Nikki out, Justine in

"Do you honestly believe that in some large comprehensives there aren't any dc who are capable of an academic education? "

Have you READ my posts?

Did you miss the one in which I pointed out how even in the worst performing schools there are children who achieve very highly academically?

I think there is vastly less difference between the quality of teaching and management than there is difference between children in terms of receptiveness to education, and willingness to embrace a work ethic. Teachers are roughly delivering the same curriculum across a very wide range of schools, and most of those teachers have trained and graduated from similar teacher training institutes. Yes, you will get some who are truly gifted, and some who are very weak, but the majority will be competent, regardless of where they are teaching. The differences in outcome are mostly down to the differences in the children.

The comprehensive system does fail very clever children, it just can't provide what is needed to teach to the very high levels a minority of children need. There is no need to return to the old Grammar/Sec Mod system but is should be possible to find a way to provide for this need.

Religion, Music, Sport, Expensive house in catchment, Feeder Schools, Arts, Technology and Languages, are all used to select, so why not by exceptional aptitude.

Perhaps in every city/area one new free school should be allowed to select a percentage of intake by aptitude. Fingers crossed the new Ed Sec will relax the rules for this and give some more equality to the system.

Would a system like the following work?

Primary yrs 1 - 6
Middle yrs 7 - 9
Senior yrs 10 - 13

At senior yr, those that want to pursue a particular trade go to tech college to study trade, but with compulsory core subjects alongside (Maths, English, Science & Philisophy/Ethics).

Those that want to do mainly academic subjects stay on at regular school, but can be in partnership with tech college or similar (for eg, if they were doing triple science, history & MFL but wanted to do an engineering btec too).

Those that want to follow traditional EBACC route stay solely at regular school.

14 is definitely a better age for branching out into different paths.

How does a primary/middle/senior school type system work?
(Genuine question, I've never experienced that sort of schooling).

You are right Badbadbunny. The technical specialisation from 14 for bright enough DCs could lead onto to skilled trades as well as eg engineering or computer options requiring higher education. As I said I think importantly the allocation of specialisation whether grammar-type academic or technical or other vocational training would depend on the choice of the student and parents as well as attitude and potential assessed by school. This would be similar to the German system but specialisation would occur at 14 rather than 10.

No talkin you are. Forgetting mere practicalities like organising childcare, getting a rental agreement, what happens when you or your dc are ill, the stress of never knowing when or if you'll work, zero hours aren't enough to support you. And I also think unskilled workers should be allowed paid holidays like anyone else.

You'd still need housing benefit and tax credits on top, and even if you are shit hot at making sure they don't overpay you, the fact is that the system doesn't work fast enough. So even if childcare etc aren't an issue, the week you get 4 hours work, or when your job is closed for xmas etc you'll still only get top ups equivalent to the 40hrs they based their award on.

And your cash in hand example is irrelevant. I won't pretend every unemployed person I know would be horrified by not paying ni or tax. But they do know you can't live on that alone, and you can't get tc or hb on top if you aren't legally employed. You'd also be screwed on the week where he didn't need you, because dwp would want to know how exactly you'd been supporting yourself till then. And you're living in cuckoo land if you think people prefer the ritual humiliation of signing on to washing cars. Are you bringing up your dc (real or theoretical) to work cash in hand with no predictable income? Because I'm sure as hell not raising mine that way.

The fact is it's simple supply and demand. By guaranteeing an endless supply of cheap labour, the conditions have been lowered. As has happened for various reasons throughout history to the detriment of the working classes. And in this day and age there is no excuse for the fact the UK has boosted its economy by lowering work and life standards for the working classes. We should have been welcoming poor Europeans to also benefit from a living wage and reasonable life standards for hard work. Not viewing the poverty in their home countries and using it to the advantage of the rich and the detriment of the UK born working classes.

I also think the cheap labour supply and under cutting of the working classes is exactly why we are now out of the EU. Which could have been avoided if they hadn't been shouted down as racist or work shy everytime the problem was raised.

We also need to stop the trades being the dumping ground of the illiterate and innumerate. Schools shouldn't pigeon-hole the high achievers for uni and the low achievers for manual skills. Someone forecast for straight A's should have a real choice of becoming a plumber or electrician rather than uni/degree being the default.

Lurked
You are so innocent
What is needed is an actual living wage
My lovely Kosovan car wash man ( he came here as a teenage refugee) cannot get Brits to work for him for even £10 per hour cash in hand.
So he hires Bulgarians and Hungarians who are willing to work.

Picking veg, strapped to a plank on the back of a truck in January is shitty work.
The UK has imported people to do it for a century before that they used gypsies
if you can get benefits to sit on your arse watching Jeremy Kyle, why on earth would you do it ?
so the Brits don't.

