Please can someone answer this simple question about state selective schools?

Hak that's really quite rude. Some of us went to comprehensives and have one or more children at comprehensives now. You did/have neither of those two things. And none of us is either illiterate or ignorant. We just happen to disagree with you for reasons which are no less valid than the reasons which support your own opinion.

Working class children definitely went to grammar schools. My Dad was a building labourer, and I went to one.

The reason that bright working class kids were more likely to access grammar schools in my day was the comprehensive nature of the exam. It wasn't opt-in. The original 11+ was taken by every child in their own primary school. We had all had a couple of practice papers in the classroom during the preceding weeks, and tutoring was unheard of.

Has Sorry....

Talkinpeace. Trafford where I am moving next year ( despite DD2s swearing and bedroom door slamming). Is a selective area that selects up to 30% of students yet as 'modern' schools that achieve up to 85% A*-C Maths/English
with average grade for high ability students of B+. The grammar schools get up to 19 students to Oxbridge each year, even the 'modern' schools get students regularly in to Russell group Universities. People always talk about Kent/Bucks as selective areas that have not worked, why not talk about a selective area where it categorically works. The other reason we can say it works because Trafford has the full range of 'Socio economic' factors.

Stretford grammar ( who were disgracefully graded unsatisfactory in 2009) is possibly a 'working class' grammar, which according to many is not possible. I think people should check out Trafford, before they convince themselves that selective education only benefits the middle classes.

No, working class children went to the Grammar School. 3 generations of my family reflect that. And DH's family too. There was always the worry about affording the uniform, let alone paying for tutoring and that shite. Many girls at my school were eligible for FSM. I would be interested to see how many are these days. I lived in an area that was quite affected by the miner's strike. There were a lot really struggling and getting food parcels from Russia.

What do you mean by that, Hakluyt?

A question ....
why do some of the people who support segregated scholing denigrate comprehensive schools as "one size fits all"

comps use seetting and broad curriculum and monitoring and testing
so that very, very few classes are in mixed ability, kids are able to specialise and excel in topics that the 11+ ignores

very few schools tolerate academic bullying if they can : the league table places are too financially valuable for that

FWIW my naice selective private gels school in london swept far more bullying and bad behaviour under the carpet than any of the comps that mine and my friends kids attend

grammar areas
three counties :
Bucks - has leaky borders all round,
Lincolnshire - has enough leaky borders and low population that it seems to work OK
Kent - has no borders on three sides and the further east you go the worse the grammar results and the further west you go the more insane the competition

in and around London, grammar schools are proxy private school for the sharp elbowed - the social mobility stats bear that out year on year

I went to a grammar school in a grammar county. I started there in 1966. Tutoring is not new. The difference is we were tutored in primary school, all morning, every day. We didn't do Maths and English as anyone teaching in a primary school today would know it. All teaching of Maths and English was for the 11+ test. The rest of the morning was taken up with verbal reasoning tuition. There was no national curriculum. Very many of us started at the grammar school with a very poor understanding of any academic subject because a lot of learning was project based and optional. As a result, many of us struggled at grammar school. We never studied History, Geography or Sciences at primary school. The Vicar came in and did a bit of RE and a local guy that played the piano took singing and the class teacher taught the recorder. The rest of the time was taken up with sport and art. A lot of children went to the grammar school but a lot of us never made it to university. I can remember one person going to Oxford during the whole of my time at the grammar school. Much larger numbers left at 16!!!!

OK. The point I was making was that the rise of the tutor has perverted the grammar school selection process. This doesn't affect me (my kids don't attend grammars). It's the clever kids without a lot of home support who will suffer.

I clicked on this thread because I found the title pretty surprising. I'm off to google the results of selectives vs non.

TheLovelyBoots Sure, the parents choose to tutor but it's not really a choice if nearly everyone is tutoring, is it?

I disagree, it is a choice. It is not an easy one, but is a choice all the same.

you would eliminate it, if there was a grammar school in every town, or if ppl had confidence in their local comprehensive to teach the hard subjects to the equivalent standards. Some comps do; many dont.

MumTryingHerBest Sure, the parents choose to tutor but it's not really a choice if nearly everyone is tutoring, is it?

I'd not suggest that you can or should eliminate the tutoring industry. It's an arms race, the system we all have to work with.

TheLovelyBoots The tutoring industry has a lot to answer for. The parents choose the tutors though so fundamentally it comes down to the parents. If there was no demand for tutoring there would be no tutors. Remove the tutors and those parents who can will do the tutoring themselves.

Tanaqui One problem with comparisons is that they are capped at the a, so any child who could theoretically achieve beyond that doesn't get counted. I disagree that is exactly why there is a tiered educational system GCSEs, AS/A2, Degree. Those who theoretically exceeded the A should do well the next level up and their higher ability will be more evident the higher the educational level (at least in theory). Perhaps I'm being naive thinking this?

