Nikki out, Justine in

Interesting. My DS's London Indy sends about 30 every year.

So because Wandsworth has one poor Comp, we should change the system? For info, my girls grammar school only sent one to Cambridge in 14 years and never sent anyone to Oxford. As a comprehensive it now does send pupils regularly, and has a couple of Olympians to boot. One of the Olympians learnt her sport at Cambridge, so it is relevant.

The only comp that was vaguely acceptable in Wandsworth has sent one child to Oxbridge in the 11/12 years it has been open and I think only one to Durham.

The results at dd's comp declined every year after a new head was appointed.

The problem with state schools is that where there is poor leadership it takes far too long to depose it. Most parents can sniff a poor head or one that doesn't fit the school in nano seconds, why can't governing bodies? At that level neither is it about poor T&Cs. When the head of dd's former comp took "early retirement" they were on £103,000 and the Deputy more than £65,000.

Lurked So again using that example there should be 5 or 6:1 ex comp students to grammar at top unis.
Ummm - but this is what you do find at Oxbridge. Out of 100 ex-state school students at Oxbridge 15 will be from grammars and 85 from comps. Which is a ratio of 1:5.

talkin I think grammars are too few for that to explain it. Especially given there are no doubt dc who would have failed the 11+ in a selective area, but in a good comprehensive have gone on to top unis. (I'm thinking dc with undx Sen, eal, late developers etc). So if anything the comprehensive pupils should be greater than proportional.

mini if you think some schools offering substandard education is ok, on the basis no local dc are capable of more than the minimum requirement of academic subjects, and no dc could possibly need teaching above the level of a pass, because naturally they'll all be too thick and low in aspiration, then you aren't worth conversing with.

www.learningspy.co.uk/featured/how-to-improve-a-school/

"when I hear of comp pupils achieving 10 a*, after well done I think how shit the system is that won't provide that opportunity to all dc at comprehensives"

Silk purses, sows ears.

There are schools near me that are rattling about at the bottom of the borough league tables, one of which schools was in the bottom 17 schools in the whole of the U.K. A few years ago, and which is still massively unpopular. All of these 'shit schools' produce small numbers of students with stellar results. What makes these students different? Each and every one is a fairly new immigrant to the UK.

Comprehensives which get terrible results in the UK overwhelmingly start off with low achieving children.

Schools which get amazing results invariably start off with large numbers of high achieving children.

Most improvement in school results following a change of management is fluke, fiddling, or the result in the school having been successful in attracting more m/c and high achieving kids.

lurked
you need to read up on super-zips
they are a very insidious part of the problem

BUT
utterly irrelevant to the job that Justine faces : producing kids to replace the bulk immigrants

mini are you even vaguely aware that a) the country isn't just London? and b) the majority of dc don't have access to grammars, because they don't live in traveling distance of them, so therefore never sit or fail the 11+. They just go to comprehensives, regardless of parental support, or ability, or anything else. Fwiw when I hear of comp pupils achieving 10 a*, after well done I think how shit the system is that won't provide that opportunity to all dc at comprehensives. Still, at least as you think private is a waste of money you can stop banging the drum about it being the biggest injustice in education.

hpfa I'm nor talking about the entrants from state versus private. I'm looking solely at where the state pupils come from.

As I cba googling the exact figures, for arguments sake let's say 4% of dc attend state grammar, and as a result another 12% attend secondary moderns. That means the other 84% attend comprehensives. Even if you say that only 25% are grammar material dc, that still means 21% of the total are potential top uni entrants, plus the 4% at grammar. Therefore there should be 5x as many ex comp students at rg unis as there are grammar.

Even using the level 5 maths as a basis it doesn't add up. The grammar dc might account for 4 of that 25-30% of level 5. But the other 21-26 would therefore not be at grammars. So again using that example there should be 5 or 6:1 ex comp students to grammar at top unis. And that's before you even consider the fact sat grades tend to be inflated in grammar areas because of 11+ preparation. Or the fact if we're looking at maths and top university, level 5 covers too large an ability range to predict top university potential.

