"tutoring for grammar school is cheating". AIBU to be fuming at DSIL's attitude?

[twiceupinarms]

namechange coz as much as I don't care if she reads this, I don't want her to know my normal nickname.
I am getting my DD tutored for grammar school. DSIL thinks it's cheating if she can't get in without being tutored and will therefor struggle when she gets there. for fucksake, the exams are not based on school curriculum - it's like being a brilliant footballer but been trialled to get in the team on your ability to tie your laces. fucksake.
Anyone else encountered this attitude?
Oh I can add hypocrisy to the list? Her DD audtitioned to go to Stage Boarding School. Did she do any practice/preparations for the audition? Only 9 lessons a week, every week, for 6 years.

AIBU to be cross?

You can't have a comprehensive if there is a grammar school creaming off!

Then there's no such thing as a comprehensive school anywhere. Some of the children are removed to church and private schools in all areas. Some areas have a completely skewed intake due to house prices and are more middle class in intake than the grammars.

I would consider a comprehensive school to be a school that offers a range of opportunities which allow children to end up on practical, creative and academic routes. There have been threads on here about children whose schools don't offer any MFL at GCSE because so many kids are at the grammar. I would consider that to no longer be offering comprehensive education.

Well, there are more comprehensive comprehensives than the school which is left when 23% of the cohort has been creamed off by ability to another school........

There are only 164 grammar schools in England. No more than 7% are in private education. Therefore I think there are plenty of comprehensive schools.

It works both ways. The comprehensive one of my children goes to offers all of the same GCSEs that the grammar offers, plus a lot more along with technical courses.

The children at the grammar have parents that have decided they don't need to be offered a full range of courses because their ability is in the academic subjects. There is probably very little benefit to those children of offering them a larger range of courses, so why would they be better served in a comprehensive?

EF, schools are highly divided by social class, whether they are grammar schools or not. Class is related to educational attainment. The highest achieving non selective schools are more middle class than the grammar schools. Many schools are not truly comprehensive as their catchments are not truly comprehensive. What matters is that every school is able to offer a comprehensive education. That clearly isn't happening in all schools, and if that's a consequence of catchment then the catchment areas need to change. If it's a consequence of too many children going to grammar, then grammar school places in those areas need to be reduced.

If 7% of children in an area go to a selective private school, how is that different to 7% of children in a state grammar? Given that neither system actually takes the most bright; it just takes some of perhaps the top 20%.

The children at the grammar wouldn't be better served at a comprehensive. But they wouldn't be worse served- unless you at of the "my child's intellect is so precious and fragile that even standing next to someone with an IQ of less than 140 damages his GCSE prospects" persuasion. And all the other children- the huge majority - will be better served.

Seeker I disagree. You can't even compare two comprehensives here - say one good and one bad - and say intelligent students would do the same at the 'bad' one as they would do in a school that actually meets national targets.

If only that where so seeker. Unfortunately in my catchment area when attending my local comp open evening this year I asked about taking individual sciences at year 9 and was told by a teacher chewing gum 'yeah but they will have to stay behind after school on Mondays like' I was and felt really cross that traditional academic subjects can not be fitted into their timetable but childcare and animal studies can. I know that they have chosen to do this as to engage more pupils but on the same hand they could potentially be alienating their academic pupils too....
If they could get to a happy medium that surely would be better.

Actually seeker, they could well be 'worse served'. And that does not, in any way, mean that i think a high IQ is that precious and fragile that it cannot be touched by someone with less

Your determined refusal to see that comprehensives are not the educational holy grail is astounding.

You have been given an example of an outstanding comp that gets less than a handful of A*s. As per the point you keep making, this is not because children from lower income families do not have natural intelligence.

It has been pointed out that comprehensives can and do struggle to truly stretch the most able students because resources need to be targeted at those struggling, or those on the borderline between a C and a D.

You refuse to admit that peer pressure and a negative attitude towards education can have a detrimental effect on some children. Why is that? It can and does happen.

Why is it that you think the non grammar school children will benefit that much from being educated under the same roof as grammar children? As you say, they will be in different sets anyway.

I don't understand why you think that something the benefits children should be taken away from them.

What is it that they have to offer others that makes it so essential for them to all be together?

"Your determined refusal to see that comprehensives are not the educational holy grail is astounding."

I don't think, and have never said, that they are the holy grail or anything like it. They are just the least worst option currently available.

So we should go for the 'least worst' option for all children instead of sticking with a system that works for plenty of children?

I'd be really interested in your answer to my last question.

Why is it that you think the non grammar school children will benefit that much from being educated under the same roof as grammar children?

They will benefit from not having been "sorted" at the age of 10. They will benefit from not knowing for the rest of their lives that they were tested and found wanting. They will benefit from the possibility of being a late developer, and being able to "move up" if they are able to at any stage.

The grammar school kids will benefit from not having been "sorted" at the age of 10. They will benefit from not having been told that they are "special" "elite" or "the leaders of the future".

Then your problem is with the testing, rather than the actual schools.

Plenty of children pass or fail the test, or pass the test but don't get a place, without it having any detrimental effect on them.

A sensitive child who might be unreasonably upset be not passing the test doesn't have to do the test in the first place. It is optional.

