Talk:The Becket School

NPOV Dispute Box
There is a NPOV dispute box on this article, but I can see no reference to a NPOV dispute in the talk page, other than an exchange from 2006 which appears to relate to a historic version of the page. Unless anyone responds to this comment with an objection, I intend to remove the NPOV dispute box tomorrow. Daldred (talk) 18:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, no responses! I've removed the box and will leave this comment in place for a few weeks as a record.  David Aldred (talk) 17:13, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Can whoever it is that seems to think the new school was 'mainly funded by the catholic church' find a viable source to back it up, or stop suggesting it was?
 * The redevelopment was not mainly funded by the Catholic Church; the rules for this type of School in the UK are that the Government pays 90% of the cost, and the Church 10% - plus any costs of specifically Church work such as the chapel.  The Chapel was entirely funded by voluntary contributions (form Catholics, of course), and much of the 10% of this redevelopment came from rollover of contributions to the two previous sites.
 * I should perhaps state that I am involved in the School and know this as a result; it will be very difficult to provide references since the technical funding of schools is not something which tends to hit the press! David Aldred (talk) 11:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

____________________ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.10.75.14 (talk) 19:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

This ia large stub or a small start. More refs would be useful. Good start. Victuallers 16:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

This article is clearly on the mostpart biased, and should be reviewed. WillPS 00:22, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I could easily say the same about your contribution. I won't deny that the article I cleaned up last month was somewhat biased in favour of the school, but the fact remains that it does achieve high results. Furthermore, the claim about the school being highly selective with its sixth formers is nonsense. There are guidelines which claim not to allow pupils with average grades below a C, but in reality, exceptions are made, and thus the sixth form is less selective than the sixth form of Nottingham High School, for example. Nevertheless, the results data is outdated, and in light of the recent publication of the 2006 results, the section does need updating. Yet the claim that the article 'clearly on the mostpart(sic) biased' is outrageous. Zverzia 00:23, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe you'll find that the Nottingham High School is a privately owned and governed school, and is thus exempt from any guidelines, giving them a right to be as selective as they like. I wouldn't dream of making a comparison between the two schools. The fact is, the school has a very low intake target for 'A' Level students, which is down to the school's poor physical capacity. This allows them to 'scrape the cream off the milk' with regards to applicants. Of course they're allowed to do this, I'm not challenging that. But until their intake target goes up (which will be whenever the Gresham Fields campus has opened), the school will continue to have a disproportionately high ranking in league tables. Oh, and for your information, the school's target intake at A-Level is exactly 100 students. Never have they strayed above this by more than 5 or so. I'm prepared to reference that if needs be. WillPS 18:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Rights or not, the High School is still a fair amount more selective than the Becket, so highlighting the Becket as a particularly selective school is misleading. When one mentions selection, the thought of privately-owned schools comes to mind. In any case, there are a great number of supposedly-state schools out there who are extremely selective, as a glance at the names of the 'state schools' scraping the top of the league tables would show you.

Reference if it you want. There were around 80 in my year of Sixth Form. However, applications for Sixth Form have only recently risen above this demand. Even five years ago, there were still spare places in the Sixth Form, and the Becket's attainment record is not a new thing. If you want to reference something, prove that the ones who make it through the selection process are the most academically-able, because this was not my experience. The ones who got low grades at GCSE generally didn't want to enter Sixth Form anyhow, whilst I know some who scraped a few Cs and were let into Sixth Form with no real trouble. You may claim bias on my part, being a former pupil myself, and with a father in the school teaching staff, but I would counter that that means I know the school better. So, as I stated, that is what I would ask for proof for, and not for the capacity, which would be clear enough to anyone who endured the current cramped conditions. Zverzia 14:54, 14 September 2006 (UTC)