If state grammar schools were for only state educated children…

Just focusing on the needs of those who can get high exam grades is not the way forward

Secondary schools do the same thing. They strongly suggest pupils who will not make the grade do not sit the exams so their pass rates are higher.

They stream so the brighter pupils get the best teachers - they also get additional ‘maths club’ dress up to help all but the lower end students aren’t studying what’s the clubs offer - because they are learning the lower end of the curriculum.

Move sets, only ever seen this downwards. Pupils never move upwards because they are already behind with the teaching.

I'd get rid of the Grammar system and look at funding schools, pupils premium, bring back Sure Start or a similar scheme and look at general social inequality so that children could go to to school warm, fed, housed, clean, with access to healthcare, special needs met, minimal caring/earning responsibilities and with parenting support for families that need it. And teachers can focus on education, and encouraging achievement as development and not have to try to combine that with patching up a broken system.

I'd oppose that, and I'm as pro state school as it is possible to get. People's circumstances change and it would be deeply unjust to ban their children from the education they deserve just because they've been in private education to date.

Some local grammar schools already offer a lower pass mark for pp children.

For all I know they all do. Have you checked?

Don't like the idea of every child being just sent to their catchment school.
Some schools are brilliant for very academic children - personally I went to grammar and it was great for me, to be in an all girls school where a higher number of GCSES was expected and other stuff like art and sport was much more optional. Many children would not thrive there as it's the wrong environment.
Some schools are brilliant at sports, have a wide range of opportunities not just a bit off football netball and tennis.
Some schools prioritise STEM, or the arts, or developing business skills.
Some schools are very big and others are very small and have smaller class sizes even within the state sector.
Some children will cope fine with two buses or a train and others will be better off if they walk up the road.
Most schools are underfunded and many are not good enough at supporting children with additional needs.
As a SEN parent, even if you hear a school is good with additional needs, it's frustrating to go and read their SEN information report and find that what they are really good at is a different type of SEN to your child's needs. However, niching into something is likely to be what has made them so good at it.

YABU. I would rather time and effort was spent bringing the state system up to scratch. With parents, teachers and the state all playing their part.

Just focusing on the needs of those who can get high exam grades is not the way forward.

The idea of state grammars looks good on paper- the best and brightest of our children get access to a grammar education no matter their background.
When you pick into the sociology of it, there are problems:

1: Why are we gatekeeping the best education? Sure a high standard of education is the best thing for all children, and what are we saying about state comprehensives when we tell people they are second best, and the choice for those who weren't good enough?

2: Why are we directing the life passage of a child at 10/11 years old? Were you the best version of yourself at this age? Have you developed and grown since then? It's an overwhelming amount of pressure to put on children of that age, and there are many children who are simply not 'ready' for the pressures of academia at that age. But that doesn't mean they won't access high levels of education later, we can't write them off.

3: Children from low income, disability or BAME backgrounds are at a disadvantage with the 11+. Take a child from a very low income background and lets make the assumption that they have a high intellectual potential. That child statistically isn't spoken to or read to as much as other children, they access health services less and live in a lower standard of housing (again- all stats). They are already 12-18 months behind some of their higher income peers by 4 years old. Higher income families will do 11+ prep and maybe even get a tutor, schools with higher income families will prepare children far more for the test. Over time (by 10/11 years old), that low income child has very little hope compared to others, and now we're going to tell them that they had their chance, but they just 'naturally' weren't good enough for grammar.

Sorry for the long post!

I know several parents who use state comprehensives (not grammars) but also pay for private tutoring. It's not something specific to grammars.

Also sometimes family finances change, after a divorce or redundancy or something else. The parents don't always have the option to stay with private schooling and I can understand why, if there's a local grammar and it's the most suitable school for the child, the parents move them there.

I don't know if things have changed but I have a couple of friends who went to grammars when they were kids. None went to private primaries. It was some time ago though so perhaps less common now?

I realise this is perhaps an unpopular opinion but I would support an expansion of grammar schools but with changes from how it used to be. In the past not passing the 11+ was seen as a 'failure' and secondary moderns were looked down on. That was the problem imo.

I'd like something similar to the German system. Equally valued secondary options but aimed at providing an education matched to each child's different abilities and skills. They have academic secondaries, but also vocational ones that are seen as an apprenticeship in craft or industrial trades. As long as each option is valued equally (because vocational skills and training are as important as academic ones) I think it's a good system to model on.

There are something like 163 Grammar schools in England and 60 odd in Northern Ireland given that the vast majority of kids in the UK are not educated in Grammar schools and haven't been for the past 40 + years I'm not sure why mumsnet is so obsessed with them.

Just get rid of them. Have comprehensive schools with sets and streams - at least sets/streams allow movement over the years and provide some leeway for kids with spiky profiles (“good at maths, terrible at humanities” and things like that).

