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.

Ah but pawsnclaws, I don't believe we would have a level playing field unless you had a true lottery system. There's a bigger social divide between state schools in the most affluent areas and those in the poorest areas than there is between private schools and state schools in very affluent areas.

Exactly MrsWitcher-why can't all DCs be given a helping hand out of poverty? I get the impression it is only the highly intelligent and the rest 'should know their place'! (and stay there!!)

What is the point of offering academically struggling children the same academic education as those who aren't struggling and who would thrive. I cba to repostva link to Sir Ken Robinson but what he says is true. Thinking that having an academic education is the best is actually rubbish. Isn't it about maximising potential, whatever that is?

Yes, Blair and New Labour frequently talked about 'meritocracy' and poor. bright kids having the same chances as rich bright kids. But nobody ever mentions poor less academic kids. They are the ones who nobody is interested in.

I have two very bright academic kids and one far less academic one. She is no less worthy of opportunity that the other two. She is kind and thoughtful and helpful and happy and I love her just as much. I hate the idea that government (society) considers her wworth less than her siblings.

YANBU

Helenagrace - I love lefty logic - because all children cannot succeed let's ensure no one can.

Please define "succeed"?

Nice name change1234

MrsWitcher that would suit me fine. If there's one thing I can't bear it's the stench of hypocrisy from people that criticise me for sending my dcs to a private school, whilst making sure they bag a house 100 metres away from an outstanding state primary (which feeds into the outstanding C of E secondary down the road). We're all acting within the existing system, I'm just not sure why they seem to think their actions to be morally superior to mine.

2% is still a lot of pupils where intake can be as low as 60 pupils per year and when you think the income bracket for paid dinners is £15,5k so thats a lot of people who can't afford private education who's children are going to Grammar Schools.

Again.

Middle income being pushed out by the people either side.

If there were enough grammar school places for all the children that were bright enough or needed that style of education, this wouldn't be a problem.

The fact is that people who send their children to prep school or can afford to pay for tutoring do have a very unfair advantage. Super selective grammar schools are sometimes the only choice of grammar school, and when they have catchment areas that are huge and nearly 6 times the number of children applying than the school has space for, tutoring or prep school is the only way bright children are going to have a fair chance of getting a place.

Our local grammar school states that they don't have enough spaces for all the children they feel are suitable for a place, so there are children that make the grade but don't get offered the places. And because of this, the pass mark is extremely high, so even children that are very bright and would easily pass another grammar schools exam or the common entrance exam are denied places.

My ds just missed out on a place for our local grammar. He has been deemed by an ed psych in the top 5% for cognitive ability, he should be a school that can cater for his academic needs, just as child with a particular talent for sport should be at a school that can cater for those needs. But because the pass mark is so high, tutoring is neccesary because every single mark makes a huge difference. It's unreasonable to expect that every school should be able to cater for every childs talent to a high standard, children are different. Nobody expects every adult to suit every job, it's the same with children's education.

When we went for the 11+ exam day, I overheard 2 parents discussing the extra help their children had been given at their prep schools. It seemed work was taylored in lessons, and extra tuition after school was offered. What chance did my ds have against that when he just had me, an unqualified as a teacher parent with a few books from WH Smith? He's already better at maths than I am, so there's not much I could teach him anyway! And the school admits that the test is based on the whole of KS2, even though the test is taken in Autumn term. It couldn't be more biased towards those that can afford tutoring or prep school if it tried.

And the whole thing about teaching for common entrance really doesn't wash. I went to a prep school, and was prepared for the common entrance. I got VR tutoring, and taught how to pass the exam. 11+ consists of VR and exam technique is very much a part of it.

I believe that any prep school that offers tution on top of normal school hours classes either for grammar or common entrance should have to offer free tuition to any state school child that wants it in year 5 and up to any exam in year 6. They generally have charity status because they offer a couple of children scholarships, even though the children they offer scholarships to are particularly good at something and are likely to benefit the school. Free tutoring could be something they have to do to keep their charity status.

Phew! I'll breathe now! Can you tell this is something I feel strongly about?

HelenaGrace - just as soon as you come up with a test that will accurately assess potential at 11 we can do that. So that's never then.

