Bexley Council's education and community services department are once again excelling in their inability to give a service to the borough's children and their parents.

Ten out of ten for putting parents and children under even more stress.

Following a decision two years ago parents of children taking the secondary education selection tests (11-plus exam) in Year 6 at primary school have this year had to make a decision over their preferred or first-choice school for their child without knowing the results of the exam.

It has been widely reported by many to be a ridiculous situation.

The fact that even if the schools' predictive tests carried out prior to the selection tests indicate that your child may pass or fail the selective tests and then on the day your child does or does not perform for whatever reason then he or she will not go to the selected school and will be sent to a school of the borough's choice or vice versa.

I believe that the decisions made by the LEA to dream up this scheme were based upon the fact that they were unable to process applications after the exams had been taken in time for the secondary schools to know their new intake.

Parents of this year's Year 5 pupils have now been told that the LEA may, after future consultation, be able to tell parents of their child's result in the selection tests prior to making a decision about their future school, but only if the tests are taken earlier during the summer term of Year 5!

I am sorry, but it seams that because of the inability of the education service in this borough to process school applications in a concise and proper manner, our children are now being asked to sit down and be tested at an even younger age.

My son will not even be ten-years-old when sitting an exam, the result of which will decide the quality of the education he receives from the two-tier education system this borough provides.

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