It’s coming up to the time of year when parents of year 5’s are starting to think about secondary schools.  Crowborough Beacon community College is keen to show its merits since the introduction of the choice system and Crowborough’s position just outside the Kent border making it feasible to travel to Grammar Schools in Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells has seen pupil numbers dropping by 25% over the past generation.

Whilst it is undeniable that these selective schools fair very well in academic league tables and – does that automatically mean they offer a better education?  With its aim to assess pure ability, the 11+ is not taught in schools so that there is supposedly a level playing field.  Try telling that to parents pulling their hair out trying to find tutor because theirs is the only one in the class not being prepped for the exam, paying more for an hour’s tutoring than on the weekly shop so as to tip the playing field back from those parents with deeper pockets, more determination and more face to lose. Pressure a go-go, leaving the non-passers to be labelled a failure at 11.

Depending in your point of view a non-selective school can be ‘one-size-fits-all’ or an education which aims to get the individual to achieve to the best of their ability.  Given the choice between applicants with the same exam results from a Grammar or a non-selective school, universities and employers will usually plump from the non-selective sector, in the belief that these pupils have more self-motivation and application. 

There is a whisper of an 11+ backlash – some primary schools in Tunbridge Wells are now using the their proximity to Beacon in their prospectuses as a plus point.  More and more parents are choosing not to put their child forward for the 11+, not just for academic reasons, but also financial and social issues too: many cannot afford the Grammar School uniform, contributions to the school fund and trips; and now the financial crisis’s knock on effect is causing independent school parents to go going all-out, even renting and buying in the catchment area to get into these schools. Once in, the child from an average family can feel like a very small fish in a big pond.

Beacon’s Ofsted report showed it to ‘be a good school with many outstanding features’; they have a good percentage that go on to university- including Oxford and Cambridge and it has a real community feel. 

For more info go to www.beacon.e_sussex.sch.uk