TheWordFactory it does mean that one student with an A may have far wider exposure to the subject than another.* Is there a single situation in the real world where this will never be the case. If you go through an interview process with 50 different candidates, you will find, due to their individual circumstances/personalities etc. (not just the school they went to will determine this breadth and depth of knowledge). Each and every one of them will have a completely different range of knowledge and understanding of a subject area. When recruiting people I have rarely found having an extensive range or depth of knowledge in a subject area to be a significant advantage unless the person has known how to apply the knowledge. Just because you know everything there is about football, it doesn't make you a professional footballer.

The tutoring industry has a lot to answer for.

You can take that argument in two directions.

You could say that we need no grammar schools: comprehensives could do the job. And I do think they could, if we were more honest about league tables, and allowed the schools to take a bigger risk by taking harder subjects.

Or we could go back to the situation in my mothers day, when as a working class girl from a rural family, she went to grammar school. There was a grammar school in every town, so there were enough places and there was not the tutoring industry we now have.

At the moment we have neither one thing nor the other.

Some people agree with grammar schools - some do not.

I do not. My kids are bright enough - predicted A*s (in the harder subjects - if that matters) - they go to the local comp, they are stretched, encouraged to take part in extra curricular activities etc.

We are in Gloucestershire, an area of many fine grammar schools and the panic that ensues about getting the right tutor and the right grammar is something to be seen - as if their children will not do well with the support that they get in the home.

And that is part of the trouble - there are children who do not get that support - children who have no hope in Hell of getting into the grammar schools here - no matter HOW bright they are, because of the lack of parental involvement. You also get the children whose parents DO get involved, but cannot afford to tutor - they have minimal hope of getting into the super selectives with no catchment area - there are not enough places for them.

and it all just seems WRONG.

both sides of the debate cite them as if they matter, so I think we assume they do.

But they don't. One side of the debate continually cites subject choice as relevant and the other doesn't.

It's not about getting into RG: its about getting A grades in the core subjects that were branded as "RG facilitating subjects". Not becauyse of just getting into RG, but because they make a huge difference to future life choices.

The problem is, we are debating this in terms of defending our own choices, so if we are using a comp we tend to defend soft subjects, or say that actually we ought to look at value added, etc. But if we instead told state schools that we want to see our most able kids take the harder subjects, and we would understand if that meant the league table results slipped, we would be doing our kids a much greater favour.

I well I think we have to dig a little deeper onto the stats. The devil is always in the detail.

If grammar areas do much worse than their neighbours in the five passes test then I agree that shows they aren't working .

However if the differential in that test is marginal but, say, the numbers of A*s achieved in the grammar area is higher than their neighbours, then you could say the grammar area is more successful.

What we need is a proper breakdown.

No, raw scores aren't the whole picture, I agree. But they're really what we've got to work with: both sides of the debate cite them as if they matter, so I think we assume they do. And since we cannot really know which of two children whose results go to make up a league table, actually knows or loves a subject more, it seems far too vague and unhelpful to make assumptions about, or to be concerned with, in this context, which of them has the deepest knowledge of the subject.

In terms of how we measure, I would think the ideal measure would be the average value added in an lea. If not possible, number of students in lea getting 5 a* to c seems to me the most relevant. Pupils getting into RG seems too broad to me because that's something that is not necessarily down to how well they are taught - there are bound to be more factors involved in where a child chooses to go to university than how good a job their school has done on them. Which is of course also the case for how many gcses they get, but I would think at least to a lesser extent.

I mean what is the measure that shows grammar areas do worse ?

Five GCSEs?
A*s achieved ?
A levels obtained?
Places at Oxbridge offered?

Gosh nit did you get out of bed on the wrong side this morning? You seem very prickly.

The thread has moved all around the subject at hand. And how A* s are achieved is of relevance.

Raw scores are rarely the full picture are they?

He's a question that perhaps has been covered - I am a bit short of time so apologies if so.

Nt all A* are the same. I have had kids at a comprehensive and at a super-selective. The comp was a great one for making everyone do citizenship, general studies, BTEC workplace skills and so forth. In some ways this suited DD very well as she was able to make a start on her vocational studies which have led to her current job. But it was deeply disappointing that she was not allowed to do just six or seven GCSEs and aim for grade Cs in English, maths and science: no, she had to take 12 subjects including the above soft subjects waste of time and of course she did badly.

In her case, then, it backfired. But she had a learning disability. Most kids aced their A grades in these easy subjects.

DS1 OTOh did IGCEs in old fashioned subjects- three sciences, maths, a modern language, history. His A levels were all maths and sciences. Kids in his cohort who stayed at the comprehensive did A level drama, media studies, etc.

It really isn't a valid comparison to take the grades and compare them unless they are the grades in the same subjects. That was done, a while back, using the A level grades of the Russell gRoup facilitating subjects. I think there were very very few state nonselectives who got good grades in RG subjects. Barely any got three As at A level. By comparison, grammars and selectives did well.

So, sorry but I think this grade equivalence thing is a bit smoke and mirrors. In fact the whole thread proves to me why it is worth schools picking softer subjects to inflate their grades for league tables. People start to believe the raw grades and forget the subjects.