Liz Truss to lift ban on new grammar schools

[noblegiraffe]

I cannot believe that we are here AGAIN after it went so poorly for Theresa May when she wanting to do this.

Liz Truss said in her leadership campaign that she wanted to lift the ban on new grammar schools. Since becoming PM, she has stuffed DfE positions with ardent supporters of new grammar schools (including the odious Jonathan Gullis as new schools minister).

The Telegraph is now reporting a planned amendment to the Schools Bill which would allow the creation of new grammar schools. Leading this is Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee, who has been trying to bring back grammar schools for years.

Some notes on grammars: They are bad for social mobility. Despite many efforts to create a selection test that doesn't select against disadvantaged kids, this remains the case, and grammar school intakes are heavily skewed in favour of the better-off (obviously this is why some people like them).

The Tories closed more grammar schools than Labour, (Thatcher closed more than anyone else). They were not popular with parents who eventually realised that the vast majority of children don't get into them. Parents who might be in favour of grammars are not actually in favour of sending their child to secondary moderns, yet this is where most of them will go.

The German system (which is always referenced when it comes to grammar schools) was condemned by the UN for perpetuating social inequity.

Vocational education is a real issue in England and that's where any energy on schooling should be focused.

And obviously school funding and teacher recruitment and retention should be the main priorities in education for the new government.

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/17/liz-truss-could-lift-ban-new-grammar-schools-months/

It’s not a race to the bottom. The more grammar schools there are, the more children who can attend.

People get so angry at everything.

Consistency of performance day in and day out is what separates students not performance on one day or a particular week. The system cannot cater to anomalies.
There has to be a cut off point.

The 11+ is absolutely about performance on a single day. Nothing at all about consistency. And why can’t a system cater to anomalies eg a child who in a true comprehensive is in top set Maths and a low set in English? I agree that there has to be a cut off point - but that cut off point is where a child is not best educated in mainstream schooling, rather in appropriate special schooling or in a specialised unit attached to a mainstream school. That cut off point relies on extensive evidence from parents, schools, medical and educational professionals over a period of time - the EHCP process, which should be much more highly resourced than it is - and is therefore significantly more robust than the few hours of coachable VR and NVR that typify the 11+ .

The more grammars there are, the worse affected the other schools in the area will be.

If we look at a county with some grammars, unequally distributed around the county, it is quite easy to see how the effect of more grammars on the other schools, both in terms of the high percentage of deprived children at the 'non grammar' schools and also the Ofsted grades of the other schools.

Town 1: 1 grammar
%PP
Grammar: 1.5% Outstanding
Comprehensives: 4.4% Outstanding, 14% Good, 29.7% Good, 30% Good

Town 2: 4 Grammars
%PP:
Grammars: 4%, 5%, 7%, 8% All until recently Outstanding, 3 reinspected since 2019 all downgraded to Good
Secondary moderns (known as comprehensives or academies): 24% Good, 25% Good, 30% Good, 40% Inadequate, 51% Inadequate

It will be interesting to see how the Ofsted grades develop as all schools are re-inspected under the new framework, as previously there was an extremely high correlation between low PP and high Ofsted grade, as is still very visible in the uninspected grammars, and the different Secondary Moderns in Town 2.

Apologies, for accuracy: one of the grammars in Town B has always been Good, interestingly the one with the highest %PP.

Exactly

Take Graham Brady's seat - all of the secondaries are ofsted rated good or excellent.

I looked this up, Sir Graham Brady's seat is Altrincham. I looked up secondaries in Altrincham and found Loreto Grammar School, which is Outstanding, and has (2019 figures) 4.6% kids on free school meals.

9 minutes away by car I found Manchester Health Academy. This was rated Inadequate in 2020, and subsequently closed in 2021. It had 57.2% of kids on free school meals.

10 minutes away, Newall Green High School. Ofsted Inadequate 2018, closed 2021. 67.3% children on free school meals.

11 minutes away, St Pauls Catholic High School. Requires improvement, FSM 56.4%

There are an awful lot of kids on FSM pretty close to that grammar school aren't there? Yet its % is well below the national average. Same for the other grammar schools in its immediate vicinity.