The middle skills jobs - chippies, dryliners, sparkies and the like - they were devalued by Bliar and Broon and then slammed by Gove
you do not need an EBACC to do drylining
so Brits stopped doing that work
FFS at my old company we had a policy of hiring prison leavers because they had to sign with the parole officer at the end of the day so we knew they would not bunk
Ebacc destroyed their self worth

Justine Greening needs to focus on Makers not thinkers

hpfa sorry, I thought you were saying 15 of the 60, i.e one quarter were from grammar. Rather than 15% of the state school intake.

mini stop making excuses. Some comprehensives manage to cater very well to the full ability range with the type of cohort you are prejudging as less worthy. Do you honestly believe that in some large comprehensives there aren't any dc who are capable of an academic education?

I will call crap schools crap. Some schools do their best for every child with deprived/ lower income forming the majority of the cohort. So leadership who think like you, that they can just trot out the line about deprivation as an excuse, are indeed crap and unnacceptable.

I don't think it takes 13k to provide suitable education. But I do think the budget should be shared out equally.

talkin the UK has exploited the poverty of immigrants for years to decrease the conditions/pay for low and unskilled work. What is needed is an actual living wage, with reasonable terms and holidays in return for doing them. And then English, Europeans, Martians or whoever else can do them. Not just taking advantage of desperate immigrants.

Vocational routes do in theory work quite well locally. The Infrastructure is there with colleges, and the decent schools are very good at implementing them. The problem is that a few of the crap schools aren't using them as intended. More 'shove dc on anything they might pass, better the equivalent of 6 passes in anything, than scraping a pass in maths and literacy and a good level in a vocational skill they will actually use'.

Vocational routes are worthwhile, but only when they are used for the individuals benefit, whether that's a future career or just to keep them engaged with education. But they become devalued when they are used to shove dc on at random because the school cba teaching. (For school read leadership, not that the teachers cba). And of course when a school starts shoving every academically struggling dc on a vocational course picked out for reasons that have sod all to do with the childs benefit, that vocation becomes less desirable as a route.

Interestingly, there was one btech that quite rightly was seen as an admirable qualification and future career prospect locally. Until one particular school decided to offer it, and shoehorn as many dc as possible onto it. The result is that it now has the undeserved reputation of being inferior to other vocational courses and future careers.

My other gripe with them is that the crap schools use the availability of vocational routes to close the academic route.

I don't think the lack of support for vocational training is just a fault of the Blair government, although he certainly didn't help. I would say that it goes right back to the post war years with the failure to implement, in large part, the technical part of a supposedly tripartite system. We have just not sufficiently valued technical/vocational education.

As a nation we also have to value the vocations more and take an active pride in the small businesses who are our hairdressers, dry cleaners. Plumbers, mechanics etc. Young people don't need a degree from a third rate uni to work in banks and hotels. They do need to be well educated and well presented, punctual, well disciplined and pleasant.

YY.
Tony Blair with his ridiculous notion that everyone should go to university and Brirain would be a marvellously (on paper) educated country of superstars was a crock of shit.
That was when we (as a country) started devaluing trades, skilled work & unskilled work as valid career paths.

*I suspect that people would be a lot less unhappy with selection at 14, which happens to a certain extent with GCSE choices anyway.

What's really needed is a proper debate, instead of tinkering around with the Goverance of schools.*

Sort of agree.
It is pretty much what happens in our local comp anyway tbh.
It's partnered with the local technical college where pupils can go to do mechanics, engineering, (all the traditional trades: plumbing, bricklaying, electrician etc), hair & beauty, Early Years care etc etc.
The school also have the opportunity of an extra period after the normal school day for an extra GCSE (my 14 yr old is doing drama after school for eg).

That is half hearted specialisation. It takes quite a bit of resources to transport DCs around and still means following one academic biased curriculum.

sendsummer
specialisation ie academic versus technical versus other more practical syllabus should occur at eg age 14.
Hmmm
So you are not aware that it already does on a massive scale

Tuesday and Thursday are "college day" when all of the year 10 and 11 kids not on the A level track go to college from school to do vocational courses like hair dressing, mechanics, boat building, tractor driving, hospitality
the other four days a week they do the "national curriculum".
( for the year 12 and 13 kids, those are their work experience days so the colleges use their resources well )

The fact that London selective school families are oblivious of what goes on in the real world explains a lot of the utterly crap decision making by politicians.

A bit like Londoners not comprehending that the rest of the country does not have free buses for children.

I suspect that people would be a lot less unhappy with selection at 14, which happens to a certain extent with GCSE choices anyway.

