Aibu to think education at the moment is a race to the bottom?

Some people in London get more choice because the public transport system works and there are all sorts of semi selective comps now with banding tests, music and sports aptitude test. The remaining grammars are incredibly selective and require some extensive preparation even for very bright children so they are not for the faint hearted. Plenty of parents are simply not willing to put a 9/10 year old through the process, however bright.

Brampton Major has a very specific ethos which is very obvious when you look around. Parents not willing to push their DC to the full and sign up to the ethos would never put it down as a first choice. So it is selective in a sense attracting a certain type of family. They do very well with poorer immigrant children whose parents are willing to do what the school demands.

To be honest your school just sounds rubbish. Ours seems much more proactive and focused in individual development. Did you research schools thoroughly?

It’s funny that you think she had a choice. There are no grammar schools within a 100 mile radius of where I live. There are 4 independents, all in cities nowhere near where we live or work, and there is no public transport to get there. DD would possibly manage to get a scholarship for one of those, but DS has ADHD and autism, and has no chance. Should I send them to different schools in different directions and spend my whole day driving around to accommodate their attendance?
Luckily we have great state schools nearby so this isn’t a problem for us, but your post shows a lack of understanding that not everyone lives in a place where your suggestions are in any way possible.

Isn’t Brampton Manor in London one of the best in exam results? It isn’t selective for year 7, only for sixth form. Many comprehensive areas have selective sixth forms.

Plenty of comprehensives have very good GCSE results. Obviously across the board they don’t do as well. But their brightest students do as well those in grammar. Just because you can’t see how it can work doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of evidence it works. If you are in a grammar area, then of course the comprehensives don’t have a top set. The brights students have already been creamed off the top. It’s not true in comprehensive areas. Do you then think that no one succeeds in exams in non grammar areas?

Octavia64 · Yesterday 14:40
Secondary schools are very different from each other.

There are very selective grammar schools and they will be stretching their students.

There are massive comps where students will be in mixed ability groups.

There are failing schools where few students go because of their bad reputation and they struggle to get staff.

All schools are different.

Yes - this.

If your child is academic it's very frustrating for them to be left to jog along in their comfort zone - they need to be stretched and challenged, and I worry that non-selective schools don't or can't do this. Non-academic children may do better without the stress of being challenged in this way and I've always wondered how comprehensive schools manage to combine these needs.

My son went to a grammar school and I just couldn't imagine how he'd have managed in a school without that competitive, high-achieving, swotty ethos. He'd have been bored, lonely and miserable.

My daughter was completely different and would have been crushed in a grammar school. Unfortunately parents don't often have a choice as to where their children go and that's the problem.

It's only year 7. Have you asked for more homework from individual teachers? Is it a good school? Was this your first choice. Because our school is excellent and once they are set, then once they start GCSE's there's plenty of homework and the top sets are full of bright children working hard (some of them! Some of them are so bright they don't actually need to do much work) so it'll all even out then. When will she be set for English and maths?

Can confirm, i remember my year 8 very well and how boring it was/how much it dragged. It felt as though we were just left to it as we didn’t have tests or exams whereas we did in every other year. (Should say this was more that 25 years ago and it still stick in my mind!)

What you're describing isn't a race to the bottom, but yes, education in general is.

• who can use the least amount of money
• how can the least amount of resources be used or teachers be made to buy their own
• how can the least amount of staff have the most volume of work squeezed out of them
• how can the student : staff ratio be stretched even further
• how many students can be put into a room without an adequate number of desks
• is supply cheaper than an existing member of staff (usually no, but increasingly unqualified cover supervisors are used, who are half the cost and may therefore work out cheaper even if they're agency), so if someone leaves can we get away with cover
• can we use the shitty free version of the website rather than pay for quality to tick the homework box
• for students, who can look the coolest to their peers by overtly giving the least amount of fucks about their work

Maybe I'm especially bitter this week. I'm doing an extra 2 days' worth of work due to absent staff and a requirement to give up every afternoon for a Y11 cohort that couldn't be less interested and I am not even given the grace of a photocopying budget despite having to somehow resource all of that. Because schools are that broke.

Other posters have been kind but the question still begs.. did you not research the schools thoroughly?
And if from your research you felt this wasn't right for your child, did you start preparing them for 11 plus, scholarships/ burseries??
If not, why not?
Perhaps it was you inadvertently began the 'race to the bottom'
Schools can't replace active and involved parents sadly and the difference is huge.

Rather than being 'disappointed' with your free school, do you support in extra work for your child?

Could you perhaps broaden the curriculum?

I know my list all sounds very expensive and privileged but you can find cheap alternatives. If you don't have a garden, there are community volunteering gardening projects. Lots of museums charge free entry for kids. You can get books in a library or second hand shop.

If you're wondering why some demographics have better educational outcomes, it's all because of the above. Not quantity of homework.

There's evidence that homework isn't very useful especially below ks4. As a parent of a year 7 you should be providing enriching experiences that are incidentally educational - for example, reading, learning about plants while gardening, going to age appropriate museum exhibitions and art galleries, watching documentaries, going to the theatre, day trips to historical sites etc. Some of that is expensive but some of it can be done cheaply or for free if you shop around. Don't feel you need to replicate/replace homework with homework-like stuff you find online.

@Araminta1003 DC1 is in a comp with a lot of homework. As far as I can tell, it's not marked. It's assigned to prepare for upcoming classes and revision. It's up to the parents to make sure they do them I think.

It really depends on the school about homework. DC1 is in Year 8 and they have a lot of homework since Year 7. About 1-2 hours a day minimum.

But I agree about the race to the bottom. They have a lot of substitute teachers and she has had subjects where they have subs for a whole term.

My year 7 has about 30 minutes of homework every day. Often it is revision because he seems to have a lot of tests.
It is all set online, and I can keep tabs on it from Google Classrooms.
Both he and I are impressed with his high school so far; he has challenging work, dozens of free clubs, gets rewarded for hard work and effort and his teachers really seem to know him.

Your school sounds like the exception not the rule

7 years old or year 7?

I am not sure it is the school’s fault, it is the centralised education system insisting on Sats, GCSEs and the one size fits all. So if the insistence is that almost everyone has to pass maths and English at x level and bums on seats no matter what is the most important, then schools have to follow that.

When I was teaching we were told to always set homework because it was the key thing on which parents judged the school. It is just one element though.

How do her books look? Which topics are they covering? Can she tell me what she has learned in maths? Having a good conversation might set your mind at rest.

If not, contact the tutor or HOY? What’s the school homework policy? How much should she be doing? Most schools have a programme where homework is posted so you can check what she has been set every week, when it’s due and how long it should take. If this is empty, screenshot it and send it to school and ask why.

Homework is a nightmare as a teacher TBF ~ there are always kids who will never do it whatever sanctions you impose and parents who won’t support it. Other kids quickly pick up on that and slack off. Most teachers don’t want to spend the first ten minutes of every lesson chasing homework and setting sanctions. If you have a solution, let the teachers know!

The thing about homework though is that it has got to be relevant and marked. In year 8 in one grammar DC had lots of pointless homework. Teachers were too busy with exam years. They did still have lots of tests in school so revision was far more relevant than homework.