Waiting list children contacted for Year 8 entry

[Great Plum]

I think Donald that you must contact the school to find out the reason - surely you are owed that...

[Chris Blewett]

Just had a thought - HOPEFULLY someone from the school may see this thread and may do something??

(or is it a case of all pigs fueled, on the runways and ready for take off??)

Donald, I think you can see that we are all behind you and just as exasperated! (not that that helps!)

[bosty94]

My sympathy and understanding go out to you and your son, Donald. My experience with CH has been, I think, similar to yours. One difference is that my dd was put on the waiting list last year. After a little research I discovered only 6 girls received a waiting list place. And within a few weeks I learnt that at least 2 of those 6 girls had received one of those places. (One I learnt through this site, the other was a child my daughter had bonded with at the residential. They e-mailed almost daily.) For the process to drag on even further, for us, was excruciating. It pretty much dominated our thoughts up until the first test, then throughout the time we waitied to see if we had got through to the residential. Then came the anticipation of the residential, and then another period of waiting for the post each day. Then to find out we would needed to wait longer, was almost unbearable. The highlight of our day became checking the post box, and the only contact I felt I had to clues as to what was going on, was this forum. It was very difficult to know when to move on, as there was no contact and no updates. In April I called the school to find out whether there was still any chance, and to try and ascertain what that chance was. It was a short phone call and it left me thinking it was time to give up.

Then, in February, I received the same/similar (I guess) letter to you. It said that some places had come up, and that they were means tested places, and therefore my dd would need to be reassessed and tested. And to let them know if we were still interested, and they would then forward the details shorty after. Because the letter clearly said that my dd would be reassessed if we should like this opportunity, I did tell my daughter. I would NEVER have done so had I been told that the school was only making preliminary enquiries, and that they could not say at this stage whether my dd would be offered a chance to be reassessed. .....BUT, because it was worded the way that it was, I should I should tell my dd so that she could begin to consider whether she wanted to go through this again, and so that she could mentally and emotionally prepare herself. Especially since we were not given a date and I did not know how soon the tests and residential could be.

And so I was flabergasted really when I got the letter which, with no acknowledgement that I had been my daughter would be getting a chance to be reassessed, stated that my daugher's application would not be being taken further!! The letter stated that they had looked at her report (summed up by her head teacher at the end as excellent) and her family circumstances (don't want to bore with the whole personal thing either, but pretty compelling reasons I am sure, father heroin addict and more I have not gone into) and reached this decision. Indeed the forms that we sent back did address these two areas. But there was one other form that we also had to send back, and this one was not mentioned in the explanation as to why she owuld not be getting a chance to be tested again. And this form was the financial disclosure form.

I do acknowledge that there may have been kids with straight As (ours were As and Bs), and whose family circumstances may be even harder. But it does look to me that ailurophile hit the nail on the head in her post (on this thread) of Feb22. It made so much sense to me, and ever since reading it, the mystery has ceased to be - for me.
What I don't understand is the way all of this has been handled. It could have been done in a different way. Thank you Antinous for your post. You also have the nail on the head.

I have written to the school today. I hope at least they will consider doing things a little differently next year.
So sorry to ramble. And truly sorry to Donald and your son as well.

[J.R.]

The Old School Ethos = Dead and Buried ???

Answers attached to a Broadie Buckle, to..................

[Antinous1]

This thread just gets sadder, doesn't it? Who on earth is it at the school who is treating the feelings of children and their families in such a cavalier and heartless fashion? It surely can't be the staff, who have always seemed to me to demonstrate an excellent sensitivity and care - it must be the faceless beaurocrats who manage matters behind the scenes and if that is so then the staff, who provide the public face of the school, ought to be ashamed of and indignant about what is being done in their name.

I can quite see why, rightly or wrongly, CH would not want to get into protracted discussions with rejected families or risk the possibility that parents felt they had any chance of appeal against their decisions, but I also think that the opaqueness of their selection procedure makes them peculiarly hard to deal with, and that the fact they present themselves as being somehow more 'caring' than other fee-paying schools leads us to expect more of them in their handling of applications.

