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?

Reallytired- but then you are discriminating against the children who have been badly taught, or at age 11 not that interested in school work or are late developers.
If you can discern latent academic potential , which is what verbal and particularly non verbal reasoning tests are designed to do, that has got to be a much better way.
Seeker- I am sure your DS is very talented and very intelligent too-I didn't mean to suggest otherwis, I am just saying IMO my DD who is expected to get L6 isn't amazingly intelligent IMO!!

Oh, of course she is intelligent! You can't possibly, even on mumsnet, say that a child who can get a level 6 in literacy at the age of 11 dispite being mildly dyslexic isn't particularly intelligent!

"Reallytired- but then you are discriminating against the children who have been badly taught, or at age 11 not that interested in school work or are late developers."

But the 11 plus does exactly that. Private schools send a disportionate number to grammar schools and grammar schools have hardly any children on free school dinners. Verbal reasoning is learnt by being surrounded by language. Numerical reasoning is developed by years of years of high quality maths teaching where children are challenged to think.

Unless someone challenges a child to think they will not stetch themselves mentally. This is an interesting article on cognitive acceleration.

www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/cognitive-acceleration-2243

I feel that schools would do better to develop children's thinking ablity that concentrate so hard on SATS.

Here's a good question for this forum [evil grin] which I was reminded of when reading an (auto)biography* the other day.

Is social mobility only allowed so far before our own class prejudices pull us back? If a family went, over several generations, from illiterate labourers to middle class professionals entirely due to education, and they then find themselves in a position to privately educate the next generation, is it a fulfilment of their social mobility or a betrayal of where they come from? Should they give up trying to get up the final rung?

Discuss!

*The Two of us: Sheila Hancock and John Thaw

I don't see it as either. I don't think anyone has an obligation to honour their roots, as it were, and neither do I think that private school is a 'fulfillment of social mobility'. I view it 'blind' to the background of one, two or three generations, and think it is the same no matter where you are 'from'. To say that not wishing to use private schools is due to 'class prejudice' is inherently problematic before we even start on that, anyway.

moonbells interestingly, my father's side of the family have done just that- my great grandfather was an illiterate dock worker, my grandfather was a miner (left school at 14), my father went to grammar school and then to University (got a doctorate), and I went to Uni and work in "the professions".

To answer your question- I have always considered myself middle class- I would be a complete pseud to try to claim wc credentials (esp as my father considers himself mc) so I don't think I have anything to betray IYSWIM.

moonbells my own family have done it in one fell swoop!!

I come from working class/underclass. Generations of miners/unemployed.

I now find myself an educated professional. To be honest, I don't and will never consider myself middle class. However, I do send my DC to private school.

Is it a betrayal?

In some ways, yes. And certainly some members of my family believe so.

But my responsoibility to my DC outweighs my responsibility to my class, I feel.

"Numerical reasoning is developed by years of years of high quality maths teaching where children are challenged to think"

My DS went from 60% in his first home administered mock test. After 5 months of home tutoring he was averaging 90%. Between then and the actual test he was still scoring an average of 90%. Basically, he reached his limit and plateau-ed.

This is why I don't understand posters that think that a child is at an advantage if they have been tutored for years and years. After about 6 months the child has learnt exam technique and how to focus and work to the clock. They will peak for about a month and then boredom will set in and performance will decline.

"This is why I don't understand posters that think that a child is at an advantage if they have been tutored for years and years. After about 6 months the child has learnt exam technique and how to focus and work to the clock. They will peak for about a month and then boredom will set in and performance will decline."

I am not talking about tutoring but basic maths teaching. Ie. being taught proper maths rather than not being taught to the test. If your child had not been taught the basics at school then he would not be able to learn exam technique.

I believe that intelligence can be developed by a good enviroment.

Sorry am hijacking or diverting a bit - perhaps I should start a new thread.

So to go back to the OP I think we shouldn't abolish Grammars, but make more of them. Give the Indy schools a run for their money nationally.

I think what we need to do is run Grammar selection off Sats and prior assessments not an 11+. And if someone ups the ante, and gets over some age-adjusted threshold after the age of 11 but before 14 (when one could reasonably expect GCSE courses to start in earnest) then they should be able to transfer to the Grammar. Sec moderns should not exist. All schools not a Grammar ought to set out to educate to high standards eg E Bacc etc. Why drop standards?

And I agree with the OP about 1 to 1 learning support too. I went to the local non-selective private school for a nosey when DS hit 3. I was by the facilities, but also that the girls showing me about said that as soon as someone is noticed to be dropping behind, they're in learning support for a few weeks. 1 to 1 to get them back to the class level. Keeping the standard up, not waiting for everyone to catch up!

Discipline too is key. Now here is another elephant in the room. Also how do you engage kids who don't want to be there? Give them learning that fits. Everyone knows by the time you go to senior school who would rather be a mechanic/plumber/hairdresser than a boffin? And therefore retired by 50 while the boffin's still slaving (huge )

So we need technical and vocational colleges too, in towns not just one per county. The lassie next door to us travels miles to the nearest Ag college. She adores her horticulture course, is first to admit she was never in the slightest bit academic and just wishes the days weren't so long given the commute.

