To think if the gov are serious about social mobility they should be banning privately educated kids from taking state grammar school places?

[MilaMae]

Spending ££££ on tutoring to get your kids into a grammar school is one thing but sending your kids to a private school which is free from the national curriculum and able to spend every day teaching to the 11+ is wrong and buys kids school places which should be reserved for the state educated.

Alongside freedom to teach to the 11+ private schools have tiny classes so it's pupils have even more of an advantage. Many of these children won't even be naturally bright and shouldn't even be at said grammar schools.

In our local area apparently far fewer state educated kids got into grammar school this year. Obviously this is due to more privately educated kids applying for places due to parents struggling to pay fees in the current economic climate.

This is wrong. Grammar school should be reserved for state kids only. For many kids rightly or wrongly it's their one big shot at getting a leg up in life. The rich shouldn't be able to hoover these places up because they're feeling the pinch.

You can't put a stop to tutoring but the gov could put a stop to this very unfair practice(if they truely believe in social mobility).It would be very easy to control.

This isn't sour grapes on my part(my dc are tiny) just an observation.

"Oh I am sure you could have found a comp if you'd looked hard enough. Is it too late to move her to the alteR of sacrifice for your principals :D"

Not without moving to another county, I couldn;t! There are no comprehensives in Kent!

Mamatomany - I think that thankfully times have changed and that Grammar schools are much less prevalent than back in 70s.

BUT by I will not condone a system that creates an apparent elite in a state funded system.

Seeker, you have come up against the mumsnet brick wall (made of straw men, quite possibly) in that you are not allowed to have any opinion about private education unless you sell up when your kids are 10 and move to the worst house in the worst area there possibly is and then send your children to the nearest school. All other sets of personal circumstances completely negate your arguments. Didn't you know?

"Not without moving to another county, I couldn;t! There are no comprehensives in Kent"

Genuine question (and apologies if tangential) - where do the kids go who don't get into grammar school? I thought secondary moderns didn't exist any more, so is the alternative not a comprehensive?

Comprehensive means everyone goes though, not just the ones who didn't get into grammar. So no school where there are grammars is comprehensive.

I'd also say there's no such thing as a comprehensive at all where you have an independent sector, but that might confuse things!

No. A comprehensive school is one that has all abilities under one roof. In Kent, all but a vanishingly small % of the "top" 23% (according to an arbitary test) are creamed off to grammar schools, where they do 3 sciences, Latin and 2 MFLs, leaving the remaining 77% in what used to be called Secondary Modernds, but which are now called either High schools, or just schools. Whhich are often very good indeed - but not, obviously as good as they would be if they were all ability schools.

But then if you believe that grammar schools are wrong, you could just not enter your child for the 11+ and let them go to the other school. Presumably the 11+ isn't mandatory.

That is a tricky one - personally I would say that you have a right to whatever the state is offering, and if what it's offering you is the 11+ then you're not a hypocrite for letting your kids take it, though I know others feel differently.

To me, it's like if I didn't believe in setting and so asked the school to put my child in set 5 - bit daft.

Of course it's not mandatory, and yes, I could have done that. We thought long and hard about it. But while I would be happy to send my child to a comprehensive school, I would not be happy to send her to one where practically every other child of her ability level wasn't.

No. A comprehensive school is one that has all abilities under one roof. In Kent, all but a vanishingly small % of the "top" 23% (according to an arbitary test) are creamed off to grammar schools, where they do 3 sciences, Latin and 2 MFLs, leaving the remaining 77% in what used to be called Secondary Modernds, but which are now called either High schools, or just schools. Whhich are often very good indeed - but not, obviously as good as they would be if they were all ability schools.

Ok- I see what you mean. It cant be comprehensive unless there's no other option. Agreed.

However, why do you think that the non-grammar schools would be better if they were all ability schools. Are you saying that being in a class with brighter children makes less bright children achieve more?

i think they should use IQ tests to control school admissions. although you can be tutored to do slightly better at these they are a lot harder to influence with tutoring than other types of tests.

however my suspicion is that current entrance exams actually want to filter out those with less advantageous social backgrounds as it would be harder for the 'best' schools to capitalise on children from wealthier / more educationally focussed backgrounds.

IQ tests are no better at predicting aptitude, can still be tutored and are just as culturally biased.