The big problem with CH's lack of transparency over the application process, now that they are marketing themselves as so many different schools (charitable institution, full-fee boarding, full-fee day school), is, as Bosty, Donald and Ailurophile have all suggested, the financial aspect. It just isn't clear to me, or I think to anyone else, for standard entry, what part your inability to pay any or most of the fees has in the school's decision whether to accept your child. If I apply to, say, Westminster School or Winchester College, and I know that I will need a massive bursary in order for my child to attend that school then I also know that the child will have to perform extraordinarily well in the tests, or perhaps offer exceptional musical or sporting prowess, in order to gain a place. If my child is something less than exceptional then my being able to pay for their place will increase their chance of getting one (they will still have to be one of the top 50, say, in the test, but not one of the top 5). These schools make no bones about this - they have few bursary places to give and they reserve these for exceptional children. If I apply to CH I have no idea what difference, if any, my financial circumstances make to the application. If, one year, 10 of the children who come top of the school's list of those they want to offer places to would require 75% or more of their fees to be paid by the Foundation then does that mean that they will be looking for a majority of people who can pay 50+% of the fees to fill the lower places? If the next year the top 10 children on the list are all from families who will be paying 90% or more of the fees then will there be more leeway for the school to slot in 'poorer' children lower down the list? Do they sit down to their choosing meeting knowing that they have to ensure that the cohort of kids they choose will consist of enough fee-payers that at least 50% of the overall fees for that cohort will be covered by parents? The school has to keep up, or even improve, its place in academic results tables if it is going to attract fee-payers, does that mean that by accepting less able full-fee payers it is looking to the subsidised pupils to keep the grades up and, just like Westminster, a child from a low income family needs to be exceptional to gain a place? As regards waiting-list places then will a child who needs 90% of its fees paid by the Foundation need a child with similar finances to drop out before they will be offered a place (and if a child who was expected to pay 75% drops out the available space will be offered to someone on the waiting list in a similar financial position)? Or does none of this matter and the finances of any particular year are sorted out after the places are offered?

A year or two ago several of the big public schools announced their intentions to try to actively move towards a 'needs-blind' application process, where they would only look at how much of a bursary your child needed once it had been offered a place, which in effect means that your child could be bottom of the list of places offered and still receive a 100% bursary. I always assumed that this was already how the CH process worked but in reality who knows? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't .......

Antinous

[Chris Blewett]

JR - If I had a buckle I'd send it to you!!!

These are truly horrid comments and I can only empathise with you. I find myself wondering if things have changed over the years or if it has always been thus - and if it has changed then why??

I guess until someone from the school puts anything on this thread then we wont know

[YadaYada]

This is a very sad thread. I'd just like to say 'hear hear' to all of Antinous's comments.

[J.R.]

JR - If I had a buckle I'd send it to you!!!

These are truly horrid comments and I can only empathise with you. I find myself wondering if things have changed over the years or if it has always been thus - and if it has changed then why??

I guess until someone from the school puts anything on this thread then we wont know

As this is an UNOFFICIAL Forum, may I say that any comment from serving members of staff is probably frowned upon.

My family's experiences of the past year have certainly changed my personal attitude regarding the 'Powers That Be' !!

[HowardH]

I am running the tests this Saturday for 39 prospective pupils. I am also the father of Great Plum.
If anyone has doubts about the selection process or has any personal gripes over the process, then they are free to email me privately.
I have no doubt that our processes are very fair. I have been involved in the procedure as the Master i/c Admissions representing the school for the past 10 years. Part of my job is to liaise very closely with the Admissions Department of the Foundation.
One final point - I have never seen a child selected or not selected for a Foundation place on the parents' ability to pay.

[Antinous1]

I am running the tests this Saturday for 39 prospective pupils. I am also the father of Great Plum.
If anyone has doubts about the selection process or has any personal gripes over the process, then they are free to email me privately.
I have no doubt that our processes are very fair. I have been involved in the procedure as the Master i/c Admissions representing the school for the past 10 years. Part of my job is to liaise very closely with the Admissions Department of the Foundation.
One final point - I have never seen a child selected or not selected for a Foundation place on the parents' ability to pay.

This is good to hear. I for one trust Howard, who has been straightforward in all my dealings with him, and feel that he has cleared up how the financial side works as far as I am concerned. Clearly my original idea of how children are selected is correct and whether or not their parents can contribute towards fees has no bearing at all on their being offered a place, and I feel a lot easier knowing this to be the case for sure.

