Labour reviewing school admission criteria

The answer is to improve the badly performing schools, not force locals to travel to badly performing schools outside the locality. It's class envy, nothing more.

”We” as in “us”.

‘We’ as in other people’s dc?

I don’t think anyone is ignoring the importance of parenting. Improving social mobility requires mitigating the impact of parents who won’t or can’t do the super job us middle class types do.No point saying “But they SHOULD….” They can’t or won’t or don’t know how. We need to start from where we are.

Completely. So many people are really blinkered to how huge swathes of this country live as well - me included, until I moved to where I am now. You can’t change it. it’s not like they are sitting and crying about their lives. The ones that are will change it - as you said, immigrant families statistically push themselves and their children to succeed academically.

Education is there for everyone. No teacher is going to refuse a child who wants to learn. No teacher is going to turn away a parent saying, “please help me motivate my child to learn.”

I honestly think we need to scrap the idea that eveyone has to be academic. It’s quite clear the children who aren’t going to do well academically and they get so frustrated. Pushing people to get a certain grade in English and maths when they can’t, or just don’t want to is madness.

They should do vocational things, and I am not talking about the health and social care and childcare btecs that a lot of kids are forced into, but trades as well.

If they are going to hang about the park for the rest of their days smoking weed, forcing them to do GCSEs isn’t going to stop that. But maybe if you don’t force kids and make them feel like shit for failing something they were never going to pass in the first place and had no interest in, they would find something they did have an interest in and want to do. And if they don’t? Well, they were never going to anyway.

What frustrates me about discussions on how to improve social mobility is that it ignores how important parents and home are. The truth is there are lots great teachers, libraries, resources. The kids on the local estate the me get free school holiday clubs while mine gets the odd day here and there as that's all we can afford. I worry that the more that people hear 'its not your fault' that they will do even less for their kids.

The kids who did best at my school were migrant children or refugee. Their parents knew it was up to them.

In bucks you literally cannot pass the 11+ without tutoring/help at home that exposes you to more advanced content, because the test includes material only taught in y6, but you take it in september of year 6 before the test is taught.

The single biggest factor would be if schools had adjusted class sizes in areas of high fsm%. High fsm = 20 kids in a class instead of thirty plus a guaranteed full time TA and you would see a HUGE difference. More if you could have an extra 2 hours a day with a third TA.

I couldn’t give two shits about social mobility. I don’t care how anyone else wants to live. And like I keep saying, the people on the shitty estates around me are always ten times happier than I am, I’m truly starting to think that I’m the mug.

I don’t care that the people here bring my children’s primary down. It’s not the teachers, they like me and my children, we like them and they are extremely helpful and supportive to us. My children are thriving as I want them to. I put things in place to help that. I can’t force other people to do the same for their children. It’s sad that it means we don’t get any school community, but that’s life.

Life isn’t fair. We used to be in a much better area, a much better financial position (and we still are in a much better financial position than most, we have no debt and chose to live in a cheaper area while we were getting out lives back on track after we lost everything due to some really awful bad luck and circumstances over a six month period. That wasn’t my children’s fault and I’m thankful dd got into a grammar so she doesn’t have to be dragged down at the local secondary school and she will be around more middle class children like her who want to learn and are motivated and not ones who see school as a punishment like so many children here do.

life is what you make it. Not everyone wants the same things out of life. Not everyone everyone has aspirations for themselves or their children and that’s okay. It’s none of my business. I mean, it’s shit when they can’t pick up their children from school without lamping each other or screaming at teachers, but that’s just how it is.

If they didn’t want to live like that, they would change their behaviour, but they seem happy.

When you say you care is if just a removed thing? ie something your dc won’t be impacted by

Depends on your definition of social mobility @CurlewKate The grammar my DS is starting at certainly provides a huge amount of social mobility for certain immigrant groups in the UK.

I think the problem is that too many people don’t care about social mobility. You can tell because they think grammar schools provide it. Actually, they know they don’t, but pretend they do because they think it makes them look caring.

This is ridiculous. I live in Lincolnshire, quite rurally (no in sticks but not a big town). Transport round here anyway is few and far between. This may work down south where transport links are great, but not round lincs or Yorkshire. For a start council's have lowered their net for council bus transport to a 20 mile radius of a school (which has meant even existing students now are having to find new ways to get to school) If they are now gonna be offered schools even further away they parents will either have to magically find car sharing (which is good if you are close to other parents already) or sacrifice working hours to ferry kids to school. This seems like socio-economic suicide for those currently working and especially those who can't drive for medical or financial reasons. Also, what would be the point in buying houses near schools to get in, therefore house prices will be affected in those closer to great schools. Yet again they've thought of a plan that works in big cities but not anywhere else.