What's really needed is a proper debate, instead of tinkering around with the Goverance of schools. Academies haven't been the wonderful solution touted, but that seems to be the only option on the table.

I wonder if specialisation ie academic versus technical versus other more practical syllabus should occur at eg age 14.
This would be selected by a combination of parental and student choice plus realistic assessment of pupil potential by school assessment.
The specialisation with appropriate facilities and teacher expertise could either be delivered on one large site (if the infrastructure is there) or several sites.

The inference from the failure of valuing trade and other jobs in the British education system plus some of the basic skills for employment listed above (delivered so much better by immigrants educated elsewhere) is that the comprehensive system with opening up of higher education has failed a large proportion of the less academically advantages students for whom it was designed to benefit.

Classes of more than 30 can be taught well if the disruptive minority is elsewhere. That's where resources need to be diverted.

As a nation we also have to value the vocations more and take an active pride in the small businesses who are our hairdressers, dry cleaners. Plumbers, mechanics etc. Young people don't need a degree from a third rate uni to work in banks and hotels. They do need to be well educated and well presented, punctual, well disciplined and pleasant.

meant nor the choice for the non-academic students

When will the narrow minded selective school brigade realise that education is about much, much more than that?
Talkin my point would be that actually PS despite all the advantages on its side, large site etc, is still not able to offer optimal support for both ends of the academic spectrum nor the choice for the non-academic schools. Therefore specialisation at different colleges or building is required. Choice for this specialisation is limited by time travelling, expense and parental input even at 16.

I do not call Central Southampton "wealthy", nor is central Andover, or Fareham, or Gosport, or Basingstoke - all of them are in the "catchment" of Symonds.

But only fairly well off kids from these areas can afford the bus passes to PS, as you yourself pointed out above. Lots of kids of academics go to PS from Shirley; far less kids from not so affluent homes go up there rather than to BP or RT.

"mini if you think some schools offering substandard education is ok"

Where did I say that?

I think in education you generally get out what you put in, in terms of the ability and willingness of the child, and the resources the state is willing to put into their education.

Put in children from families where there are no books in the house, and nobody reads, where parents don't engage with schools or teachers or the educational process, and try to compensate for that when you can only spend 4 or 5k per head, and the result is pretty predictable.

It makes me sick hearing people describing under-resourced schools with high numbers of very low achieving children from communities generally very disengaged from education, as 'crap'. What do you expect?

If you think the cost of educating a child properly is 13k a year - which is what it costs to send a child to a private school - then stop criticising state schools for being unable to produce the same quality of education for a half or even a third of that sum.

Stop arguing that state schools are failing poor, low achieving children when private schools can't/won't do anything for them either - because if they could, why the hell aren't they offering them bursaries?

esonerp
I do not call Central Southampton "wealthy", nor is central Andover, or Fareham, or Gosport, or Basingstoke - all of them are in the "catchment" of Symonds.

Also Symonds has significant numbers of pupils doing Btec and vocational subjects who could not give a flying &&&& about Oxbridge.

When will the narrow minded selective school brigade realise that education is about much, much more than that?

The Brexit vote was a backlash against immigration.
Why is there so much immigration?
Because British kids cannot or will not do the jobs that need doing.
So we either have to get our kids to be happy cleaning toilets and picking veg, or import people.

Greening's job is to deal with the 80% not the 20%

Jo Johnson can deal with the impact that Brexit will have on Universities.

Peter Symonds is located in Winchester, which is a very wealthy and educated city. PS draws many of its students from the most affluent surrounding areas, in which parents are also highly educated and well off. A significant number of PS students were educated at selective private schools up to 16. 40 Oxbridge offers to PS out of a cohort of 2000 therefore does not look remarkable. Neither does 800 to RG universities. The numbers reflect the cohort. (Private schools nearby send around 10% to Oxbridge.)

Overall I agree that the Hampshire sixth form colleges do provide a variety of choice. But as TP said above that choice is very much limited by parents ability to pay for transport.

Peter Symonds : 2000 pupils per year of whom around 800 go to Russell Group Unis
Peter Symonds got 40 Oxbridge offers in 2015 so 2% of whole year from those numbers (which is about right if intake is completely unselected) but only 5% of RG standard students. I am not sure what that says about that model of education for very bright students. Many students there will be MC and not deterred by the image of Oxbridge and in fact about 160 applied.
It is hard enough to cater for all abilities with right pastoral care in even very large schools / colleges in the state system. Even a sixth form college the size of PS does not have the full range of provision for non academic students. Most of the school / colleges around the UK are smaller sites and that infrastructure is unlikely to change.

Justine Greening currently being interviewed by Andrew Marr. While she didn't rule out a return to grammars she didn't sound altogether encouraging, suggesting, rightly, that there were more important things to worry about.