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/

If the most able were creamed off the Comps would become Secondary Moderns by default.

I couldn’t give a shit about grammars.

Fix SEND education.

"They are now both thriving at grammar, we need kids who are able, to be able to actually learn, because we need them to be the doctors etc"

My sister is a doctor. She went to an average comprehensive.

Pretty sure 31k is average personal income not household! That would be below benefits threshold if that were the case!

Oh God. Just why? Can't she do something useful for the country as a whole. I honestly feel horrified that she is our new PM.

Nope. According to google:

The median household income in the UK (after direct taxes have been deducted) was £31,400 in the financial year ending in 2021, according to the latest figure from the Office for National Statistics.

Yep, my dd is planning to do medicine. Going to a comprehensive school does not appear to be a barrier to that.

I'm so glad I'm not in a grammar school area. My DS is very bright but is autistic and gets very anxious. There's no way he could cope with tutoring or an exam that determined which school he went to. I used to live in a grammar school area where all the parents were paying for tutors from year 5 to coach their kids for the exam. It's absolutely not providing more options for kids from poor backgrounds.

How predictable.

Politicians never look at the schools on the opposite end of the spectrum. I live in an area with great comps but the kids needing special schools are travelling shocking distances for their education.

Grammars are full of sharp elbowed middle class parents who have jumped through hoops that some parents wouldn't do. While I believe that the original idea was sound, entry is dominated by those who can overcome barriers like tutoring.

There are also many that are. I went to one. It was shit.

The biggest problem I’ve seen so far in my journey through educating primary age DC is that there are so so many children with ADHD/autism/dyslexia and the class teacher is expected to manage 10 kids with special needs as well as teaching the other 20. The school is supposed to provide 1:1 support for some of them but this money disappears elsewhere. Naturally what happens is the teacher spends 99% of their time trying to control the SEN kids (we had one who tried to escape the classroom several times per lesson) and no one gets taught anything as the teacher’s job is impossible.

So now we’re paying £6k/term elsewhere so that my child gets an education 🤔

Nothing to do with grammar schools lol but the system is very broken.

I agree with lifting the ban on new grammar schools but would rather a different solution was found.

Good grief, what a stupid issue to focus on when the state education sector is crumbling due to a lack of funding. The immediate priority needs to be SEND. There are not enough special school places, not enough funding for those with SEND in mainstream schools and an extremely lengthy process to get any support for children who begin school with undiagnosed SEND.

I work in a one-form entry primary and we have 1 or 2 children who start each year in Reception who are non-verbal, require constant 1:1 supervision (which we have no funding for) and are often distressed just by being in the school environment; generally they have not yet had any diagnosis of SEND although some have started the process at pre-school. We had one non-verbal pupil who started a year ago who just cannot stay in the classroom - they run around the building, screaming if they want something they can't have. In a year we have been unable to get an Educational Psychologist or SALT to see them because there are so few of them about and there is still a huge Covid backlog. Even if they do eventually get a diagnosis, there aren't sufficient special school places and EHCP funding is not sufficient to pay for a full-time 1:1 TA (not to mention it's almost impossible to recruit TAs to do such a demanding role on such low pay). I know from discussion with colleagues in other local schools that we are far from alone in these circumstances. We are in a deprived area and parents are often not equipped to seek out or fight for early support and diagnosis. SEND provision is at the worst point I have seen in 20+ years of teaching.

Grammar schools should be at the bottom of the list of priorities when there are so many more important issues that are not being addressed.

When people defend grammar schools there's always an assumption your child would get in. What if they didn't? What if they were perfectly bright and they didn't? My DC sat the 11+, we are in an area where people will travel out to the grammars in a neighbouring area. He's very bright, always doing well at school, got high marks in all the SATS.

On the day of the exam he choked. Couldn't sit it. Had a panic attack triggered by the whole exam experience and had to leave. So obviously didn't pass.

So they are at a comprehensive instead. Which is fine as we just border a grammar area so the comprehensives are just about still comps. In a full grammar area, if your child doesn't pass because something goes wrong on the day, or they just aren't quite bright enough, where are you sending them? Because if you don't like the comprehensives in your area at the moment are you going to like them any more once the top performing kids are sent elsewhere? I'm not sure you will.

I would far rather my child was at a well funded comprehensive with an appropriate curriculum. And I'm very tired of people who went to grammars decades ago saying they work because they worked for them, while ignoring all the current evidence.

I don’t think this is a terrible idea as long as areas don’t become too overcrowded with them. I live in an area where there is a super selective grammar and it takes so few students from such a wide area that it has no effect on the surrounding schools. Many of the surrounding comprehensives are still successful enough that they get high grades and send many pupils of to university every year. We could double the number of grammar places here and still have no effect on the comprehensives.

All that would happen is that the very highly intelligent children would have more access to a school that suited them.

Trying to fit every child into the same mould fails all of them imo.

Every time I read these threads I despair of the polarised, black-and-white thinking; a bit like ‘four legs are good and two legs are bad’. I do always feel compelled to post on them, though! So, my DD1 is probably an anachronistic outlier as she is at a selective grammar school but she is also a FSM and PP+ pupil; DD is also registered blind and diagnosed with ADHD and ASC. DD is adopted from the UK care system and has neonatal abstinence syndrome as she was exposed to drugs and alcohol while in utero.