I think posters who protest against condemnation of parents paying to get their kids into grammar school either by tutoring or private education are clearly those that can afford it,why wouldn't they.

Parents who can't afford it are clearly going to think otherwise as their kids are unfairly excluded.

Getting a little annoyed with people saying it's only X amount of money.It may only be X to you but for many it's completely out of their budget.

I've been told however bright a child is unless they have tutoring in how to complete verbal reasoning papers they might as well not bother sitting the 11+,anybody know if that's true?

In our area the grammar school head tries to put parents off tutoring kids into the school,he apparently gives a little speech regarding it on open day as kids being shoehorned in who shouldn't be are a problem.

IQ tests can be tutored but the impact of tutoring on an IQ test is way less than on the current type of entrance exam. because IQ tests look at reasoning skills, sequencing ability, visualisation they are less knowledge based and more aptitude based. they are not perfect but the are a lot better.

Have you actually seen an 11+ paper Milamae? This site has some to download. It'll give you an idea of the specific question types different exams use.

Our experience of the Bucks one is that you would have to be a genius (yes I know they do exist!) without some sort of coaching in methods over and above the basic familiarisation done in schools. The code ones in particular can be done very quickly once you know the shortcuts. IMHO This puts children who don't have external input at a massive disadvantage.

There's certainly a report somewhere - will try to dig it out - which says that coaching for a prolonged period can make a substantial difference to a child's VR score. Bucks does finally seem to be waking up to this and there is some research being done for the next Admissions Forum. What difference it could make remains to be seen...

FWIW My dcs are at prep schools which do not tutor - I do the papers with them myself.

Thanks Weblette thats really interesting and tallies with what I've heard round hear.

Just looked at your link, blimey you'd have to be quite bright yourself to coach your own child or do you think not?

'Just looked at your link, blimey you'd have to be quite bright yourself to coach your own child or do you think not?"

You wouldn;t have to be particularly bright - but you would have to have the knowledge, confidence and money to access the help you would need.

Which rather makes my point. Privilege follows privilege.

My ds1 had to do an IQ test at a hospital appointment last year (his IQ came out higher than mine ) - I literally had no clue what on earth they were doing and how he was solving the puzzles. He obviously had no coaching, and I was told beforehand that the test they used was pretty much impossible to coach for - you might get a tiny improvement the second time you do a test but beyond that the effect is negligible.

I thought it was a good test of all-round intelligence - codes, vocab, letter sequences, repeating geometric puzzles, and a sort of "emotional intelligence"
section which included questions like why do the police wear uniform?

Having said that I suspect an IQ test would be more expensive to administer? This one took a full two hours with a one-to-one psychologist.

My parents refused to allow me to do the 11+ because grammar school wasn't "for the likes of us." At the end of the first year at my very very poor comprehensive a teacher arranged an interview at the local private school for a free place. This was politely declined by my parents because private school wasn't "for the likes of us."

Until you tackle that sort of ... I don't know what the word is, maybe "knowing your place" attitude - you can forget social mobility. Being the kind of girl that doesn't take any crap from anyone, I did just fine at my crappy school, got my A levels, went to university and got a first class degree in law, practised as a solicitor for many happy years before giving it up to sprog. How many girls and boys of my generation didn't though? How many would have accepted the advice of the careers advisor at my school, who noted my ambition to be a lawyer and suggested that it was far too lofty an ambition and I might like to consider being a legal secretary instead?! (no offence to legal secretaries intended).

In our area only children who have spent the previous 2 years (or longer) in a state school are eligible to sit the 11+.

I'm not so sure re IQ tests that it would highlight suitable kids for grammar school. One of my sons has I suspect a high IQ however I know he'd be miserable in that environment. Having said that he's quite like his grandad(the one I mentioned before) who thrived.

How does an IQ test differ from the 11+ then?

Phoeb interesting,where are you? So it is possible to enforce then.

Paws - well, if you didn't have any private schools for people to think (quite rightly, if they're poor or not good at passing exams) 'weren't for them', then it might be a start!

And your secondary modern might have been a bit more aspirational if all the local bright or rich kids weren't sent elsewhere!

Never heard of that phoebeophelia -where are you?

I don't disagree Joan. I'm working on dismantling the system from within .