I think the problem is that leaving social mobility to Sixth Form or university is far too late. And often things go wrong for children from deprived backgrounds when they hit secondary school level (prime disaster time is Year 8/9/10) so it is the right time to intervene. The question is how to make the most difference without causing harm to others.
I have seen our state primary work wonders with children from poor backgrounds for it all to fall apart when they end up in the “wrong” secondary schools.
It is challenging enough to get through the early secondary years for those of us with means and good schools and hold down a job/deal with peri and all of the stresses life throws at us. I think for kids from chaotic backgrounds sent into disruptive schools - it is really very difficult for them to keep focussed, even if they are bright. Alternative would be gifted and talented pathways in those schools attracting lots of funding and extra opportunities at other local schools, free trips, academic extension, early input from universities and careers.

The growing British underclass is everyone’s problem ultimately. Everyone ends up paying one way or another. And one can want it addressed, even for selfish reasons. I do not think we are talking honest hardworking working class here. We are talking generational trauma towards education and lack of aspiration and children really quite severely held back from opportunities.

It's an excellent example and very true about grammars and selective indys.

So what do you want to do? reduce standards and entry criteria so these deprived kids can be accepted but at expense of Araminta's kids quality of education? so they should end up with less than they could for the sake of social mobility? even though some of these kids will become national treasure in science, arts and business?

What an awful and snobbish post.

I’ve just had a look at the stats for the grammar dd is going to in sept.

It has an outreach program for children on FSM schools local to it (these schools aren’t in the area I live in, we are 25 mins away).

They target children from year 4 and 5, who are in receipt of FSM via workshops at the school in core subjects. They also offer those children free 11+ practice sessions and practice books to take home. SLT attend the parents evenings at those schools with a highest level of FSM to give parents information and help on applying for the 11+ exam and information on free uniform, travel and music lessons for FSM children.

It states: “(school) will develop parental interest and aspiration, by targeting them through their children. Pupils attending outreach and partnership events at (school) will be given a personal invitation for their parents to invite them back to tour the school and speak with teachers and students. This will be for all children attending the targeted events and familiarisation sessions.”

I’m sure other grammars do the same (although that is the only grammar in the area, the others are around an hour from that school in opposite directions).

I am just bringing up the church and grammar schools question, because you cannot have a situation where all LA controlled schools are directed to take higher numbers of FSM/SEND whilst not also directing the church schools and grammars similarly.
I do not agree that all kids suitable for grammar have to pass the test in exam conditions. I think FSM pupils could be directed there by schools and have different forms of assessment. Sure it would seem unfair to some, but I think that would be the only way to do it fairly. Or insists they are given opportunities and vouchers for free mock tests by private providers. Atom Learning already provides free online access for disadvantaged pupils and if there were more of this and widely advertised, that may be a way of addressing the matter.

Fair enough @Wonderwendy - but I guess some would argue you should not have put a religious school on your list at all. Although I do agree it is unfair if you did not actively choose it, and there are no alternatives locally.

My kids go to a church school. I actively didn't want that. It was put quite low on our schools list when we applied. But it doesn't have selection based on faith and is just in the same algorithm run by the council. It annoys me that we have all the religious stuff. They have daily "worship" and we are an atheist household. But it's that school we were allocated, so what can you do?
I do think it's unfair if I'm honest.

Working class does not mean shit parenting

But the problem with lowering the standard for PP children is that they will always be behind.

You have just said yourself how much additional work does in to these children, from infancy. How will a child who has not had those advantages be able to keep up.

If they are bright enough, they will pass the entrance exam. If they are not, they wouldn't thrive anyway.

I can only really comment on church schools and grammar schools, because those are the types my DC attended. Firstly, for the church schools, I think they should allow in more children who are not of the faith. However, those people cannot then complain that the school prays, does religious assemblies, goes to church regularly or that they have to take RS for GCSE. So the deal is you get to go, but you must attend the compulsory religious education. If anything, that should help the churches anyway, as they are meant to be recruiting more believers.
Secondly, as regards grammar schools, yes they should take their fair share of PP too and figure out what lower score is appropriate there. The score cannot be so low that the kids cannot then comfortably keep up. Grammar schools tend to have less funding due to the advantaged cohort, the pace is fast, there is an expectation that the parents support, right from the start.

My youngest is joining a superselective boys grammar in September. He is not even at the school. There have been numerous transition events and detailed Year 7 guides already. There is homework set over the summer, hours of it. There are several very busy parent WhatsApp groups discussing which calculator to get that is GCSE compliant (and these kids have not even started Year 7). Top grades never come without effort on the part of the students, the teachers, the school and the parents. Nobody has ever “bought” grades, it is down to effort. Similarly, the kids joining the grammar have been read to since infancy and encouraged educationally from the get go. I doubt any of these kids have ever spent a summer not reading a lot of books, or at least doing some basic maths. They have been doing this from Reception, sometimes even earlier. A lot of them are entering Year 7 at Year 8/9 level in Maths and English.

This is classic talentless policy - it sounds good, but it’s likely to have a net negative effect on outcomes, as the kids that were doing well will do less well, and the kids that have no to little parental support will perhaps do a bit better but without serious investment in schools, not better enough to offset.

i suppose it’ll depend to some extent on the detail but i’m so glad mine are not going to be impacted by this…

Sounds ridiculous to me.