We are a very low-income family, for a variety of reasons, and rely on UC to survive. I always resent the lazy MN trope that poor people don’t care about their children’s education. My DD did not have external tutoring as part of her 11+ preparation as I couldn’t afford it but I educated myself to find out what was required and helped her myself; we learned together.

I think we can all find anecdotal stories to support our stance; I have teacher friends, for example, who argue that all children should be forced to attend their nearest schools but they forget that they live in leafy middle-class enclaves where the schools are generally ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ mainly because they have inherited well.

As many people have said upthread, I wish we were in a position to consider the individual educational needs of all children. My dream for my DD, who, mainly due to her blindness, will be severely disadvantaged when it comes to her employment opportunities, would be for her to attend a specialist provision for young people with severe VI. There is not a single bespoke provision for VI students in my LA, or region. I have battled my LA for two years now to secure an EHCP for my DD in a quest to have a legal document that states she should be able to have her educational needs met at the best provision for her.

The irony is that I’m told that my DD will be disadvantaged for contextual offers at university on the basis that she attends grammar school. You literally couldn’t make this shit up!

I have a DSS who is incredibly bright at maths. He has a masters degree from Cambridge and a very successful job in the financial sector. He wasn't as strong at English and there is no way he would have passed the 11+. Luckily he went to a comprehensive where he was stretched in the top set for maths and in an appropriate set for English that enabled him to get a sufficiently high grade to study the A-Levels he wanted.

They would also be able to afford to go part time or take a secondment for a year so their children would qualify to apply sadly.

You won't convince the wealthy they are wealthy or get people to really grasp what 'average income' means - if 15 kids have 1 sweet, 10 kids have 2 sweets and 4 kids have 3 sweets and 1 has 50 then average child in that class has 3.233 sweets. In reality only 1 child has more than 3 and saying well let's say you have to have 7 to not qualify for free sweets you have really narrowed anything down have you?

I went to a grammar school, I taught for a decade in a much sought after grammar school, but I’ve also taught in a non-selective school in a grammar area, and a truly comprehensive school. I would ban grammar schools tomorrow.
I know that sounds disingenuous went I went to one, but they are simply not the engines of social mobility that they once were. They are selective by house price and for those who can afford extensive tutoring. As @noblegiraffe rightly says, they don’t work with nearly as many disadvantaged children as they should, and they don’t add much in terms of value added to the attainment of bright children. Non-selective schools are quite capable of serving the academically bright.
The education system should focus on providing better provision for SEND students and better training for teachers in this area. Whatever you do to improve the education of children with SEND improves education for all students.

haven't really narrowed anything down.

We got rid of all but a handful of grammar schools for a reason.

Just like we joined the common market and EU for a reason.

Of course the current education system is not perfect, but let's not go backwards eh?

Both my children went to very unleafy comprehensive schools in fairly deprived areas of London. Sometimes we felt slightly let down by the schools in some aspects of our dc school life. Isn't that the case with every school?

But they both did really well in their GCSEs and A levels (AAA and A*AB) and dc no 1 got on the most sought-after course for her subject in the country, and dc no 2 has a place at an RG university.

Most of their peers in these schools did very well too. They were in the top sets. They were in what you could call the grammar stream. Where they made friends with pupils whose parents would never in a million years have been able to afford grammar school tutoring.

I wish we wouldn't just keep saying better training for teachers on sen - you could give us all the training in the world and we would still not have the time or the means to cater properly to sen 5 classes a day of 30 kids plus a form.

We need decent quantities of specialist schools, properly trained and skilled (and therefore paid) lsas, more non contact time to be able to prepare the right resources and materials for sen and everything else we need to do etc.

Another training day telling us the things we could do if only we had the time and resources, physical space and ability to be in 3 places at once to deliver real differentiated support whilst also managing behaviour and teaching the majority is not helpful.

I don’t think grammar schools were ever really the engines of social mobility. Many families including MILs could not have afforded to send her to grammar school, and other posters have said the same. They are even worse now due to the level of tutoring parents pay.

All schools need more funding, increased provision for SEND, the choice of academic and practical subjects to suit children’s abilities.

Before I became involved in education I probably would have said grammar schools were a good thing but now I am more aware of the issues in education I don’t think they are

And you are the sort of person whose kids are getting into grammars now, not your Dad in poverty. Which is why grammars are no longer working, if they ever did.

My Dad got a place at grammar school and went - he still had to leave school at 15 though sadly as his parents couldn't afford for him not to be at work.

I was aware of that problem when I posted the suggestion of that as the limit, but I still feel it is better than no limit.
When I was solely on benefits as a single mother, including child benefit I received about £15,000 a year to pay all bills, rent and food, clothes etc for 3 children. Well below the average household income. Whilst I don't know my friends exact wages, they all have jobs that would pay minimum wage or not much above it. I didn't suggest £60k because I have a high household income and in denial about it.
I think any lower than the £60,000 limit there would be too many arguments. But that is nearly double the average household income, even though many live on half that.But it would mean more children who deserve a place get one, even if not all deserving children get one. Not fair, but fairer.

noblegiraffe - I stand corrected! I do realise that time has moved on, that was just my experience and education.