The answer to our private/grammar/state school angst

[Shagmundfreud]

Remove the charitable status of private schools, as this only benefits those children who would be educationally successful where ever they were schooled.

Abolish grammar schools.

Abolish external selection.

All schools to be truly comprehensive. Places allocated by lottery to get rid of post-code selection. School buses to get round transport problems. Highly structured streaming so that the brightest children could work at a fast pace, unhindered by thick or badly behaved pupils holding them back.

But all children to mingle outside class time.

And lots of one to one support for students who are working hard to move up through the streams, to support educational and social mobility.

Maximum of 20 in each class.

Teachers allocated to teach the bottom sets would receive extra money, training and support, and more non-contact time for lesson preparation.

You likey?

The only thing I agree with you is abolishing postcode selection, but finding ways to do this is hard. Prehaps schools should be in federations and be OFSTED inspected together. That way the group of schools would find a way of giving Little Jonny who lives on the council estate a chance to do 3 seperate sciences.

I think that bottom sets should be no more than 15 children and should have at least one TA. The nice but dim kids should be seperated from the EBD kids.

I think the top sets could be a lot larger than 30. I was in a top maths set of 33 and I don't think the large class affected results as all the girls were bright and hard working.

I want a choice of academic, vocational and provision for those with learning difficulties pathways. Children would be directed on a particular pathway at 13 years old dependent on class work, results in several tests and what the child wants to do. Assessment over a two year period would make it a lot harder to cram.

"
When I was teaching Shakespeare to bottom set year nine on a Friday afternoon, I needed at least with one hour of recovery time spa treatment and psychotherapy for each minute I had to spend in the classroom with the vile buggers children. grin*"

I expect they were just as unhappy. What is the point of teaching shakespeare to a bunch of kids who can't read. They would be better in a small group of ten to 15 with TA support and teacher helping them with the basics.

I don't think there is anything wrong with bright kids doing vocational courses either (if they want to). I'm bright but " good with my hands" and went to art school instead of university. The way corse choices are organised in some schools precludes choosing a mixture of vocational and academic subjects.

Nope. I don't like it one bit. But I can smile and carry on as usual because presumably you're not in Parliament. :) If you were I'd be calling for the reincarnation of Guy Fawkes and asking him to do the bloody job properly this time.

Sounds fine. I would be fine for primary, but would either have got a school I wanted for secondary ( by lottery) or I would HE, or send overseas. But really.

I think the top sets could be a lot larger than 30. I was in a top maths set of 33 and I don't think the large class affected results as all the girls were bright and hard working.

However, as I said before, the marking in those classes would be a nightmare, let alone the assessment and target setting.

We have a full comprehensive system in our area. It was a test area for Harold Wilsons government. Other areas kicked off, I believe, and kept there grammer schools.

When A level results come out the local schools will be bragging about the A/A*'s achieved, will be a small percentage that get to this level and also into Oxbridge/Russell groups, mostly with the help of private tutors . Not much social mobility going on around these parts.

I feel its really sad that the governant is obcessed with the English Bac when its the wrong thing for many children.

I would like to see the internet used to provide a wider range of courses with e learning. I think that online schools could be used more to provide courses for the very bright. Ie. Imagine if 20 children across the UK who are gifted at maths could have a maths lesson that is age and ablity appriopiate. Prehaps online classrooms could make it possible to offer more languages at GCSE level or futher maths to one child in a rough school in hull.

Agree with ReallyTired about elearning - a fine idea. And you could tailor it to different abilities and different needs.

I'm in broad sympathy with Shagmund's views, though of course you couldn't carry them out. People will never agree to allocation of places by lottery, for example.

As for the small classes, just think what the impact of reducing class size from 30 to 20 would be in a typical primary with an intake of 60 a year. That's one extra class per year - so seven new teachers and seven new classrooms. Then multiply that throughout the UK.

wigglybeezer has a point. There was a decline in manufacturing & agriculture and explosion in the service industry - and it's got unsustainable. I used to recruit for jobs in the media & the number of identikit candidates I saw all vying for a handful of jobs was depressing. Put me right off the idea of white collar jobs as something to aspire to & so glad I don't work in an office now. I'd far rather work in a shop a naice one of course.

The policy problem is this. In the current system, there are winners (those who go to private schools, grammar schools and the best comprehensives) and there are losers (everyone else, more or less). The winners by and large want to maintain a situation where they are still winners - they don't want a system where every school is a good school and everyone has equal access to a good school, regardless of intellectual ability or economic background.

Basically I think poor social mobility is having a big effect, the middle classes are having to try harder and harder just to maintain their families position , hence people considering private education and tutoring or moving, just to achieve results that previous generations achieved without so much angst and effort. At the bottom end families don't even bother because there is no point.