If something gives a tiny benefit to a minority, but a massive disadvantage to the majority, then obviously it shouldn't happen.

The areas which have selective education do not have better results over all than the areas that don't. That's the bottom line, really. If selective education produced better results than comprehensive education, thn they're might be q case for it. But it doesn't.

CloudsandTrees, my oldest DCs attended a 3000+ student high school in the US that catered for the Harvard-bound as well as students who thought they had made it if they got a job bagging groceries, and there was also a special education division and a school within a school for students with profound emotional/psychological issues. In Ireland (Republic) where there is no grammar school system I went to a school a good deal smaller but operating on the same principle (but without the special ed division). A sort of a comprehensive. It did everyone good imo.

My US educated DC in were on an honours track from day one. That meant doing a course load that included four years of science, four years of a modern language, four years of English, four years of maths, and four years of humanities, with the possibility of squeezing in art if they were willing to do it in summer school or forgo study hall or if they were able to get a gym waiver to do a portfolio course. The school published a 70 page academic prospectus. My DCs might as well have gone to the local Catholic high school where they offered a college prep curriculum only. (It would have cost $10K per year per child though).

You could do literally anything in the public HS. Jewellery making, automotive tech, wheel throwing, broadcast studio, astronomy, fashion design - you name it. The advantage of having it all in one large building was cost. Economy of scale meant there were fantastic sports and drama facilities for all. Looking around at the wealth of facilities on offer every child going there could feel they were worth it.

Plenty of DCs fail and it does have a detrimental effect on them. I wonder how many people would be arguing in favour of grammar schools if they knew that their DC were unlikely to get a place? If it is all so wonderful why don't we get campaigns to 'bring back the secondary modern'? I get very irritated that you only ever hear 'bring back the grammar schools'.
The very term secondary modern tells you it is out of date- it was modern 50years ago. By the 21st century we ought to have come up with a test that doesn't involve passing or failing at 10/11yrs of age.

Sorry - tests on the brain! I meant an education system that doesn't involve a test at such an early age.

I think the 'friends party' line is the oddest I've heard yet! God forbid there might be some c grade maths students at any social event a clever dc attends! (also slightly undermines the idea often put out that selection isn't divisive because children stay friends with their old primary mates, socialise out of school, etc ect)!

At the end of nearly five years in a comprehensive, my daughter has fallen out with and made up with, and liked and disliked, a lot of people, as you might expect. I think the individual who caused her the most grief was a boy who's good at maths, probably better than her. For what that's worth. And no, they didn't fall out because she socked in him the dinner queue out of seething envy at his sums capacity!

I can see plenty of arguments which I sort of understand why people find compelling. I can see what looks awfully like snobbishness and unpleasantness getting a chance for an airing in this debate too.

I don't believe that grammar schools existing give a massive disadvantage to the majority. If some children are being disadvantaged then it isn't because of what a school they don't attend is doing.

I do think there is a strong argument against grammar schools that take as much as the top 25% of children in one area, but not all grammar schools are like that, so it doesn't follow that grammar schools shouldn't exist because some take too many.

It would be better IMO if there were more grammar schools but they all aimed to take the top 10%.

FWIW, I have a child a a SS and one at a comp. I am arguing in favour of grammar schools when I have a child that would have been unlikely to get a place at one. I didn't put my youngest in for the test because while he is bright, the grammar simply doesn't offer the subjects he is most interested in and it isn't the right environment for him. I have no reason to believe that both of my children won't come out of school with equally good GCSE and A level results.

As I said, it's not what the grammar schools are doing that disadvantages the majority. It's the system.

I agree that there might be an argument for the superselectives- although I would personally not want a child of mine to be quite so ivory towered at the age of 10. Education is about more than academics.

The thing is, the comprehensive system can often fail those who would be grammar students, because the comprehensive system tends to serve the middle cohort very evry well, but finds it hard to properly serve the outliers at either end.

Ih order to properly serve the outliers at either end you ned critical mass. If you have a top set (as in my niece's school) where only five students get an A* then somehting has gone wrong. Either those students spent their entire year yawning as the other students worked for their As and Bs, or the entire class wasn't challenged properly and so most underperformed.

What you need is enough people with the same ability and enough resources to target their skill and intellect and attitude levels. This is very difficult in a school with a huge mixture of skills and intellects and attitudes.

If you want to do it the comprehensive way then you need huge resources. My DD's school does it extrememly well, but by God it costs a fortune, because the class sizes need to be so small. And even then it doesn't IMVHO cater for the real outliers (top 5%) because you need a massive catchement to get enough of those students.

Even if we accept that ^ point, and I'm not sure I entirely do, then the obvious corollary is that the 11+ system finds it hard properly to serve those who would not^ be grammar school students, surely?

The niece's school no more proves a point than do my versions of my dds' school - both are being interpreted and presented by one person on here.

All I would say is that rubbing shoulders with, and even sitting next to, some people who don't feel the same about education (and I don't think even in grammar schools that children go about thinking 'woah, academia is like way cool, you suck 'cos you only got an A dude' etc) hasn't been a bad thing. DD starts exams in two weeks - if she doesn't do as well as I think she ought, by this stage I will be in no doubt that that's because of something she's done or failed to do at this final furlong - ie., ultimately down to her by now.

(italics fail - sorry!)