to say that most inner city high schools are wank?

[ladyfirenze]

Why are we getting it so wrong here? The culture amongst many kids seems to be that if they are trying their best and working hard they have somehow lost to the teacher. What the actual fuck is this about?

Wordfactory I understand your point but my local school is desperate to get the kids in from the middle class feeder school. I guess the governors at that school see it differently to you. Also, their particular problems are probably different to the ones at your school. You may find this arrogant and obnoxious but I think that to introduce children whose parents have high educational aspirations for them would boost the general moral of the school and the aspirational pupils may act as a good role models and an element of stability. Not every child in a deprived school is incapable of achievement due to social problems.

It's a bit rich to say inner city schools need middle class people to send their kids there in order for some pupils to get decent grades. I've taught inner city kids who've got 10A/A* grades at inner city comps. They might not be the average pupil but we don't need to start bussing in kids from the burbs to massage the figures, we need to harness the potential of the children we have in front of us so that they can do their best. This, however, costs more money to do well than educating easy to manage pupils with little SEN and EAL requirements so we're stuck with what we have at the moment. Equality of outcome, not input!

Agree handbag, it is a bit rich! DH worked at a state primary (the top in borough league tables) in an "inner city" borough in London for many years. He had a lot of contact with and saw lots of pupils go onto the borough's secondaries, including an academy which is cited as being revolutionary and breakthrough and a fantastic school (amazing building, kids wear v smart uniforms etc etc).

The reality is that not one of the teachers that he came across would have sent their kids to the state schools in the borough, not even the academy, which, incidentally, was fairly full of local middle class kids that didn't go to the London private schools. As an aside, the academy that DH got to know quite well was actually what I would call selective in practice.... but that is another thread altogther!

A large percentage of the teachers in the state primaries and secondaries in this one borough that DH and I have experience of are excellent teachers. Lots of the kids have difficulties (so, for instance, in DH's school there were 2 full time members of staff whose sole job was to liaise with social services and the police), but equally, there is a fairly good smattering of "middle class professional" kids - increasingly so. But this just didn't (and doesn't I assume - we're no longer there) seem to be able to pull the state schools up beyond "okay". A HUGE number of the aforementioned middle class-ies ended up pulling their kids out after a year or so at secondary. The main reason was exposure - exposure to an environment that, despite everybody's best efforts, promoted clever = sad and (fairly violently) rebelling = cool.

I think that DH and I have concluded (TBH, I always thought this as its what my parents think and is precisely why they sent us private - but DH is a convert having taught extensively in state schools) that it is VERY HARD WORK for a clever kid to acheive in a state secondary. They can and do, sometimes, but to do so they need to buck the trend.... very character building if they can but honestly, many if not most fairly lazy teenagers are going to be failed. IMO, a good private school does the opposite - in that it can be fairly easy for fairly mediocre pupils to do well.

To me, this is a HUGE problem and is terribly, terribly unfair. I have no idea how to change it, but experience in this one borough suggests that swanky academies aren't the answer, despite everyone and his wife saying how great they are.....

So, OP, YANBU in that I think, in general, it is probably true and that is a really, really bad thing about our society that I have no idea how to fix. I think the roots of the problem are vast and (almost - aware this sounds defeatist) unfixable - social issues, particularly ghettoisation and housing in innercity areas (translated to sink estates where this is the geographical case as opposed the this happening in the city centre), historical associations, family, everything that makes up a society and its norms starting form the day the child is conceived...

Not only inner city ones,our nearest is in a small town and was dreadful 30 years ago when I went and it is no better now.None of the parents who went there as children want to send their own children there,including me.

I totally agree with what legallyblond says. Sad.

Well, here in Lambeth I can say that at least 3 teachers in DS's primary have children in very similiar local state schools, one of his friends has a parent who is a teacher in a Brixton primary, and that the parents of one of Ds's best friends are both state-school secondary teachers and are very happy indeed with with both our likely secondary catchment schools.

Generalising is never good. Mostly it makes one look wank, I think.

*A HUGE number of the aforementioned middle class-ies ended up pulling their kids out after a year or so at secondary. The main reason was exposure - exposure to an environment that, despite everybody's best efforts, promoted clever = sad and (fairly violently) rebelling = cool.

I think that DH and I have concluded (TBH, I always thought this as its what my parents think and is precisely why they sent us private - but DH is a convert having taught extensively in state schools) that it is VERY HARD WORK for a clever kid to acheive in a state secondary. They can and do, sometimes, but to do so they need to buck the trend.... very character building if they can but honestly, many if not most fairly lazy teenagers are going to be failed. IMO, a good private school does the opposite - in that it can be fairly easy for fairly mediocre pupils to do well.*

That is exactly why I think it would be good to get the more aspiring children into the deprived state schools.

Crikey, what you teachers are saying is a real eye-opener for me. I don't want to hear it but I'm glad I am hearing it.

My DC has passed for a private grammar school. I am a single parent on a low income. I'm hoping he will get a bursary but if he doesn't get enough I'm seriously thinking now that I should move house so that I can live mortgage free and use the money to pay fees. I feel like he will be a lamb to the slaughter at the local school. He achieves well academically but only with a lot of effort and encouragement from his current teacher as he is very dyslexic and dyspraxic.

but we don't need to start bussing in kids from the burbs to massage the figures

Agreed. What needs to happen IMO is that local kids go to their nearest school, so that they reflect the areas they serve. Many inner city catchment areas are very diverse in terms, yet the inner city comps become ghettos.

The policy of 'parental choice' has been an exercise in middle class NIMBYism and has created something akin to educational apartheid, far more insidious than the 11plus was.

Completely agree Compos.

