Justine Greening grubs around for grammar school support after disastrous consultation

"Bertrand Not quite gone out yet - they would - I had a post deleted recently - too much identifying info"

Not sure how giving the mumsnet names of the people you claim are behaving in a hypocritical manner would be giving too much identifying information. I can only assume tht you were, at least, exaggerating with your "half"...

Increasing the number of grammar schools is just another way of saying, "aren't faith schools, schools with complicated selection criteria which favour those with resources, and schools in postcodes with expensive houses great? Let's give already advantaged children even more ways of obtaining a competitive advantage and give up on the rest of the hoi polloi!"

You cannot really claim, given the data, that selection by 11 plus is a fair system in a way that selection by any other means is not. It quite clearly favours those parents most willing and able to shove their children through the requisite hoops, whilst still excluding a majority who would love to have been able to jump through those hoops for their children or who did not realise that raw ability in a poor primary school with parents lacking the education and nouse to make up for the deficits was not enough to compete against years' worth of grooming for a single test (a large proportion of which time and energy would most definitely have been better spent learning and experiencing other things, if it were not for a rather silly test which fails to distinguish potential from intensely focused preparation).

clav I would repeat my earlier questions to you when you continually brought up this line. Why is this in any way an argument for restoring secondary moderns? The school you continually decry as being "Selective" is not even oversubscribed!! How would making it into a grammar mean that more people got access to it?

"The main barrier is that our school system is adversarial rather than cooperative"

Because of a government who believes we can apply the ideology of the markets to our education system as a means of improving provision.

They intend for there to be winners and losers. Namely because their own children will never be at the losing schools. The children at the losing schools are just collateral damage, and they're almost always the poorest and most disadvantaged kids.

Noble Well I don't remember all the details but something about NQTs from Ireland at the other school? Definitely going out now - rather an important day coming up.

Bertrand Not quite gone out yet - they would - I had a post deleted recently - too much identifying info.

"You are right - half the anti-grammar school posters on this thread send their own dc miles away from home (up to an hour's journey each way) to avoid their local 'good' comprehensives and access much better comprehensive schools elsewhere."
I am pretty sure nobody will mind if you name names here

Clavinova

Coloma and other church schools are highly selective.

The people who don't support grammars also tend not to support other forms of unfair selection and socially polarised systems of education.

In other words, it's no point putting that forward as evidence of hypocrisy.

If you want schools which are socially mixed the only defensible system is comprehensive.

Somewhat off-topic but I've read that some far-eastern countries such as South Korea, Singapore and Japan rotate their teachers by lottery to different schools every 5 -7 years to avoid the same schools having the best/worst teachers - even the head teacher moves. You mentioned a failing secondary school near you noble that had no experienced maths teachers whereas the 'middle-class' comp you teach at is fully staffed with experienced maths teachers. Sounds like a good solution to me! Now I really must go Christmas shopping and leave you to it.

"has virtually no bullying"

It probably helps that the grammar has

• no children with behavioural problems
• almost no poor children
• almost no children with significant SEN
• a cohort of unusually committed parents

People love comparing 'leafy' comps with grammars, to the detriment of the comps. My dc's go to a comp in a road where no house costs less than 2 million. They still have lots of kids who have major behavioural problems, lots of challenging behaviour in the classrooms (except in the top and bottom sets).

Teachers dream of having a class full of highly motivated children. That's what you get in a grammar. It's what you don't always get in a comp. Not the teachers' fault or the schools'!

If it was down to me I'd pay teachers according to the level of disruption they experienced. Teachers in schools with high levels of bad behaviour and difficult kids would be on a starting salary of 100K.

Also, the grammar schools are starting to look a bit 'tired' and the facilities at the private schools are getting better and better.

Our local state grammar schools are certainly "tired" as they didn't sell their souls to access the grants/subsidies of the last 10-20 years - their main building is condemned due to leaky roofs etc and has to be moth-balled.

There's a comp just over our county border in a small village - it has come from nowhere on the back of "ticking boxes" to get millions of state/EU funding. Theatre, sports halls, all weather pitches, computers on every desk in every room - you name it, they have it.

Despite all the money thrown at it, the comp is still under-performing, despite it being in a leafy, rich county. It's got a horrid reputation for bullying and rolls are falling! Staff are leaving like rats off a sinking ship. This isn't in a deprived area!!

The grammar, on the other hand, remains popular, over subscribed, has virtually no bullying, yet is in a much more deprived area. It's clearly grossly underfunded, looks awful to an outsider, but the kids are happy and successful there!

My point is that money is no guarantee of success. Huge amounts have been pumped in to build new schools, but some have still failed.

Clavinova how does that work if comprehensives aren't usually able to select from outside their catchment?

Only a minority of comps use partial selection which enables them to take kids from out of catchment.

My dc's school does this. Its intake is still vastly less privileged than its immediate catchment would suggest.

Grammar schools are (relatively) skint because funding formulas rightly prioritise pupils entitled to pupil premium or with SEN/low attainment on entry.

The private school arms race to have the best facilities is all about attracting international pupils from oligarch families and seems to be one of the main reasons why boarding schools are no longer affordable by anyone since the super rich. Ugh.

noble
How can you send your dc miles away on a bus to access the best comprehensives if the problem with the best comprehensives is that you have to buy an expensive house on their doorstep

'There is more than one way to skin a cat' - I can certainly name 3 posters on this thread who send their own dc out of borough to much better schools than their local comps - as well you know. Faith schools, for example can have massive catchment areas - The London Oratory, Coloma, Grey Coat Hospital School have catchment areas up to 20 miles across - I know/know of dc at all three schools. Dozens of schools in London and elsewhere have partial selection tests, academic banding tests, music, art, technology aptitude tests etc.

Yes, it's amazing what facilities money can buy, isn't it? Such a shame the government underfunds state education.

Ciutadella
Parents are worried about lack of funding, overcrowding , continued access to specialist teachers at the grammars. Some parents are worried about cultural differences - the private schools have a more balanced cultural intake. Also, the grammar schools are starting to look a bit 'tired' and the facilities at the private schools are getting better and better.

GreenGinger2 - this may make sense to those people in their own minds, but travelling a long way to avoid a good school in most people's minds makes them idiots.

Clavinova - that, I think is a statistic you have entirely invented for yourself. And if a child is malleable enough to prep for an entrance exam, they are plenty malleable enough to be brought up attending church every Sunday.

In our area people pay more to live in the better towns which have catchment to the better comps. When the perceived even better comp in the town with even higher prices has spaces( low birth rate year) the more wealthy pay best part of £300 a term to bus their DC there.