RichMan My family were successively farm labourers, railway/manual workers, white collar workers (Dad was Sec modern, left school at 14, Mum was a Grammar scholarship girl to 16 who wouldn't have gone without the scholarship as in 1942 you had to pay otherwise) and me (first to go to Uni, now an academic). So WC to LMC to MC.

for doing it in one go!

Mum had to leave at 16 because she was told to choose between her boyfriend and school. She chose Dad. I think this was a societal as well as class thing - back then, you could be an educated woman if you were wanting to stay single but if married, education was a waste of money and time as you were expected to be a SAHM.

I am glad we are not at that point any more

Oh and here's this little article.

"There is nothing to stop you being whoever or whatever you want to be. The only thing stopping you is you."

Might be a little naïve (you have to have the ability to be, eg, a mathematician in order to be able to consider it!) but I think they're making the point that if we have the ability, then who is to stop us?

Reallytired- Non verbal reasoning tests are nothing to do with maths

' The Non-Verbal Reasoning Test Series measure a pupil?s ability to engage with context-free visual information in order to identify their wider reasoning ability and potential.'

They are completely fifferent to anything taught on the national curriculum and as the poster above says children very soon plateau making extensive tutoring pointless.

@oopsi - I'm glad that someone gets me.

DS did Kumon Maths from the age of 5. By 11 he was about two years ahead of the national average. IF the 11+ was based on an examination of national curriculum maths then yes, 5 years of Kumon maths would have given him the edge. But as I said above, you can teach your DC exam technique and you can get them use to the format but once they 'get it', 5 months or 5 years of tutoring makes no difference.

How are you going to make place truly 'comprehensive'? About half the children in London are foreign, are you going to bus them up to Carlisle every morning, and vice versa so that everywhere satisfies 'diversity'?

I think 'comprehensive' in this instance means 'does not bar anyone from entry on the grounds of wealth or intelligence'.

Comprehensive in this context means taking everyone that applies, using proximity as a determining factor if more children apply than there are places.

Poulay - One poster cited 'diversity' as a reason why they bypassed the indie system and chose the comprehensive that they did. Downthread the poster went on about the parents at the comp who were GPs, Phds, engineers etc. Her diversified cohorts were the same as my private school one :) Hardly a diversified catchment.

So when people talk about diversity they mean they don't want their kids to mix with kids whose parents are prepared to pay for a private education as opposed to wanting their kids to mix with council house kids, blacks and asians.

Having a comprehensive intake is not synonymous with diversity, obviously. I would also suggest that the entirety of the poster in question's child's school is not made up of the children of the professionals mentioned: the point she was making was that they were there, not that they were the only people there.

Your last paragraph is just silly and wrong.

I should say, it is not necessarily synonymous with all the possible different kinds of diversity. But Poosh and Poulay (!) have got the terms a bit confused.

I agree completely! except for making kids bus to suit quotas, it doesn't work well in America and is unfair on children. Although the postcode lottery is an issue as douchebag rich people can get round it. I'm not sure of a solution though.

And re the highly structured streaming, DSs school doesn't stream in Y7(they set within the class like at junior school, and only have foundation and higher sets in Y8.

They get excellent results in GCSEs.

It may be off the wall, but it works, and it's free.

oopsi ,
Good maths teaching is NOT sats or kumon. It is challenging lessons that simulate the mind. Children can be taught higher order thinking through maths, problems, chess, philosophy, science. It is the abstract thinking skills that makes children perform better in numerical and verbal reasoning and life in general.

My son is good at maths because when he is little we got out the cuisaire rods, he got concepts of fractions, probablity and algebra at a very early age. We have done maths games and which have developed abstract thinking. I don't know how much of being good at maths is genetic.

"I don't know how much of being good at maths is genetic."

Well, both I and the children's father are good at maths and we did nothing like Cuisair rods, Kumon etc. All three children are very good at maths and always have been. I do think that their brains are, in some way, "wired" for maths. My dad and XFIL are also both very good with numbers (even though my dad gained no formal qualifications and became a printer's apprentice at 15 - his mental maths is fantastic)

Interestingly though, my brothers weren't particularly academic and neither was XH's brother.

"But Poosh and Poulay (!) have got the terms a bit confused."

Where would we be without 'clever' MNetters to correct our English :o

"the point she was making was that they were there, not that they were the only people there"

It was a small village school with an affluent catchment so I doubt that were many (if any) council house kids, blacks and Asians going to that school.

My point is this. Many parents move to an area away from the problems of inner cities or problem council estates. They then go - look at me. My family is living in a diversified environment. No you are not. You are probably living in a predominantly while upper/lower MC area which invariably has a stereotypical studious Chinese child in the class who is the token 'ethnic' child.