We don't need more money spent on school education, smaller class sizes have been proven to make little difference to outcome ( probably nicer for teachers though). Tax breaks are neede for companies that invest in research and development and apprentices and on the job training.

"I expect they were just as unhappy"

Given that during the lesson many of them were probably surreptitiously looking at internet porn on their phones, or sitting with their hands in their pants, I suspect they were happier than I was!

"So you dislike the working classes about as much as you dislike the parents of privately educated children???"

No. I like the working classes, which is why I'm living among them, rather than in a middle-class enclave in Surrey. I just dislike aspects of w/c popular culture.

My grandparents and parents generation (who were w/c) were politically engaged. They could play instruments, and cook. They loved poetry. They attended lectures at working men's colleges during the evening after work. Compare that to w/c culture today. And the content of newspapers bought by the w/c from the 1930's with the Sun and the Mirror today.

I would be inclined to say we need more selective education, realisation children are all different, there are thick ones as there are bright ones. But most of all giving kids realistic achievable goals not this current wave of all kids must go to uni bullshit.

I also feel grammar schools should only be allowed a small percentage of entrants from private primaries and get them back to being elite schools for state school children.

I would want to see Comprehensives fixed first before breaking the 10% of the school system that actually is globally competitive.

Shagmundfreud: "My grandparents and parents generation (who were w/c) were politically engaged. They could play instruments, and cook. They loved poetry. They attended lectures at working men's colleges during the evening after work."

Yes. This is true of my grandparents' generation too. They were working-class, had no money, but they read and they educated themselves outside working hours. But then, they were in terrible, badly-paid manual jobs because they had no opportunity to do anything else. I think perhaps what's changed is that people of equivalent ability born, say, 40 years later, would have gone to university.

Remove the charitable status of private schools, as this only benefits those children who would be educationally successful where ever they were schooled.

Why? Loads of unacademic kids go to private schools. They're not all selective and arguably some unacademic children would benefit from smaller class sizes/ more individual attention.

Also, removing charitable status just restricts private education to a smaller subset of the wealthy- if you can afford £30k+ per year to send your child to Eton, you can afford £35k+. It'll just take out the local private schools which are a couple of G per term, not the elite.

If you're basically saying "ban private schools" then you would have to say "every child must go to a state school" which means that you couldnt make an exclusion for home schooling as either every child must go to a state school, or the parent can choose how to educate their child. There's no way of legislating for one and not the other.

However, where I fully agree with you is that we need to review whether we should be forcing all children to follow an academic path until they're 16, when, if all you're going to get at GCSE are 5 d's, you might as well have not been there for all it's going to enhance your career prospects.

Don't agree with the bottom set thing. I can't see why it's more time consuming to plan a lesson for bottom set than a top or middle set.

I think teachers who have to deal with children with behavioural problems need more support and training and I know from experience that these children can be in top or middle sets.Yy to the better vocational training.

I also disagree with abolishing catchment areas. I can't drive for medical reasons so need to walk to school.

I'd like to see faith schools abolished before private schools. It is appalling that tax payers fund them.

You should've titled this thread 'Myanswer to my private/grammar/state school angst'.

I don't have any angst over it and I can't imagine many people do.

grammar schools would be better if we could find a way of testing purely academic intelligence.

I think that better SEN funding is needed. In a nearby town there are 3 primary schools with a special needs unit but the nearest secondary school with a special needs unit is 20 miles away. The children end up struggling in mainstream or being home ed as they can't cope in mainstream. I know one child in the latter category and he ended up behaving badly so he was sent home and suffering extreme anxiety. Both him and the other children in the class would have benefitted from him being at a suitable school.

I think if the OP's suggestions were put into practice there would be a massive increase in home schooling, and also private tutoring - unless those too are to be made illegal.

Maybe there are some things (defence, law, transport infrastructure) that the state does best, but I don't see any evidence that education is one of them.

"Don't agree with the bottom set thing. I can't see why it's more time consuming to plan a lesson for bottom set than a top or middle set."

The bottom set typically have all their kids either on a IEP or are statemented or there are social/ child protection issues. They are also more needy/ time comsuming because there are more pastoral and behavioural issues to sort out.

In some schools the NQT/ weaker teacher get lumbered with the bottom sets that noone wants to teach. It is real double whammy for both the NQT who is learning the ropes and the kids who get an inexperienced teacher. In good schools all teachers have to teach at least one bottom set.

canisawitoff

Why should parents who have had children in private not be allowed to go back to state?! I pay, via tax, for that school and therefore should be entitled to use it as much as the next person?