Admissions

Transfer 2010

Having given careful consideration to the Minister’s Guidance for Transfer 2010, published by the Department of Education in June 2009, the Board of Governors has resolved to maintain academic selection in its admissions procedure for the following reasons:
• Bangor Grammar School has traditionally been an academically selective school and the heart of its ethos has lain in enabling boys from diverse social backgrounds to achieve their academic and intellectual potential and, by so doing, attend university.
• The skills of Bangor Grammar School’s staff are geared to boys who are academically competent.
• Academic selection is lawful.
• In every available survey so far undertaken, including the household consultation conducted in 2002 by the Department of Education, academic selection was the preferred wish of the majority.
• Academically selective schools have added value to the whole of the Northern Ireland educational system and have enabled more pupils from socially disadvantaged backgrounds to enter higher education than has been the case in England and Wales.

In determining how it will devise its selection process, the Board has resolved, therefore, that the first criterion should be academic ability as measured in the AQE CEA. However, in determining the list of non-academic criteria to be applied, the Board of Governors has given further careful consideration to the Minister’s Guidance for Transfer 2010, published by the Department of Education in June 2009.

The Board agrees with the Minister that in the selection procedure, some significant account has to be given to children who suffer social disadvantage which has inhibited their academic progress in primary school. It is reasonable to expect such children to benefit proportionately more from immersion in an academic atmosphere at post-primary level. The Department’s recommended measure for determining social disadvantage is entitlement to Free School Meals and the Board therefore proposes to afford a significant measure of priority on the behalf of such children to redress the social, and consequential academic, imbalance.

The underlying rationale of the Minister’s choice of approved criteria expressed in her guidance is that of community and her desire that post-primary schools should recognise as a priority the needs of the children in the community of which they are a part. The Board shares her view in principle, but does not entirely agree with her practical outworking of that view in her choice of criteria. The School will retain its close association with its group of regular feeder primary schools within its reasonably small catchment and will recognise its obligation to the local borough; it also accepts that it is appropriate for families to wish to send siblings to the same school. None of these criteria in any way conflicts with the Minister’s approved list of criteria. The School believes, however, at the same time, that its sense of community is enhanced by acknowledging the loyalty of families over time and that there is little to distinguish the prioritising of boys with brothers at the School now from boys whose brothers or fathers attended the School in the past. This acknowledges a deeper sense of community, one rooted in identity over time (in tradition) as well as identity characterised in location.

The Preparatory Department, as its name implies, has always been an integral part of the School. Its pupils wear its uniform and adopt its ethos. The Grammar School is involved in the delivery of its curriculum through the sharing of a small number of staff and the use of its facilities. It is part of the School family and part of the School’s traditions. The School feels that it is appropriate to retain attendance at Connor House as a non-academic criterion to acknowledge the close affiliation between Preparatory Department and the School and the contribution Connor House makes to the School community.

To sum up: the School seeks to give due consideration to the constituents who have traditionally been part of the community which the School has served and which it reflects in its ethos; it also wishes to give weight to the Minister’s desire that schools should seek to restore the imbalance in access to post-primary provision caused by social disadvantage. To achieve this in its practice and procedures, the Board of Governors has decided that there should come a point in the selection process when pure academic ability as measured by a score in the AQE CEA as the sole criterion should be balanced against wider considerations. It has therefore resolved that, in principle, up to 90% of its admissions number should be determined by rank order in the AQE CEA and that the remaining 10% should be allocated primarily by means of the non-academic criteria.

Its choice of 90% is determined by the pattern of admission over the last three years, 2007 to 2009, when, on average, 92% of its intake was composed of pupils who had achieved a grade A or B in the Transfer process. The remaining 8% was typically drawn from pupils who had achieved a C1, of whom there were more than there were places available within the admissions number and to whom, therefore, the non-academic criteria were applied. To broadly replicate the position which obtained within the model of selection offered by the Transfer procedure up to and including 2009 and to sustain, therefore, continuity of process, the Board proposes to create a ‘pool’ of applicants drawn from the next pupils in strict rank order after the first 90% have been placed, the size of which is calculated as twice the number of places available and which will be approximately equivalent to the C1 band. Restricting the pool to this number will be more likely to ensure that all will be academically competent, while at the same time giving priority to socially disadvantaged pupils and acknowledging the School’s sense of community as represented by those groups listed in the non-academic criteria.