Seriously though, why ARE some state secondary schools allowed to select a proportion of their intake? And I'm not talking about religion here.

Actually the grammar schools in Bucks do not have 100% high achieving. They can have at least 10% who are not due to successful coaching either in private schools or at home. There are at least 30% high achieving in many of our secondary schools who, in many cases, did not have the benefit of tutoring or being prepared by a prep school. That sucks too!

I think the religious selection is actually the worst. The highest achieving secondary modern school in Bucks selects on C of E grounds. It does have a catchment area but it is tiny. This, effectively, screens out a lot of SEN children. Children in the nearby town are not in catchment and never get a place. This is where the majority of SEN children live. They have to go to one of the worst performing secondary schools. I have never found selection on religious grounds to be "religious" because it is effectively about preaching to your own "club" membership and not, in any way, reaching out to others who are more in need. It is the opposite of what I think religion should be about.

Following on from both posts I've made in the thread, as was hoping it would trigger the memory (perhaps of Labour Party supporters?) who might know the reasons for this policy.

My apologies for not writing all of what I was thinking.

meditrina I think I've found when it the current system of partial selection was introduced

the OPs post was not so much to do with when it was allowed but more to do with why.

I think I've found when it the current system of partial selection was introduced (under new Labour)

"However, the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 permitted selection of up to 10% by aptitude for certain subjects for which a school is a specialist college (section 102), and also permitted the retention of partial selection that existed prior to the 1997 entry, provided that the proportion selected was no higher than that in 1997 (section 100)"

If you have more than one child with different talents/interests then specialist comprehensives are a real problem as it is not possible to be in the catchment of two schools which cater for different interests. If children are in consecutive years it could mean needing to move house between start of term in September and October deadline for following year admissions - not financially easy and v disruptive for dc at start of important years 6 and 7. IT could theoretically be possible for families with larger gaps.

I think the only fair system would be a lottery (with perhaps some way of stratifying to ensure fair proportion of wealth/ ability) but if there is a private school sector this fails as the best 'prizes' might well go to those who don't 'play' the lottery.

I agree tiggy - it's a minefield.

And it's the complexity of the 'market' which is disadvantaging poor children.

There are dc's in my son's year 6 class who would have a strong chance of a sports or music place at my son's very popular m/c dominated comprehensive which is out of borough but within a 45 minute commute. I was talking to the very young mum of a child in ds's class yesterday - boy is a fantastic singer - and asked her whether she was considering the school. She hadn't even thought of applying to any out of borough schools, seemed not to be aware that you could, and a bit flummoxed by the idea. I've come across quite a few parents who are the same and just find it all very worrying and confusing. They tend to pick the 'safe' option of the nearest comprehensive, or try for places that they haven't got a cat in hell's chance of getting (super-selectives for a child who isn't particularly high-achieving, or church schools with rigid religious criteria which they absolutely don't meet). They overlook the less obvious choices - high achieving partially selective comprehensives which are out of borough, or not absolutely local to them.

I was thinking about a voluntary scheme where pushy m/c parents like myself were paired up with disadvantaged parents who were tackling the schools selection process for the first time - kind of like a mentoring programme, where these parents could be supported to negotiate the system to gain a good place for their child, rather than getting the places nobody else wants, which seems to be what's happening at the moment a lot of the time.

Some schools do practise selection by the back-door, as it were. One of the most common is uniform - they will insist on it being bought from a traditional small supplier where a pair of black trousers cost £45 rather than the £10-15 from the high street. Multiply this by the whole uniform including sports kit and the difference will run into hundreds of pounds especially if you have more than one child in the school. Obviously the majority of their pupils are solidly middle class despite the school bordering a small council estate

Nicole - your school's fsm rate will be less than 10% soon - for London!

Meant to add, most 'comprehensives' which select part of their cohort get NOTHING LIKE a grammar school intake, regardless of how popular they are with mc parents. My dc's school still has at about 50% low or average achievers. In comparison 100% of children attending grammar schools are high achieving. There are vanishingly few comprehensives with an intake of higher than 50% high achieving kids and those that are tend to have very rich catchments and not use lottery or fair banding selection processes. Even Harris Academy Crystal Palace - the most oversubscribed comprehensive in the entire country which selects 10% still has an intake which is 40% average and low achieving.

Or in our case they allow the much lower achieving child with SN to gain entry to school in the wake of a higher achieving, brighter sibling....