I could easily afford to send my DC's to private school. I'm not doing it, I'm not perpetuating the cycle.

They are both having behavioural issues that I am working with the school to sort, but they are both on track academically. I'm a working class parent that worked very hard, I have extremely high expectations of them.

Doesn't the assumption that these bright and/or middle class children will 'massage the statistics' whilst having no real effect on the others depend, in fact, on the assumption that a bright child will indeed 'do well wherever he or she goes', though?

In fact, I think it is not so much that four or five children from wealthier/more academic/more aspirational (take your pick) backgrounds will improve a school just by being there, than that the drip drip effect of any family who can afford to opt out either by buying a house elsewhere or going private has a very detrimental effect on the shunned school, in terms of ethos and actual sustainability.

The whole idea of 'ethos of success and achievement' which many value in private schools is at least in part due to the kinds of children who go there. If, in a struggling school, you simply do not have the numbers to make up a convincing and effective 'top set', you cannot hope to have that ethos.

If parents of bright well-behaved children opt out in the belief that those children would be bullied for achieving, this sends a powerful message to the children on both sides of that decision: 'you would be bullied by children like that' and 'you will bully anyone who is clever, so best for you never to be exposed to such children'.

A case in point here is a school in my city which is currently facing closure due to low uptake of places. Parents of children who attend it are, from my experience at least, happy with the school. However, its catchment is made up of 1) a big council estate (usually cited on MN threads about this city as somewhere you don't want to end up near, although usually also the comment is made that it's nowhere near as bad as estates in other cities) and 2) one of the wealthiest areas in the city.

(we have a strange set up here whereby a lot of the wealthiest areas are in the catchments for the least desired state secondaries - not much buying for catchment here).

So in this area, parents have tended to get into the next school down the road on a 'foundation place' if they are savvy enough to wangle one, or else they go private ('well we felt we had to, as we're actually in the catchment for B' is a comment I've heard several times).

Thus, choice for the better off and the more savvy has resulted in no choice at all for the rest - to the extent, now, that their local school will be closed. This school is not a bad school: have never heard of any crime there, and I know that two of dd's favourite and best teachers went there at the end of last year, so the teaching cannot be all bad, to say the least. But it will go, because so many shunned it out of hand. The message to the children there has been negative for years (you wouldn't go there if you had any choice at all) and now it is one of utter failure.

I think this is wrong.

I can only assume that I've won. Hurrah!

I generally agree with you Nit. What is a foundation place?

YABU

many schools do a fantastic job, many are dealing with students that have many different needs. the studenst and teachers work hard and get good results

i have no problem ds going to the high schools around here

It's as distinct from a 'community place' (ie, you live in catchment). But as it is a c of e school, they're allowed to offer a certain proportion of foundation places so you can get in out of catchment if your parent has an active role in the church or leads a youth group or whatever.
Essentially a clever way to get children in from the middle class villages surrounding the city.

Nit are you talking about Oxford perchance?

No, bu I imagine similar situations obtain there!

I don't think posters on mn appreciate how lucky their dc are. We can all speak English, we are all able to use and have access to IT, we are all able to read and get our point across in a way that others understand. This is passed onto your dc as a matter of course. Lots of dc don't have that benefit but that doesn't make them thick or needing someone from a more privileged background to come along and show them how to be polite and clever. Those dc are just starting from a different point to your dc but with the right help and support they, in theory, would be able to achieve the same.

I've never met a child in the 100s I've come across in my work state that they don't want to achieve anything but I've met lots who don't know how to and find it hard to make good choices. Most parents want their dcs to do well but they don't know how to help them and some have issues with school and teachers so are not willing to work in partnership. I don't have the answers to this.

State schools are great, honestly. We get 5 and a half grand per pupil in inner city Manchester, what could a private school do with that kind of money and an inner city intake? Academies and free schools get more dosh so aren't a true comparison at the moment.

My son goes to an inner city comp. I used to drive past when he was small and say "He'll go there over my dead body" Well I'm not dead (well at least I don't think I am) and he goes there.

It's a stones throw away from home. It's small so son isn't a number in a large "academy" and he LOVES it there. He has never been bullied and everyone looks out for each other. The teachers are young, dynamic and marvelous. The head is someone I want to pay homage to. The only other school I would think about sending my son to is the one in Essex that was recently on TV.

I have friends that send their children to private school and I have friends that send their children to a church school, they've been bullied etc. and most of them hate going.

I can only speak from my own experience of course. But it's a fabulous one from where I'm sitting.

He rarely gets unnecessary homework and whilst I wouldn't class him as an academic by any means, he's coming homewith GCSE "B"s in year 9.

i love the way these threads are always posted on aibu

so op up for a good discussion on schools, post on aibu rather than education?

lordy

whatevvver

handbagcrab The thing that concerns me about my local Manchester school is that the average GCSE grade for middle attainers, i.e., those that entered the school at a level 4, was D. Surely this is not acceptable? The average grade for high attainers (those who left primary with a level 5) was B. Surely the average kids should be getting at least an average of a grade C at GCSE?

YANBU - In my experience, mostly.

migsy how it works is broadly speaking a child at level 4 at the end of key stage 3 will get Ds at GCSE, level 5s are Cs generally. If primary schools have just taught SATs in Y6 you can also get a blip where a pupil coming into secondary at level 4 is actually level 3 when working across the curriculum without the impetus of national testing looming over them and their teacher.

Most schools put loads of effort into getting D grade pupils up to C as it makes so much of a difference to the league tables, so I find it unlikely a school would not put the effort in if this were a possibility for those pupils.

But according to the national league tables these kids are level 4 and 5 at the end of KS2. The level 4s are getting Ds. I accept that primary schools are teaching to the test but level 4s are supposedly average kids.