Admittedly she did part of her degree in the Murray Building at Soton Uni - about which we BSc bods were extremely rude.

She did a Business related degree, not Economics, apparently.

margrethe
Golly, I hope not.
Because at 11 you have no idea which kids will end up on which track at 16.
Let alone 18.

Surely, you've just made a practical argument for selective secondary education TalkinPeace.

Surely there are families with that same ethos in comprehensive areas minifingers. They haven't been strained out through the 11+ process, so they blend in, but statistically, they must be there.

Lurked I'm not sure of your point here.

About 25%-30 of students attained Level 5 in SATS. Obviously the vast majority of grammar school pupils will have attained this level. So as 4% of students nationally attend grammar schools this represents about 15% of the high achieving students who (allowing for a few late developers) will be overwhelmingly those who go on to Oxbridge. So the Oxbridge figures don't reflect any "added value" given by grammar schools, they certainly don't challenge private school dominance of Oxbridge entrance and historical statistics show that they never have done.

There is also the issue of kids do what their parents did

• one of the reasons why such high numbers of medic students went to private schools

and if parents are low skilled, debt averse, they are not going to want their kids taking on £50k of debt to move away to do some strange course at Uni.
Schools can only do so much when parental aspirations and the state of the economy are stacked against them.

London state schools have disproportionately high numbers of

• immigrants who push their kids to do well
• professionals who expect their kids to do well.

Somewhere like Skegness has very little of either because such people moved away when the jobs went.
And the bright kids have very few role models to encourage them.

Remember of course that in a selective school, the whole 6th form will be on the A level track.
That makes careers advice a darn sight simpler
the most extreme case is a certain top boarding school where half the boys do the same A level combo and half of them go to Oxbridge

In a comp less than half will be on the A level track
and only 1/3 of them will be headed towards RG
which makes getting destinations right much, much harder

Actually mini, dd was friends with some extremely clever girls at the comp. Girls who were intellectually ahead of her. At GCSE dd did as well or better. Also there were boys as clever as DS at primary who went to the comp - they are at Newcastle and Nottingham. DS is at Oxford.

In any event education is not all about GCSEs. IME too many comprehensives do not have high enough expectations.

"Which can only mean too many are failing those able dc."

Or it could be that the bright kids at comprehensives don't have parents standing over them monitoring their homework and revision, and are less self-motivated in relation to their school work, which is why they either didn't apply to a grammar in the first place, or why they failed the 11+.

All the children I know who passed the 11+ have very motivated and involved parents. They are also not allergic to doing homework/maths practice/essay writing practice. My dc's are bright enough but they would rather have teeth pulled than do extra work outside school or homework for that matter

In other words it's the attitude and work habits of families and children, not the quality of the teaching that accounts for the differences in outcomes between bright children at grammars and in comps.

My main hope for Justine Greening is that she is less averse to the views of experts and educationalists than her two predecessors.

Admittedly she did part of her degree in the Murray Building at Soton Uni - about which we BSc bods were extremely rude - but hopefully the attitude of
evidence based decision making
will have seeped into her brain

then again Theresa May is a fan of scientifically impossible legislation
and has just made Penny Turkey will join the EU in a year Mordaunt a DWP minister

so maybe we are doomed to watching the same mistakes be made for many more years to come.

Ohtheroses, so did none of the bright children at your dc's old comp achieve highly or go on to university?

Many people wouldn't touch my dc's school with a bargepole, and luckily for them it's in a borough stuffed with elite private schools so most don't have to.

I do wonder how someone feels though, when they see newspaper pictures showing a line up of happy kids who've just got 10A*s at a comprehensive, (something that happens every year at my dc's school) when they themselves have spent 80K on their own child's education at a private school down the road.

