Oxfordshire votes to reject grammar schools

noble: the secondary moderns in Kent might be worse than comprehensives, but as I have said on other threads, plenty of Secondary Moderns in Bucks have GCSE results (and A level results) many comps would die for! You cannot say they are all the same - comps or secondary moderns! It is however true that few poor children get to any grammar schools. Ofsted have the stats on this and it is the reason Sir Michael Wilshaw spoke out so strongly about the idea that grammar schools aid social mobility - they just don't!

Everybody keeps saying 'better off rich or advantaged' but no one has actually defined what this means other than family income greater than £15,600 PA.

Roguedad. Please come and help us grammar advocates on the other threads.

At times it's likes '1879' 'Zulu Dawn' and being at Rouke's Drift in Natal, trying to put up a defence against thousands of the sods.

free = not having to pay. You're muddling the point by pretending I meant that free = open. The point was that not allowing state grammars preserves the privilege of the better off to access a selective education, with the more academically focused curriculum that suits bright kids.

My school turned from a grammar to a comp in 3rd year. Over time it ruined a great school. The neglect of secondary moderns, and the bigger failure to create the 3rd leg technical schools originally envisioned, will remain a serious issue, but it's not a reason to not allow bright kids to access a tailored education irrespective of the wealth of their parents.

So it will remain the preserve of the better off in Oxfordshire, who can pay, to have their kids educated in an academically selective school. Nothing beats a bunch of lefties voting to preserve the isolated privilege of the higher paid! I am one of those right now, and it irks that relatives in Kent have free access to grammar schools.

I hope Surrey doesn't reintroduce grammars. Dd goes to a Surrey comp which we are happy with. There are a lot of good comps in Surrey where there no grammars.

Perhaps they had a vote at this stage to put down a marker?

Any It can't but it makes it much easier for local campaigners to argue against it. The government would have to justify imposing secondary moderns when there is a clear mandate against them.

If May's govt change the law on this, I do not understand how an LA could prevent an academy or free school becoming selective.
That said, perhaps there are no academies or free schools in that LA, unlikely nowadays though.

www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/14753256.Oxfordshire_education_boss_steps_back_from_reintroducing_grammar_schools_after_losing_vote

Hot off the press. However the Council member in favour of selection still seems to think it could be re-introduced. Whatever happened to democracy people?

Quite so Pandapumpkin. A theory that I have heard expressed by a former Oxfordshire head teacher is that economic considerations were, in part, behind the decision to convert to comprehensives in the first place. As the baby boom children left school there were lots of already fairly small schools with spare places which became increasingly unviable. This was then dressed up with suitable educational theories - initially Oxford City went for a Middle School system, which was one outcome of the Plowden Report, of there being a distinct middle phase.

Rural areas of Oxfordshire are largely Tory but a new grammar school system would be very expensive to introduce in rural areas where schools are widely spaced and small towns only have one secondary school.... you either have to convert one rural comp to grammar then bus the 75 % of kids who dont get in to somewhere else or have build a new gramnar and reduce tge size if the other chools which is also expensive and unnecessary in an area of god existing schools. Even then, the parents of ths academic kids will want their local sxhool to be grammar. The parents of the rest will not. System is only really feasible to introduce in more urban areas with a higher population density such as Oxford but the city is labour.....not a single Tory on the city council.... and I dont sense a local appetite for change

Well, I'm delighted at this news

1. Only 14 councillors voted in favour - the Council has 31 Tory members. Maths that will not be lost on our local MPs or the PM. 2)People who have said that the council can't stop an Academy becoming a grammar are perfectly right BUT Justine Greening has also said that areas will not have grammars forced upon them. It will now be much harder to justify enforcing secondary moderns when we in Oxfordshire have expressed a clear desire through our elected representatives to remain comprehensive. I suspect this has made it much less likely that we will get an expansion through Bucks annexes for instance. 3)Cheney school gets good results considering its intake is less advantaged than Cherwell's - with Spires Academy on the rise we now have pretty good schools in the City

Cheney has a reasonable reputation locally, but as far as I'm aware Cherwell is better regarded.

Interesting! My children will probably go to Burford, which I'm pretty sure started life as a grammar. It's now an academy, but is also a state boarding school so I shall be following with interest... not sure I'm keen on the idea of more selection

Of the Oxford City schools, Cheney was a Grammar, which is now Comprehensive, but I don't know what its reputation is. What is now Oxford Academy has had an extremely chequered history, having been turned into a comprehensive by combining Littlemore Grammar and a couple of Sec Mods, into Peers School, which went rapidly downhill, until its rebirth as the Academy, and now appears to be on the up.

For Catholics there were the Salesian College for boys, which was run by the Salesians, but was basically an independent school being propped up by the scholarship boys (according to DH who went there) and Notre Dame for girls. Both joined up with the Sec Mod and became Edmund Campion comprehensive, (now something else).

Oxford High started its life as an Independent school, became Direct Grant and then went Independent once the comprehensives came in. I don't know Magdalen's history except that its been going for a few hundred years.

In a nutshell the ex-grammars which have become Independent have had a much longer history of being Independent than they ever had as grammar schools. The Local Authority Grammars have disappeared.

Abingdon School and St Helen's in Abingdon were independent schools prior to the 1944 Act. They then became Direct Grant Grammar Schools, and once Oxfordshire went Comprehensive they reverted to being Independent.

Cherwell in North Oxford which is now considered by many to be the best (not by my Daughter in Law, who went there) started its life as a Secondary Modern, and takes a lot of children of Oxford academics. Milham Ford in Oxford was a Girls Grammar, went comprehensive but closed a good few years ago.

I think a Grammar would be popular with a few academics because they wouldn't have to pay the fees for Oxford High (termly fees £4,808.00), Magdalen College (£17,115 per annum), Abingdon School (£18,585 p.a) or St Helens (£4,915 per term), which is quite a lot of money to find because academic salaries haven't kept pace with rising school fees.

Oxford High and Magdalen College School.
I do think new Oxford grammar schools are extremely unlikely.

Which were grammar schools?

I live in Oxford but didn't go to school here and don't know much about the schools. I went to a grammar school and loved but but feel very conflicted about it all.

Interesting how the ex grammar schools of Oxford have become very successful independent schools whilst continuing the grammar type tradition of education. IMO a new Oxford grammar school would be rather popular with quite a few Oxford academics.

It's still illegal to set up new grammars, under New Labour legislation. So no one can change a school into a grammar or set up a new one, unless it's an extension of an existing grammar.

I guess May will try to get the legislation repealed; it will be interesting to see what happens then.