HARD-WORKING pupils who received their 11-plus exam results this week are set for disappointment.

The Government's schools adjudicator has ruled grammar schools can continue to cherry-pick the top-performing children.

This means Sevenoaks schoolchildren are set to miss out on preferred places when they are allocated on March 1 next year to children from outside the area.

Schools following a policy of 'super selection' – The Skinners School, Tunbridge Wells, The Judd School, Tonbridge and Tonbridge Grammar School – have been given the green light to carry on choosing the top students.

They take the most successful 11-plus students, even from outside the county. A fifth of children who passed the Kent Test this year are from outside the county.

Super selection has meant some Sevenoaks pupils being allocated grammar school places in Folkestone and Gravesend.

The decision has renewed calls for Sevenoaks to have its own grammar school.

Derry Wiltshire, head teacher at Amherst School, Riverhead, said: "Seventy per cent of our 95 Year 6 children passed the 11-plus on Tuesday.

"Now they must wait until March to find out there isn't a place for them where they want to go. How is the system 'fair and reasonable'?

"If Child A lives ten miles from the grammar school and passes the 11-plus, he or she may miss out even though Child B lives in Hastings.

"I've spent 40 years dealing with the policy and it's not healthy for anybody."

Amherst chairman of governors David Hale's ten-year-old son passed the test this week.

"The process is so dragged out," he said. "Our main objection was to try and reduce the stress caused by a significant number of children not getting their first choice."

Lisa O'Rourke's daughter Jade missed out on a place last March.

Mrs O'Rourke, of Main Road, Sundridge, said: "The three schools don't give a damn about our children or the stress they put them through."

Mum Barbara Rizza, of Mill Pond Close, Sevenoaks, said: "Kent tax-payers' money goes to the schools but they take children from all over the place. My son Louis is in Year 5 at Sevenoaks Primary. We were thinking about doing the 11-plus next year. We need a grammar school in Sevenoaks."

More than 200 objections were submitted to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator by parents, school governing bodies and Kent County Council.

Schools adjudicator Dr Bryan Slater dismissed objections to the super-selection processes aired at a September 15 public meeting.

He ruled: "An alternative process based on geography is very likely to disadvantage those unable to afford the higher cost of housing in the area."

Sevenoaks MP Michael Fallon said: "This is a kick in the teeth for so many parents."