New Grammar Schools: good or bad?

@Anothernamechangeplease - In many areas there is already a split between middle school and 6th form/further education college (and very few people complain about selection at this level or at uni). It’s just a question of when people consider kids develop (some take into their 20s!) and when it’s acceptable to select.

a grammar system may allow the top streams to cover things at a more similar pace to academic private schools. IF secondary moderns had a lower pupil to staff ratio (increase grammar class sizes), they may be able to give more attention and breadth of subjects as some private schools. But it’s a big IF - and probably not likely to happen. So I think grammars could work but probably won’t.

If we want people to be able to move within the system, then surely the best way of doing this would be to offer a wider range of options within comprehensive schools. Moving schools in the teen years is immensely disruptive, and a better comprehensive system would enable us to minimise the need for this.

As you say, no system is going to suit everyone, but I don't personally support a system that seems to be designed to suit those who already have the greatest advantages anyway.

@Anothernamechangeplease - no system is gonna suit everyone and ideally there would be movement within the systems. In the grand scheme of things gcses aren’t everything, nor are a levels or uni.

some people are not in the right sets or miss out on a 6th form place or uni/apprenticeship place. So people either decide to try a different course or work for a year/re-do exams and try again. Some people re-train as adults. It would just be nice to offer more variety than there is now.

To be fair @Anothernamechangeplease I think the suggestion was an opportunity to take another year to do GCSEs rather than a compulsion.

Sure, but some grammar school kids might like that opportunity too. I remember my dsis tutoring one young boy who was struggling terribly after having to be coached to get in.

I think that's a separate issue from the grammar school debate, personally. Totally agree with you though that we should be aiming to provide a better education for all pupils and not only the lucky few.

Ideally, education should be designed in such a way that the architects of the system would be happy for their own kids to go through that system no matter where they happened to fall on the spectrum of academic ability. The problem that we have at the moment is that the vast majority of decision-makers assume that their kids or grandkids will fit into the top 20%, so they don't really give a toss what happens to the other 80%.

Goodness! As someone who failed the 11+, I did better in my exams than the vast majority of the kids at the nearby super-selective grammar school, so I certainly wouldn't have thanked you for making me do an extra year!! People aren't thick, you know, just because they haven't crammed for a silly test at age 11!

@HPFA - but surely the opportunity to have an extra year to do gcses may be beneficial for some people. even if some people just miss out, they might have an extra year to do better in gcses than they would have done otherwise and then go to the same 6th form. people now have the summer-born child dilemma and want to delay entry into school but are denied - which is a bit crazy.

People see Further education colleges and 6th forms as fine; also apprenticeships and traditional 3 year uni.

The fact you assume pupils at secondary moderns (some of whom will only have just missed passing the 11+) will need an extra year to pass GCSES shows why we shouldn't have secondary moderns.

There is no evidence at all that returning to a selective system will enhance educational results all round - if that was the case then the selective counties would do better than the non selective ones (they don't) and countries which have selection would do better in international tests than those who have comprehensives (they don't). Estonia doesn't even use streaming or setting yet outperforms the UK.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-50590581

In a situation where parents pour money and effort into trying to get their kids into grammars (and this happens everywhere that grammars exist) the schools who take the kids that fail can never have equal status. If parents really believed that they'd let the exam do its job instead of doing everything they can to ensure it makes the "right" decision.

None of this is to condemn the parents who do this - if I lived in a selective county I'd do the same. But let's be honest about it.

This makes an interesting read from Full Fact. Doesn't look like grammar schools were so good for social mobility even back in their apparent heyday.

fullfact.org/education/social-mobility-selective-education-era/

It would be interesting to see those historic demographics @cantkeepawayforever. I share your scepticism about how effective the system was with regard to social mobility back in the day.