Yes, I was going to point out that aptitude tests then allow siblings of able/talented dc to gain places, to the detriment of less talented local dc.

Not forgetting the lottery banding tests found in many successful 'comprehensive' schools in London and other large cities.

Not just Harris schools but this article is about Harris;
disidealist.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/harris-the-hero/

And, of course, any school which selects from 10-35% on any sort of ability (and musical ability often correlates with academic, not to mention mc-ness), then has access to the siblings of those children (who will, more often than not be similarly able), so cohorts can be increasingly full of able children, even if they've not got one of the 10-35% places. That's how you get a 'comprehensive' with grammar school levels of attainment on entry.

prh47bridge No more than 10% of the intake can be selected on aptitude.

Our local 'comp' takes 15% of its intake every year on selected ability based on a science test.

"I think I know the one Nicolewink and TBF, the children selected on Musical Ability are truly amazing"

What I'm impressed by is the fact that they are so skilled at selecting for aptitude rather than attainment. Music lessons are so sodding expensive that very musical children from disadvantaged backgrounds are generally deprived of a chance to learn an instrument one to one with a good teacher, unless they've come from a primary school with unusually good provision. Our state primary offered one to one (for a fee) but the quality was awful and the lessons very short.

There are children in my dc's year (7) who have reached grade 6 in an instrument who have only got half scholarships and other children who haven't taken formal music exams who have got full scholarships.

prh47bridge No more than 10% of the intake can be selected on aptitude.

That is not correct. I know a number of schools that select up to 35% of their intake and Grammars select 100% of their intake.

anothermakesthree Not really. Why should those without the financial means to pay for it, have less choice in the Secondary school system?

I think that is exactly the point the OP is making. As education provision varies from county to county, some people do have less choice than others. Choice, for many, doesn't even come into it.

I think I know the one Nicole and TBF, the children selected on Musical Ability are truly amazing (and the Music department is fabulous) - ie they are not selected because of other academic abilities, but on musical talent. The school does actually have a very comprehensive intake, having heard my DC talk and actually seeing them all with my own eyes... However there are a significant number of very highly achieving MC children in at least Y9 and above because of all the MC parents who put the school first (and this part of London is now full of MC families...)

The local school that selects on proximity is far more exclusive (especially in the older years as they have only recently had to adhere to a fair policy on distance) as the houses nearby are £££ and people move to be in the catchment.

But I do agree Mintyy, the comprehensive system is not straight-forward and different comps are not ensured similar intakes.

This came up on a thread yesterday, didn't it?

About having a number of places selected by a particular ability (eg languages or music)

That came in when there was a move to give schools 'speciality' status, I think. But I can't remember when that was, nor the original justification.

For historical and political reasons.
That's why my children's schools are partially selective (25% academic aptitude, 10% musical aptitude).

"This is often alleged but there is no way a school can do that in the normal admissions round."

We have an academy chain which somehow manages to use its 'fair banding' selection process to exclude children with SEN. We have some mainstream schools serving disadvantaged wards in the borough where more than 25% of the children have SEN, and other supposedly non-selective schools serving similar communities in the borough where fewer than 5% of the children have SEN. I really don't know how they achieve this. The schools with a high concentration of children with SEN don't have specialist provision, the children are ending up there by default.

I get where you're coming from OP, and to a certain extent I feel the same.

However, I have worked the system to get my ds a music place at a partially selective comprehensive, which offers 15% of its places to children who are musically talented or good at sports.

He was the only child in his primary who achieved highly in music and I wanted him to go to a school where there was a concentration of musically talented children so he could get involved in ensemble playing, and I wanted him to have access to an outstanding music department. These things weren't available in our local comprehensive, partly because we have a few private schools (with generous bursary schemes) and a Catholic school nearby which 'mop up' lots of the musically gifted and musically high achieving children leaving many non-selective state schools denuded of talent.

It's mainly religious selection around here. The Catholic school prioritises Catholics first, then other Christians, then children of other faiths. If you don't have a faith, you're at the bottom of the pile.

Strangely, I don't see the non-religious schools giving priority to atheists. Perhaps they should.

It does irritate me that the state is funding a school that discriminates against my dc on the grounds of her parents' religious beliefs.

DD's school are allowed about 15 free places a year, which they allocate via a few different tests reflecting the school's speciality.