11+ test: I think it's unfair and elitist

My child got 112 in GL bucks 11 plus eligible for selection review if anyone completed successfully please share. Really need ideas for strong application pls

@Paradisegained "life is unfair."

Indeed. All the more reason not to add institutional unfairness.....

I can't think of anything it would be essential or even useful for once a child joins Y7, regardless of of what school they attend. For a selective school, a high standard of written English would be the most useful. The only careers that I think NVR would be particularly helpful for are trades such as joinery, plumbing, bricklaying, and wallpapering with an offset match!

I doubt if any private secondaries of public schools use NVR as a major part of their selection process. The beauty of both VR and NVR is they are multiple choice and can be marked by computer so marking is both quick and cheap.

Regardless of the above, both VR and NVR are part of IQ tests and are only really valid if candidates come to them cold!

I am genuinely struggling for a career that requires ‘11+ style NVR’ as opposed to ‘domain specific reasoning’ based on training and knowledge?

11+-style non-verbal reasoning? Do you have evidence for that?

As an anecdote, my sibling is Oxbridge-educated in physical science STEM, professionally successful, highly intelligent, but cones out with a NVR score in the ‘significant SEN’ range every time. Always has, from childhood to now, familiarity has never improved it.

But in an all-grammar area the supposed brightest 25-30% of DCs, as determined by the 11÷ test, are in the grammar schools. So by definition there aren't any of the top 25-30% in ability in the other schools are there? not one. Therefore they aren't compehensives.

Non-verbal reasoning is a valuable skill in many different contexts. Why on earth would children be prohibited from learning this at school? It's essential to numerous different careers and useful for many areas of academic study.

Well it is. My daughter (state school, SEN, FSM) has just got 4 places offered at uni (waiting on Cambridge). I have hugely struggled as a single parent.

Society is depressing. It’s not ideal and of course it would be nice to promise every child a super education - but the reality is very different and you have to deal with reality as depressing as it is.

Surely we can guarantee ever child has the same parental support at home, same income for extra curricula - etc no you absolutely can’t.

You can’t guarantee even in the best school that your child’s teacher doesn’t suddenly get ill and they have disaster daily cover teachers etc

nothing is a guarantee

life is unfair.

some children are young carers, some undiagnosed SEN, some don’t have support at home, some have parents with mental health issues or those that have to work 3 jobs.

Thinking about it, there also needs to be no element of academic selection in the admissions criteria of ANY local state schools (not just the school in question) for a school to be comprehensive.

A school is comprehensive if it reasonably reflects the makeup of its catchment area with no element of selection in its criteria for admissions.

So yes, the ability range and relative proportion of different ability groups will depend both on local demographics and the exercise of parental choice (where more than 1 school is reasonably accessible). But the ‘other’ school in a grammar area is not made ‘truly comprehensive’ by the presence of some able pupils who may not have taken, or may have failed, the 11+.

If a school has one child from each of the three ability ranges, by definition it is Comprehensive in the range of academic ability it teaches. Is it not a Comprehensive School then !

I don't believe in all this talk that a Comprehensive school needs to have a equal 33% split across the three ability ranges or anything like that number, just one from each group is enough. If this is not the case Comprehensive schools in deprived non selective areas which have less than 15% high attaining and more than 40% low attaining pupils must be Secondary Moderns.

As explained, because it is a pejorative term, schools don’t call themselves secondary moderns. There is no universally-understood name for ‘the other schools in grammar areas’ - and some are misleadingly referred to as ‘comprehensive’. To avoid this confusion - and only for that reason - I would refer to non-grammar schools in wholly or largely bipartite areas as ‘secondary moderns’, those in areas with a few super-selective grammars as ‘near -comprehensives’, and those where no state selective schools within reasonable reach as ‘comprehensives’.

I have never encountered a school calling itself a secondary modern in my entire life. I went to secondary school in the 90s and didn’t encounter the term then, or in the decades since 🤷‍♀️

The term "secondary modern" is not used, particularly by grammar supporters because there is too much baggage attached- it reminds people uncomfortably of the fact that we're dividing children into sheep and goats based on an arbitrary test taken on one day at the age of 10.

@Tiredalwaystired a school cannot be a comprehensive if it does not have the full range of abilities. And in an area like Kent they will not have that range.

Thats irrelevant to my initial response to your question about places that have comprehensives and optional grammar schools sitting side by side.

I guess we just go with selective and non- selective then! It’s all very confusing and area specific. Personally I’d rather they scrap them all!

Incidentally, I agree with you re qualifications. The one of mine who went to a secondary modern did better at every stage than the one who went to a grammar.

She still didn't go to a comprehensive though 😀. And there was a clear difference in terms of resources and finance.

Ah well now we're in total agreement. I agree with you over teaching quality, and study after study has shown that the biggest in-school factor behind pupils' success is great teaching. There's data showing that DCs do better in a large class with a great teacher than in a small class with a weak one.

Do you think I'm a grammar school fan? I'm most certainly not!!

I'm simply arguing with the terminology - in an all-grammar county such as Bucks if 25-30% of state-educated DCs are attending a grammar school, the remaining schools are not, quite literally by definition, comprehensives. And just as they don't call themselves secondary moderns, nor do they refer to themselves as comprehensives

@cantkeepawayforever thank you that’s a really clear explanation!

@thing47 of course they can teach the very top achievers- all students sit the same GCSEs and follow the same curriculum, by and large. In my experience the very best teachers are those who stay at the non-selectives, I have known many colleagues make the switch to grammar or private for ‘an easy life’ (their words not mine). To answer your question there is absolutely no “need” for any other schools, and there are many areas of the country with no grammars at all. Statistically high prior achieving students actually do better in non grammar areas. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/28/english-regions-dominated-by-grammar-schools-do-not-improve-grades-study-says?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I also don’t see how they are not comprehensive, there are many parents (myself included) who choose not to put their children in for the 11+. There are other reasons why they might choose that school, for example my closest grammar school has quite a narrow range of subjects and doesn’t even offer drama GCSE. By your reasoning no school can ever be truly comprehensive, there are also those who go to private school, and those who are home educated. Maybe we should just stick to selective and non-selective.

Well no, the schools may not because it's seen as pejorative and the narrative is that these schools are capable of educating the very top achievers (though this begs the question why do we need any other schools then?). However parents and children do call them that.

What they most definitely are not, is comprehensives.

The thing is, secondary modern had a negative connotation (the place for those who failed). Understandably, schools did not choose to keep that name once they had an option not to - proliferating into academies and high schools, secondary schools and upper schools, St Bob’s school and Community schools.

However, in threads about grammar schools, someone in Kent, Gloucestershire, London or Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire or Lincolnshire will have a different view in what a ‘non grammar’ is - is it truly comprehensive (representative of its catchment); near-comprehensive; or lacking 30% of the higher ability students within its catchment? When someone in Kent says ‘I don’t want my child to go to a comprehensive’, they mean ‘a school denuded of higher ability pupils’, so it is for clarity that the term ‘secondary modern’ is used to differentiate those from true comprehensives.

In NE England where I am from they abolished state grammars in about 1971. I don't see why in a united kingdom state educational provision differs so much based on where you happen to live.

Getting slightly off topic, however I don’t believe that any school actually calls themselves a secondary modern these days. Correct me if I’m wrong, the term just sounds very outdated to me.