My elderly father did go to a grammar school from a working class family, and he did pretty well for himself, so arguably he benefitted from the opportunity. However, his brother - who my dad considered equally intelligent- failed the 11+ and ended up at the secondary modern. In the end, it didn't make much difference- my uncle pursued a more academic occupation after leaving school and they both ended up in similar jobs. My dad has never believed that the grammar system promoted social mobility. As I said further up the thread, my exceptionally academic mother was not able to go to the state grammar school in her area.

I'm sure there were success stories, but I often wonder how representative they really were.

Remember that a very small proportion of 18 year olds in the 1950s /60s went to university, and there were plenty of respectable ‘white collar’ as well as ‘blue collar’ work for those who left school at 16 or 18. With today’s ‘employment arms race’ meaning that graduates now take jobs previously open to school leavers, education to 18 that at least gives a shot at university entrance for far more of the age group (far more than attend grammars, even in wholly selective areas) is important.

I don’t know whether it ever helped in a ‘mass’ - statistically significant - way. A few ‘deserving’ cases were ‘saved’, but I suspect the class / income split was not very different. The difference may have been the existence of well-paid long term jobs in heavy industry - mining, factory work, steel works - for those who would typically have attended secondary moderns and left school for jobs between 14 and 16 depending on the date. Also perhaps more ‘catch up’ education - night schools, working men’s institutes - for those like my grandfather who needed a second chance at education for employment in the difficult late 20s / early 1930s.

Thanks, that is interesting. The distribution seems similar to the Australian selective school DS would have gone to (other image was his primary, stark difference!). It seems like selection used to help (my grandad was a working class grammar school child, as were some of his brothers) but at some point stopped working?

I don't seem to be able to post the images, but there are some graphs and stats here.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X18787820#:~:text=For%20those%20from%20median%20SES,distribution%20attend%20a%20grammar%20school.

Yes, he will be invisible on the school's published stats, but this is the sort of thing that researchers have looked at.

In Australia there is info like this online

Yes, this is how ours works, no catchment means they do need to select by score.

I was just curious about our school. There's info on FSM but nothing to differentiate working working class families like ours from middle class that I've seen. So it seems kids like DS (low income lone parent family) are invisible on the stats.

I'm not aware of any official stats on this, but there is a lot of academic research. All of the studies that I have seen seem to confirm that grammar schools substantially favour children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. This is true even after KS2 attainment has been adjusted for.

People like to argue that grammar schools would promote social mobility, but all of the evidence seems to suggest quite the contrary.

its not that.

In Bucks (non super selective but 100% selective) there is a qualification score of 121 - this is a standardised score. Everyone who gets 121 or above is deemed qualified. Places are then essentially offered within catchment by distance from school (catchment siblings and the like having priority) - so you are either qualified or not qualified and one qualified score isn’t better then another.

Superselectives select by score - some have catchment some don’t but basically all scores are ranked and if they have 150 spaces the hugest 150 scores will be offered places - if one declines then the 151st highest is offered and so on.

Is there information on household income for schools available, percentage of students in each income quartile/quintile or similar?

Not all children with SEN have an EHCP though.

Some grammars have a far higher number of kids sitting the test relative to the number of places available and therefore greater competition and a smaller chance of getting a place. So not all the same.

OK, so pretty standard stuff then. I think it's extremely unlikely that this kind of admissions process would eliminate the massive advantage that wealthier pupils have with regard to getting admission. Of course, it's easy to say that you'll prioritise kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who meet the selection criteria, but how many disadvantaged kids are actually able to meet those criteria without having access to the extensive prep for the entrance tests that their wealthier peers enjoy? It simply isn't a level playing field, and the stats back this up. Even after adjusting for KS2 attainment, far fewer pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds gain admission to selective state schools. Segregation by class.

Ours seems quite middle class and the FSM percentage is low, but I don't know what percentage would be low waged working class but not FSM.

Without a catchment I think. Ours don't have them, you could apply from anywhere then move into the area if you wanted, or commute.