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.

Giddy, I suppose the benefit is increased 'choice' for those who do not have Grammars on their doorstep. It is a competition and the boy who lives next door is entitled to enter. It's just hard luck if he doesn't 'win' a place. The boy who catches 2 trains could be Seekers son who has truly awful schools on the doorstep.

Just as an aside, you could probably fill 10 more Grammars with the kids that apply to the Essex schools and 'fail' to 'win' a place. That's 10 more successful schools presumably. So, do all these one time Grammar hopefuls go on to ace it at their local Comps?

I could not agree with the OP more. Thank god some one had the balls to say it. Spot on.

bristolcities this one comes up more regularly on here than the P and T parking spaces debate .......

I assume then that it would be reasonable for parents excluded from applying simply because they'd opted out at primary to ask for a tax rebate? Or are we really saying that we expect some people to pay towards a service they are excluded from ever accessing?

If the government are serious about social mobility they should increase the number of grammar schools and widen the Assisted Places scheme. My DP made it out of working-class Liverpool to Oxbridge and a high-flying career via Assisted Places; he reckons under the current system he'd have ended up with a criminal record and a job in Tesco's.

.

You can still have a high paying job at Tescos

The govt should concetrate on improving the state education system so that most of the schools become great, so that they are no catchment wars and all this arguing. If the state education is first class, you will have less people opting for private education (not that private education is always best)

Teachers in state primaries should encourage their pupils to sit the 11+ and not dismiss it as fantasy. More exam technique lessons should be lessons.

Parents should work with their children at home and not just leave all learning at school.

If my DS passes the 11+, we will send to Grammar without any hesitation whatsoever! State schools are for everyone.

You cannot ban something because you can't afford it. You improve what you already have!

Our comp does early Gcses and triple science for top sets. I don't see why if grammars were abolished like in Scotland the more able pupils could have the 'grammar school' experience academically whilst learning to get on with children of all abilities socially, and get a broader experience whilst growing up. I went to a school where you could go to borstal or Oxbridge. I think the motto was 'sink or swim' but I made friends with some fantastic people who I wouldn't have met in grammar or private school.

why?????? Everyone pays the same taxes - everyone has the right to apply to a grammar school???? Children should be excluded as their parents earn more than you and choose to spend their hard earned cash on a private education???
That is the whole point of the grammar school system, it is open to everyone from every background - you get a place on ABILITY......
You are not 'offered' a place just because you are privately educated.....
Some people are always going to have more money/ make different choices to you - get over it!! Concentrate on you own family and stop worrying about other peoples/feeling hard done by.......
This is the kind of thought process that wants to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator....

I'm not sure it's helpful to inclusivity for people to be insisiting that tutoring or private schooling is essential to get in: who are the people that are saying that and on what do they base the idea, which is presented as fact?

In the latest poll, market researchers GfK NOP surveyed parents of children at some of England's 164 remaining grammar schools.

The survey - for the BBC - revealed 81 per cent of parents coached sons or daughters to pass the entrance test.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/3832871/Middle-class-children-coached-to-get-into-grammar-school.html#

I find it quite funny, 99.9% of posters on mumsnet claim that their children are just naturally smart and passed without any coaching. So where are all the parents of the coached kids? Or do they like to pretend their kids are just the britest and the most deserving ones?

i mean "the brightest", grr.

FedUp My two were coached as was every child I know who got in. Obviously those who claim not to coach don't live in my area.

Read the thread, petitpeach, then post again when you have grasped the issues.

There are things that people always lie about

1. How much they drink and smoke
2. When their baby slept through the night

3 How much convenience food their child eats 4 Whether their child was coached for the 11+

Same here, Every child that I know in a grammar school was coached for at least 6 months, but most were coached for a year or more.

all private and grammar schools should be banned.

Knittedbreast, they should be banned as long as the people that does not pay tax are not allowed to send their kids to state schools. Then it'll be only fair.

People usually only want to ban them when they feel they give an unfair advantage to kids that aren't theirs. It is rarely an ideological statement.

I want to ban them because I think they give an unfair advantage to children that are mine!

I think it almost always an ideological statement actually - the people who are most disadvantaged by the system are the people who are traditionally least likely to be politically involved.

Sorry about the random italics!

MrsWitcher - You don't pay tax to have YOUR children educated, you pay tax to have everyone's children educated, and we all share the benefit of an educated workforce.