Parents' Experiences of the Process of Choosing a Secondary School

comprehensive, still test children the year before so they can set them so
you’ll end up doing tests come what may, more or less whatever school you
wanted your child to go to.
6.6 Applying for places at a selective school
In some areas all children in the last year of primary school are entered for the test
with parents able to withdraw them by request. This method of entry is common for
wholly selective areas and provides universal access and raises no obvious equity
issues beyond those generally associated with selective systems. In others children
are entered on the primary school’s recommendation with parents able to include
them by request. This involves, as a formal part of the process, a discussion with
primary school staff about the child’s secondary education and raises issues about
the status of primary schools’ judgements and the possibility that parents will differ
in how they act on that recommendation. In other LEAs parents may request that
their child take the test, for example when they must make application to the
schools themselves. Again this requires parents to be pro-active and there may be
differences in parents’ understanding of how to use the system.
6.7 Schools that use partial selection
Partially selective schools are those which select a proportion of pupils entering the
schools. Two grounds for selection are identified in the School Standards and
Framework Act 1998 (Chapter 2 s 99 to 103). The grounds are selection on the
basis of general ability and selection on the basis of aptitude for one or more
subjects. Arrangements for partial selection that were in place in the 1997-1998
school year are authorised providing they have remained unchanged since that time.
However, objections to such arrangements can be made and this is the most
frequent type of objection that the Schools Adjudicator has to deal with.
In almost all partially selective schools testing is carried out by the school. The
issue for parents in choosing a partially selective school as their first preference is
firstly, the uncertainty of whether their child will be successful in gaining a
competitive place at a selective school and secondly, the implications of not gaining
a place at such a school for the remaining choices available to the parent.
6.8 The composite prospectuses from all 141 authorities were examined and all schools
(community, foundation and voluntary-aided) mentioned in the prospectuses as
operating partial selection by aptitude or ability in 1999/2000 were recorded. Since
a single school may offer up to three kinds of specialism the table records the
distribution of the number of specialisms within different LEAs and not the number
of schools. The category ‘general ability’ means those places allocated on the basis
of a test for general ability.
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