No. Plenty of parents of kids at state primaries are paying tutors from year 4 onwards to try and grab their place.

The segregation of kids at 11 is so flawed, pointless to keep tinkering around the edges with convoluted legislation to protect a tiny niche sector.

Concentrate on resourcing good education for all in well run comprehensives. Plenty of those are making a genuine contribution to social mobility and the prospects of kids whose parents would never have afforded tutoring, or those who matured late, or didn’t quite make it on the day in the one-exam gamble.

Checking data for one town with a grammar school and secondary school, one has 6% FSM and one has 27% FSM, no guessing which is which

Absolutely this. Grammar schools should be abolished.

I didn't even realise till I came onto Mumsnet that some aww re as still had grammars, and the 11+. Terrible idea to judge kids at 11.

Grammar schools through one off exam and private schools requiring fees can only help a tiny minority of pupils from low and medium income families.

This is why we should abolish grammar schools and curtail the private sector and make sure comprehensives are providing proper opportunities to stretch their pupils and give them confidence.

Here (Birmingham) a certain percentage of places are reserved for pupil premium children who only have to achieve the minimum qualifying score to get a place. 25%? Not sure on that.

So for example, the qualifying score is 205 but non PP children generally need to get in the 230s. I'm not sure how the PP children achieve a place if it's oversubscribed, by distance or by highest score and working backwards.

Also they're overwhelmingly Asian. I'd say 80/20 Asian / white & other. And whilst of course many Asian families are wealthy professionals and business owners, they may only be first or second generation immigrants so assisting social equality in other ways.

My SIL lives in Kent. They sent DNiece to a private primary because they felt it would give her more chance of getting into a grammar school.

Whether it did or not, I have no idea, but the majority of girls at her grammar school had been to private primaries. And a lot of the girls who hadn't were bullied by "Queen Bee" types who'd been to the more expensive private primaries.

For grammar counties, not sure. For super selectives, absolutely not, it’d just lead to more/earlier tutoring/trying to game the system while attending state schools.

Interestingly reading the thread- our super selective grammar wasn’t an easy intake when I taught there briefly on cover 10 years ago.
Progress 8 was impossible, all high achievers on paper so everyone had to get the highest grades. However there were a not insignificant chunk not working at the levels expected, really really well tutored to tests in a way that didn’t translate well to class. Academic and bright, but not the top end. More middle achievers.
There was no money for LSAs as pupil premium was pretty much zero, so support wasn’t easy to give. Budgets were tight.
I even had a boy get in who was certainly at the lower middle level of his class in primary. Mum was a tutor and did well. On the old SATs he needed support to get level 4, barely scraping it in English.
This is the extreme end of when it doesn’t work, if there’s one grammar for multiple London boroughs for example. Ends up all ‘chalk and talk’ because there’s no funding for much else, no support if needed, and an artificial cohort

If there where no state grammer schools, but all schools where well funded and had good SEN provision.

It's ridiculous that we have some very small pockets of grammer schools left in the UK. Most areas did away with the grammer schools in the 70's and I don't see what good keeping them in some areas has done.

A bit like the middle school areas which have slowly been being removed over the last 10-20years the same should really happen to the grammer schools. ALL schools should be good schools.

Round here it would be hugely levelling the playing field. A super selective grammar entirely filled with children sent to private schools for the cheaper years or very tutored children. Lots of privates set up for it and a weighting towards private at primary.
However, it wouldn’t work the same in somewhere like kent. You’d be disadvantaging some children for very little gain for others.

I agree with you as far as it goes. But it would be tinkering around the edges.

The most important thing for social mobility is not necessarily a hand up for the lucky few. But good general provision for everyone.

So decent well funded schools, proper SEN provision, funding for extras like music, art, school trips, smaller classes, teachers who are well paid and supported etc....

And on a wider level: The availability of well paid jobs, social housing, libraries etc.

Looking at periods where there's been relatively easy social mobility between classes. That tends to coincide with periods where working class living standards are increasing, on the whole.

Which makes sense as there's less distance to travel.

No. Selection at 10 does nothing to help social mobility- and no tinkering at the margins will make any difference.

It's been a long time since I lived in bucks but when I was at school there, nobody I knew had tutors and the children who were naturally extremely clever went to grammar school.

I didn't pass so I went to the secondary modern where I was one of I think 4 in my year group of 240 who went to university. I was considered "academic" because I was quiet and did my homework so I had to do double science and a humanities subject for gcse. I failed both. The students who were considered non academic were allowed to do more "fun" subjects like child development business studies (which was boring but you got to go on trips to Cadbury world and Disney land paris).

I don't know many people in bucks anymore but most seem to have a tutor.

And to make it a proper level playing field then are you suggesting parents paying for private education should then get a reduction on their taxes which they have to pay for education even if they don’t use the system ? Or would you think that was unfair and they should continue to subsidise state education even if they don’t use it ?