I can assure you though that these overcoached children WILL fail in a Grammar school setting (or they would in my old school!) because you aren't coached or spoonfed you are just educated at the level of your own intelligence. We could spot the coached prep-school kids by year 9 as they were really truly struggling.

bubblecoral Interesting idea that prep schools would have to offer 11 plus coaching to maintain their charitable status.

A peek at 11+ results from local state schools in our local paper illustrates the social divide within our area. A school that actively encourages tutoring gets 60%+ pass rate, whilst a school in a poorer part of town gets 2%. (This is in a small provincial town and surrounding villages.)

Parents do indeed send their children to private preps because of their preparation for the 11+ (VR only), and advertise their passrates on their web-sites. (Such is the local sanctification of grammar schools.)

Local grammars now have SEN classes in maths for children who can't keep up.

The whole thing is a middle-class con.

Helenagrace - I love lefty logic - because all children cannot succeed let's ensure no one can.

Please define "succeed"?

Success is too tightly linked to GCSE numbers and A level grades. Some children don't fit that pattern but rather than properly boosting the status of vocational qualifications and providing good alternatives we have to play about with academic qualifications and put down grammar schools in order to attempt to achieve a level playing field. It seems to be acceptable to talk about removing the option of an academically challenging option for academic children just because some children wouldn't suit that model. Yet if we said all children were going to have to learn latin and "soft" subjects like theatre studies were being banned there would be uproar.

So I would define succeed as fulfilling your potential but the government has decided it is about getting 5 GCSEs. On that basis, there will be children who will not succeed because they do not attain GCSE standard. A good education system would ensure that they were well equipped for adulthood in a different way whilst also ensuring that children who can attain GCSE standard are equipped for the path ahead of them.

I am a child who succeeded because of grammar schools. I grew up on a really tough council estate. My school tutored me and my brother, even though they were told not to by the LEA. My life has been radically altered as a result, as have my children's lives and probably their children's lives. My brother and I were the only two children from my primary school (now closed) ever to get to university.

lot of state educated kids who pass the 11 plus are tutored BIG time and not necessarily worthy of a place just because they pass

don't need to be well off to buy some practice papers from Amazon!! time and commitment

"Middle income being pushed out by the people either side."

Eh?

The majority of LEA's don't even have any Grammar Schools....

"don't need to be well off to buy some practice papers from Amazon!! time and commitment"

No, but you do need to know tht practice papers exist, where to get them, have the money to buy them, the literacty skills to read them, the space to do them.....Ah - I think I have just defined middle class.

There are, I think, 186 grammar schools in the country.

don't need to be well off to buy some practice papers from Amazon!!

Believe me, it takes more than a few practice papers! It takes knowledge in the entire KS2 curriculum, experience, knowledge of how to teach VR and NVR techniques, it's not that easy when your child is brighter than you are and the last time you sat a formal exam was 16 years ago at 15 years of age!

TheCoalitionNeedsYou Tue 05-Apr-11 21:19:43
HelenaGrace - just as soon as you come up with a test that will accurately assess potential at 11 we can do that. So that's never then.

Whilst it isn't possible to assess all children at 11 there are a lot that are obviously bright and showing it at that age. A better way would be to have a 13+ and maybe a 16+ entry as well as 11+. At least then bright kids from tough backgrounds wouldn't get stuck in a sink school where it's seriously uncool to be clever just because that happens to be the only option in their part of town.

Helenagrace - a proper comprehensive school offers GCSE success for the academic, whilst also offering BTECs and other qualifications for students who have other talents. Or, shock horror, a mix of good GCSEs (perhaps 7/8 rather than 11/12) for the middle ability students. And nobody feels a failure for failing an exam when they are only 10.

As others have said, the world has moved on since you or I were at school and it is not fair to current students to use our experience as the basis for defining current eduaction options.

An academically able child will do just as well in a good Comprehensive as in a Grammar school.

So lets abolish the Grammar schools and put those resources in the reach of all children.

Frumpy, they might to just as well academically, but what about other things that school teaches a child. My child will need more social support than he is likely to recieve at the outstanding comp he now has to go to. He achieves highly academically, and because of that any extra support available is likely to be targeted to the children that don't.