Clearly also Howard is right to call the process of selection 'fair' - I personally don't actually put a lot of faith in the idea of 'fairness' .... life, as I always tell my kids (just as my parents told me), is not fair and no one ever said it would be. Trying to make life fair is like King Canute trying to turn back the tide. I place rather more importance in the idea of trying to behave with kindness: with the best will in the world I am not always able to be 'fair' to my children, and in fact life has often not been fair to them, but I do strive to always deal with them and others kindly, and I encourage them to do likewise. Whatever has gone on with Donald and Bosty I fail to see much in the way of kindness about their treatment by the school.

Antinous

[wurzel]

I have to chip in on the side of CH on this. My son took the exams this year and was not offered a place. I am sure he was up to it academically (he just got a Mathematical Association Primary Maths Challenge Gold Medal and has also just graded at lv8a in maths) but as was pointed out at the beginning of the residential assessment, all the children who have reached that stage are good enough to reach CH but there are only places for c50% of them.

It is not like a day school etc where an extra few places can be found, and even if it was all you would do would be to move the line a bit further along. I stick by what I have said before, I do not believe there is a FAIRER method of selection being used at any school I have come across. I am sure that every child that made it through the initial assessment could give excellent reasons why CH would be great for them but they can't all get in and selection has to be carried out. To be fair it has to be intrusive or else decisions would be based on incomplete information.

Our primary HT could also not believe our son did not get a place, not least as one of the other teachers has 2 sons at CH, but that is life - we had always told Samuel that if he was not offered a place it was not because he had failed in any way it was because someone else needed the place more than him and that is what we have to remember.

If the school starts giving protracted information to people then it is giving info for people to argue with, and we all know there are parent who will as they are so worried about the alternatives. At the end of the day in some ways more information can actually be more painful in the longrun

[YadaYada]

I agree with the previous comments that there may be students who are able and who would benefit who don't get in, simply because it is felt someone else would benefit more.
That is fine for the initial assessments for Year 7 entry.
However, I do think it is not right to treat people in this way when it is later entry from a waiting list. There needs to be more feedback to these families because they have already jumped over a number of hurdles just to reach the point of being re-invited to apply. Plus children and families are already settled in a new school by this point and the invitation from CH to re-apply will throw up all kind of emotions.
There needs to be more sensitive treatment of families.

[ailurophile]

Well said YadaYada. The point has already been made on this thread that many applicants for Foundation places at CH will inevitably be disappointed, and that they will need to move on. The difference for Bosty and Donald's families (and how many more?) is that having gone through this process they have been directly invited by the Foundation to re-apply, and given renewed hope, only to have their hopes dashed again - all without adequate explanation. By any reckoning this is unkind, unprofessional and unacceptable.

It is decent of HowardH to offer to correspond privately with anyone distressed by the issues raised here, but I can't help feeling that this shouldn't be necessary. All applicants to the school (and indeed current pupils!) deserve to be treated not only fairly, but also with sensitivity and respect: the Foundation are clearly failing in this. Hopefully this thread will effect an urgent review of how these issues are being handled.

[KenHo]

If parents have gone to a great deal of trouble and effort, and then feel let down by the system, then they need to appeal. They should contact the school and ask for their case to be reviewed according to the school's appeal process and to be informed of what action has been taken, and by who. If the school doesn't have such a process, then it clearly should, otherwise mistakes will be made and an injustice may follow. As such,those people in authority, perhaps the governors, should then be pressed to bring the school up to the 21st century in this regard, before such an injustice ends in litigation.

[bosty94]

I appreciate Howard H taking the time to post on this subject. Although I know it has been said that staff contributing to this forum can be frowned upon, I think it is great that someone has taken the initiative to make themselves available to anyone who feels they are not getting the information they need. I too, believe Howard. Although I do not know him, I trust the other poster (forgot her name) and Howard too, since he has gone to the toruble to get himself involved.

However, because of the lack of transparency and the way we seem to have beem mislead, I would very much like to speak to someone from the school, if only to better understand. I would also like to put my case forward regarding the way that some children and their families have been dealt with. It really seemed like a case of 'Computer says no!'

Again, I must stress it is not the fact that my dd did not get a place that I have a problem with.

So thank you to Howard H for coming forward and offering to talk with us. Please can I have your e-mail address so that I might contact you directly as suggested?