The Judd School - Admission

Admission

The Judd School opened as a day school for local pupils living with their parents, between the ages of eight and 16. According to the foundation document, the conditions of entry were possession of a "good character" and "sufficient health"; sons of freemen of The Skinners' Company were given preference when the number of applicants exceeded the places available. During his tenure, William Bryant attempted to extend admission to boarders and estimated the costs to be £50 per term (including fees), but the Board of Governors rejected the idea. However, when a lack of public transport made day-to-day travel to the school impractical, boys were permitted to lodge from neighbouring villages and would stay at masters' homes or at hostels approved by the governors. Entry to the school was conditional upon a pupil passing an entrance exam, which would vary according to the age of the boy. However, the foundation document stipulated that every boy had to be able read, write from dictation and perform sums in the "first four simple rules of Arithmetic, with the multiplication table".

In 1944, The Butler Education Act confirmed The Judd School as a grammar school, at which time it applied for voluntarily aided status, which required it to abolish fees under the principle of universal free education. The school was required to offer entrance via an entrance examination, now known as the Eleven Plus, which pupils take aged 10 or 11, depending on their date of birth. Provision was made for pupils to enter aged 13 or 14, for those that had failed the test two years earlier. While defining the school-leaving age as 15, the act granted the government the power to raise the age to 16 "as soon as the Minister is satisfied that it has become practicable", which happened in 1973.

Admission continues to be via the Eleven Plus examination; The Judd School complies with the Co-ordinated Admission Scheme which is administered by the Kent Local Authority. All pupils must have gained a selective place through the Eleven Plus and placed The Judd School as a preference on their application form. Because the school is usually over-subscribed, priority is given to students in Local Authority Care in the first instance. Students are then ranked according to their aggregate scores in the Eleven Plus, and the distance from a students home to the school (as the crow flies) is used as a tiebreaker.

Pupils are also admitted to the sixth form aged 16 or 17, for which similar criteria is applied. Students must have at least four GCSEs at grade A or above (all offers made during Year Eleven are conditional on students fulfilling this criterion). In the event of over-subscription, priority will be given to internal applicants, followed by external applicants in Local Authority Care. Students are then ranked according to their predicted or actual GCSE results, and the distance to school is again used as a tiebreaker. Should entrance be refused for any reason, parents have a statutory right of appeal, which is heard by the governors of the school. In 2007, the school was ordered to pay compensation to two pupils after it was deemed that they did not receive fair appeals because of what the Local Government Ombudsman deemed "inappropriate links" between the appeals panel and the governors.