Back to school … a
new startBy Kathryn Rice
Two years ago the parents of under-11 year-olds in this part of Bucks heaved a sigh of relief when the proposed boundary changes to grammar school entry were shelved. We had fought a vociferous campaign against County and won. With this victory we assumed that we had secured a choice of schools for future generations of children eligible for grammar school.
It seems we were wrong and the situation that triggered those proposed changes has arisen again. This time the distance criteria for entry to Dr Challoner’s Boys’ School has shrunk from 7.9 miles to 6.2, thus affecting not only Gerrards Cross but Prestwood and potentially parts of Lee Common and further afield, my youngest son probably only getting a place under the sibling rule. This is despite County giving assurances that there were no bulge years until 2010.
For the uninitiated this means that this year, even if you scored top marks in the 11+ you would not be allocated a place if you chose this popular school if you lived over 6.2 miles away, even though you live within the catchment area. This is and has been for generations one of our catchment area schools but in 2007 seven children in HP16 who chose Dr Challoner’s did not get places.
Although all have been allocated a grammar school place some have not been given transport and some are going against the natural flow of friends going to local schools. Making the school choice is difficult enough: then there is the hurdle of the exam, waiting for results and finally hearing about allocation, so not to be given your choice at the end of a long enough process causes considerable disruption to what should be an exciting transfer to secondary school. I would also question the timing of school visits. Should we be showing our children round schools when we don’t know what their results are?
My concern is that this catchment seems to be shrinking each year and with the current pace of housing development between us and Amersham it will only get worse. We have already lost Aylesbury Grammar schools from our catchment and now it looks possible that we may lose Challoner’s Boys’ by virtue of its popularity. This year Challoner’s Girls’ School took from outside the catchment area, but who knows how much longer that situation will last? It appears that by living in a rural area we are slowly being marginalised and that eventually both sexes will have only one school to apply for, with urban areas having a genuine choice. So much for the County Council’s commitment to rural areas.
For those parents who are about to embark on this process beware, as County have no plans at present to address these issues. Do we want a lottery system such as Brighton? Do we want to revert to the old system where the most popular schools set the entry score? Perhaps we should scrap the grammar school system completely! Food for thought.
Make your views known to:
Cllr Tricia Birchley (pbirchley@buckscc.gov.uk)
Cllr Marion Clayton Cabinet Chair for Education (mclayton@buckscc.gov.uk)
Cheryl Gillan MP (gillanc@parliament.uk).