RADICAL plans to ditch Kent's 11-plus and switch to a system of continuous assessment are impractical and unlikely to work, county education chiefs have been told.

Around 12,000 ten and 11-year-olds sit the 11-plus each year, with the test, sat over two days, determining who will go to the county's 33 grammar schools.

Kent County Council has indicated it would be willing to end the one-off test if it could be replaced with a system allowing children and parents to apply for secondary school places on the basis of some kind of continuous assessment.

County councillors are keen to find an alternative to having a single test, chiefly because admissions rules means parents must apply for places before they know if their child has passed.

But a working party set up to look at alternatives has concluded continuous assessment on its own would not be practical and has concluded some kind of test will have to be retained - at least in the short term.

Minutes of meetings of the working group have been disclosed to the Kent Messenger Group after we requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.

Our request has also revealed that the leader of Kent County Council, Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, held two private meetings with the former Secretary of State for Education Charles Clark about the 11-plus. No records or notes from those meetings were kept.

KCC's working group, consisting of headteachers and education officials, says continuous assessment might be useful in guiding parents when it comes to transferring to secondary school.

But it concluded that dropping the test would not be practical, partly because there is "limited availability of diverse reliable assessment tools which are secure, nationally standardised and discriminate well."

The party cited several complicating factors, including the fact that many pupils from transfer to Kent schools from outside the area.

Despite their misgivings, the group says "there is a strong current of feeling that there are difficulties with the 11-plus testing model and improvements are desirable and should be possible."

Children could be spared the disappointment of "failing" the 11-plus if parents were supplied with "realistic and reliable information which puts their child's academic achievement over an extended period in context," it concluded.

"Better targeting puts children under less stress and reduces the number of disappointed applicants," a two-page report concludes.

One contentious option set out by the group is the idea of incorporating a "headteacher's recommendation" into the process.

This was abandoned many years ago, largely because heads themselves disliked it. But the working party concluded: "An element of headteacher judgement has been a part of the selection process in the past and could in time be built into it again."

It is understood county councillors may not even be presented with options for discussion because of the group's conclusions.