling to Sevenoaks rather than T.Wells.
Scrap the lot of them and bring Kent into line with the 150 LEA's that saw the light a good few years ago rather than the 16 LEA's that still use this system.
Kent may have a few of the best performing schools in the country but at the expence of having many more of the sub standard performing schools.
I thought the girls were looked after in Sevenoaks. So this is mainly about the boys. In any case there are two excellent girls grammars in Tonbridge. At least one of them isn't anywhere near as super selective as Judd as far as I'm aware....
The only KCC senior school in Sevenoaks is the recently established Knole Academy - formed by merging two existing secondary schools. If you have deep pockets there are alternatives.
But Sevenoaks children of all abilities and both sexes come to secondary schools in Tonbridge. An annex to the Judd is not the answer if you want to curtail all the travelling from the Sevenoaks area.
The latest news on the Sevenoaks Grammar School campaign can be found here:-
http://sevenoaksgrammarschoolcampaign.blogspot.com/
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