I suspect that the more you pay, the more you convince yourself that your child would have been an unhappy failure at a state school. Must give some people such a headache trying to maintain that illusion when they stumble across happy, clever, high achieving kids from comprehensives, of which there are many.

talkin I agree it's not their duty to fill them, and they have a duty to also open doors to other equally valid routes. But they also have a duty to offer the top uni route to those who are capable and might want it, and too many don't.

sorry hpfa I meant to say comparing the state school dc in terms of grammar/ comprehensive, the grammar numbers are disproportionate to comps. Rather than in comparison to private. I know in areas with grammars that of course it's logical they would be the dc most likely to attend top unis. But when you consider the majority of the country has no access to grammars, therefore in the majority of the country those grammar dc will be at comprehensives, you'd expect more of the state entrants to be ex comprehensive. I'm not willing to believe 1/4 of the brightest dc all happen to live in grammar catchment, and that fully comprehensive areas just happen to contain less able dc. Which can only mean too many are failing those able dc.

Lurked I agree that all comps should be offering triple science and two MFLs but I suspect this is more about resources and teacher shortages than anything else.
On the Oxbridge stats 60% of students have been to state schools. Of these an estimated 15% come from grammar schools and 85% from comprehensives (Sutton Trust). Given that about 15% of high achieving students attend grammars this is what you would expect, in fact the Sutton Trust believe that students from grammars are slightly underrepresented. Incidentally, in 1964 when comps barely existed only 37% of Oxbridge entrants attended state schools.

Where we can all agree is that socio-economic background is way too important in determining educational success. A relevant example: in Skegness Grammar (in a deprived area) the average high achieving student gains a B grade at GCSE. At Wellington College a secondary modern in wealthy and fully selective Trafford the average high achieving student gains B+.
Wellington also offers three MFL whereas Skegness only offers two.

The job of a comp is not just to try to fill top 200 unis.
It is also tasked with producing the plumbers and mechanics and cleaners and veg pickers and nurses that the UK has been importing by the million for decades.

With the Brexit vote that will no longer be possible.
So hopefully Miss Greening will ignore the loud and sharp elbowed middle class and focus on the ones they try to avoid by sending their kids to private.

After all city traders are a bit nadgered if the electrician is not there to connect up their kit
and the office will stink without cleaners
and Tarquin's nursery will close without cheap labour
and the wait at casualty will be even longer without nurses and porters

hpfa If all comps did offer a comprehensive education as yours presumably does, then more people would think it was the best system. But whilst there are comps offering one mfl, no seperate science etc, with academic dc not achieving anything near potential, then people will want grammars.

I don't know what the stats are for eg Kent versus London, but last time I looked, the figures for state school dc going on to rg unis, Oxbridge etc was not even vaguely proportional. Which can only mean that a large number of comprehensives are failing their high achievers.

Funnily enough the four London boroughs I checked for results all outscored Kent in the headline 5+ A-C (maths and English) figure, including Wandsworth. So if the Kent grammars are so amazing this rather implies that the 80% at the secondary moderns are doing much wo rse than they would in comps doesn't it? Don't that 80% matter? Incidentally my DDs comp offers 4 modern languages plus Latin on an after school basis. I really don't think a secondary modern would have offered that. And as she wouldn't have passed the 11+ (poor maths) and we have been told she seems to have a natural gift for languages this would mean her not fulfilling her potential wouldn't it?

One of the key elements of supply side economics is to improve education & skills across the whole workforce, regardless of where they live, faith or household income.

If you can afford private school fees, you do not need your school to have charitable status. Remove the tax break and pump the cash into the rest of the education system to increase their funding per head.

Allow the church to fund schools, but don't allow them to discriminate within their admissions policy. Make them open to all.

Scrap free school meals for all infant school children & put the money where it's needed, allowing each school to prioritise how to spend the money instead of facing criticism from parents because they don't offer kale & quinoa.

Ban ludicrously expensive school trips in state schools (over £3,200 for meeting an oran utang in Borneo, anyone?)

Bring back schools providing copies of English Lit set texts so no child has to pretend to forget it lesson after lesson.