Many hrs of consistent training are given to the child to pass the 11+. The results are arbitrary. However, the 12/13 plus does recapture those willing to attempt the selection process again.
I don't think it's a good idea to have an education system at a private/grammar level across the board. It'll isolate students.
The test is after all an IQ test. Those that pass are generally at 115-120 which is a small percentage. Grammar schools cater to those pupils.

Many hrs of consistent training are given to the child to pass the 11+.

What do you mean? VR and NVR are not part of the school curriculum.

I agree that some relatively privileged children are given many hours of coaching - by educated patents ir by paid tutors - for the 11+, Sone children are given even more hours through being enrolled in private primary schools who teach these skills for years.

For the test to do what it should do - be fair, accurate in terms of identifying what it should (potential to benefit from a particular school) and fully reproducible in terms of selecting the same group every time - then every child should have exactly the same prior exposure, whether that be many hours or none.

Who thinks a school system which selects DCs at the age of 10 is a good idea? Bloody ridiculous.

In a past life I worked in educational research and all the pedagogic evidence indicates that DCs experience peaks and troughs in their educational achievements. There are a myriad reasons for this, ranging from their upbringing, their family circumstances, their sibling relationships, their support (or lack of it) at home to not being suited to a particular type of exam, not realising their potential until they can concentrate on what really interests them, peer pressure, quality of teaching. The list of contributing factors is long and varied.

Telling a child that they aren't suited to an academic eduction based on the results of a non-curriculum based test, taken on a single day, at the age of 10, is absurd.

@thing47

Who thinks a school system which selects DCs at the age of 10 is a good idea? Bloody ridiculous.

The answer is, of course, for there to be options at whatever school. The main problem with the old grammar/sec mod system of the 60s/70s was that "sec mods" didn't provide teaching for 'O' levels. Things have moved on in the past few decades. Now all secondary schools provide teaching for a wide variety of GCSE's.

Going to a comp/sec modern/academy these days rather than a grammar no longer means your choices are restricted quite so much. Yes, you'll be unlikely to find Latin being taught other than in a grammar school, but that's an extreme case. If you're able, you'll still be able to sit GCSEs in all the main subjects. That's something that wasn't possible back in the 60s/70s.

You're comparing apples with oranges there, I'm afraid.
Those struggling schools you mention are comprehensives, over in Manchester education authority (different council, different MP, comprehensive system).
The children who live in Trafford (grammar school area) take an 11+ and are offered a place at secondary in a good or outstanding secondary school (grammar or secondary modern) - none are offered places in Manchester schools.
Also, Loretto Convent probably isn't the best example as it is a single sex faith school, so has catholic pupils from across Trafford and not just the local grammar catchment. Its equivalent secondary modern is Blessed Thomas Halford, which is also oftsted outstanding.

@noblegiraffe there's a link here looking at the schools in that area www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/schools-by-type?step=default&table=schools&parliamentary=Altrincham+and+Sale+West&geographic=parliamentary&for=ofsted

That is a valid point @Badbadbunny, but restrictions still exist. DD2 attended a Secondary Modern, which was very poor just before she started (it has improved markedly since due to a superb HT and strong SLT). She took 'academic' (for want of a better word) GCSEs – English x 2, triple science, maths, further maths, statistics, Spanish, history, PE.

However, the structure of the school made it very difficult to study sciences at A level – it hadn't mattered before because they simply hadn't had students wanting to do hard sciences in the sixth form.

Those struggling schools you mention are comprehensives, over in Manchester education authority (different council, different MP, comprehensive system).

They're ten minutes away, not another planet.

If you don't think that a silo of schools where all the advantaged kids go doesn't affect the intake of schools ten minutes down the road, then you're mad.

Bunny if your argument is that bright kids are now catered for at secondary moderns for those misplaced kids, then why not also cater for the misplaced kids at grammars who are missing out on more vocational options?

We could then call both types of schools comps.

That's what the 11plus was, now it's optional.
People need t make their minds up about what they want. Super comps or selection for all. Section for all meant that people complained about a tragedy of epic proportions that generations of children have been segregated at such an early and impressionable age into groups considered to be either worthy or unworthy of receiving a proper education based in large part on such spurious tests as IQ.

Grammars DO provide less academic subjects too.

The thing is that no school can possibly provide the full range of options. A grammar is going be more weighted towards academic subjects. A modern "sec mod" is going to be more weighted towards vocational.

Timetabling clashes, teacher availability, classroom/lab availability, etc all make it hard for a school to offer a genuine FULL range, especially in the option blocks for GCSE and A levels.

So a grammar may offer a full suite of sciences plus languages and humanities and maybe one or two less academic subjects. Whereas a modern "sec mod" would offer more less academic subjects and maybe only one humanity or one language or 2 sciences instead of 3.

Back in the 70s I went to a newly converted "comp" that had been a grammar up to 2 years previously. In it's "grammar" days it had a woodwork workshop, art studio, drama classroom, so even back then, a "grammar" wasn't all about academic subjects!

Having posted, read and reflected on this thread, I have decided that rather than the grammar vs comprehensive debate, my preference would be for less of a regional divide in education.

My DD1 is at a selective grammar and her complex back story can be distilled into: she is adopted, blind, diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome (like foetal alcohol syndrome, only drugs), plus ASC and ADHD, and she is also on free school meals due to our low household income.

Another poster on the thread wrote that their non-blind child attended a secondary school in their borough with a dedicated specialist unit for visually impaired children. There is NO such provision for sight impaired children and young people in my borough, let alone my whole region.

I went away and did a little bit of research and there is massive regional variation in GCSE and A-Level achievements.

Here is an example of a story from the Evening Standard which shows how far ahead London is in its GCSE results (I do realise that London is comprised of many discrete boroughs lest anyone takes me to task.)

Now, as well as my DD’s manifold disadvantages, I can add the fact that she is less likely to succeed because we live in the north of England.

Oops, link here

www.standard.co.uk/news/education/gcse-results-day-2022-boundaries-grades-london-b1020829.html?amp

So a grammar may offer a full suite of sciences plus languages and humanities and maybe one or two less academic subjects. Whereas a modern "sec mod" would offer more less academic subjects and maybe only one humanity or one language or 2 sciences instead of 3.

Thinking about the ‘border’ children, though - those who on another day would be in the other institution - why should one child only gave one language or two sciences whereas their academic peer has two languages and 3 sciences? How does that enable both children to meet their full potential, which is what the schooling system should do?

Here is an example of a story from the Evening Standard which shows how far ahead London is in its GCSE results (I do realise that London is comprised of many discrete boroughs lest anyone takes me to task.)

Funding is one of the elephants in the room here - huge investment in London state schools over recent decades, and continued higher per capita funding.

Another is of course private schools. A significant number of high performing private schools are clustered in the capital, so it would be very interesting to see those stripped out of the results nationwide to see comparisons between state schools in different areas.

Socioeconomic factors are also key. Academic performance and aspiration in deprived coastal towns, especially those with no major employers outside seasonal tourism, is lower than in wealthy areas with high stable professional employment. That’s not a reflection of ‘school quality’, or ‘school system’, but a much more complex multifaceted societal issue.

A grammar is going be more weighted towards academic subjects. A modern "sec mod" is going to be more weighted towards vocational.

And therein, you have neatly encapsulated the problem with grammar schools and the 11+ exam. 10 is just too young to decide who is more suited to academic subjects and who to more vocational subjects. So DCs need several more years of varied schooling and to study a wide range of subjects before that sort of decision can be made.

But the comp system doesn't achieve that either. There are always going to be restrictions on subject choice when it comes to GCSE and A levels simply because of the "block" option choices that are impossible to give everyone a full choice of any subjects out of, say, 20 in total. There are always going to be cases of someone not being able to take 2/3 languages and 2/3 sciences and 2/3 humanities. In most comps the "blocks" are set according to availability of teachers/classrooms etc so pupils don't have free choice despite what comp advocates like to have you believe.

Back in the 70s I went to a newly converted "comp" that had been a grammar up to 2 years previously. In it's "grammar" days it had a woodwork workshop, art studio, drama classroom, so even back then, a "grammar" wasn't all about academic subjects!

Because we couldn't possibly have the grammar kids be denied stuff like art and drama while we could definitely deny the sec modern kids languages and science?

If you are not happy with kids being denied choices due to option blocks, then what you actually want are bigger, better funded comprehensive.