to really regret the whole grammar school thing.

[newrecruit]

DS1 is in year 4 (DS2 in year 1).

I went to a girls grammar school and loved it. So when we moved out of London one of the reasons we chose this area was the schools. I don't think we are super selective (don't quite know what that means)

However, I was explaining the schools to him this morning as we drove past one and had an impending feeling of doom.

He's bright but can't be arsed. Resists pushing and I am against tutor on principal. I don't think he'd suit an all boys school.

What have I done! We should have just moved to a comprehensive area with a decent intake.

Some parents are already talking about tutors and its 2 years away. I want to hit them quite hard.

Please pile in and tell me to get a grip.

"It's not buying an advantage any more than stocking up with GL Assessment papers and doing lots of timed tests at home is buying an advantage."

Yes it is. I don't understand what's so difficult about this. There is a test. It is possible to teach somebody how to pass the test. Some people can do this, some people can pay others to do it, others can do neither of those things. The first two groups have an advantage over the third.

What are you quibbling about, Hak? That's just exactly what I said, if you read my post. I said that paying for a tutor is not buying an advantage any more than doing it yourself. I then went on to say Yes, I agree that both methods of prep are buying an advantage over those who don't have either.

You've just re-iterated what I said

Really nit you do literally leap on all my posts!

Perhaps I should be flattered .

You surely don't think I spend so much time trying to help widen access to Oxbridge because I think the status quo is fine?

The admissions process of course favours the advanataged. Applicants have to reach a very high standard. Very few disadvantaged pupils can meet those standards.

Contextualised offers, which I support enormously, as you know, help a little bit.

But, as you also well know, my colleagues and I believe there's a balance. It's not for the universities to drop standards ever lower, to make up for inefficiencies within the state sector.

To be honest, a huge part of widening access is getting people to apply. Breaking down the myths. Encouraging those who think it's not for them. This must apply to super selectives just as much as selective universities.

And because the most selective universities tend to take a good chunk of those from SS, if the SS contained a more mixed cohort, a good part of my job would be done for me.

Happy Days.

The term buying an advantage is an interesting one. It seems to be a bit like 'being a pushy parent.' The line always seems to be drawn just a little bit further than the accuser has gone .

So buying a house in catchment is ok, but tutoring for GS is not.

Helping with university costs (which so many parents cannot do) is fine, but private school is not.

thewordfactory
I know you meant a broader intake :

Bus fares of up to £800 a year will act against you ... especially when any after school activity means missing the bus so needing a car.

I give a lift home to a kid at the college after sports who would otherwise have to wait till 9pm for the public bus - single working parent

Lower income families have LOTS of things to consider : sending kids to school miles and miles away is a LEAP too far

'The most selective universities have a disproportionate number of advantaged students in them. The admissions process favours them.

Yet I'm sure you wouldn't want to close them down or make them less selective. I do recall you being rather happy at the prospect of your DD applying to Cambridge ."

I honestly don't see why universities are even remotely relevant to the debate about selective state education......

I don't intend to leap at all; I think it's inevitable though that when people are consistently and recognisably presenting a view that's strongly opposed to one's one (and sorry for the pompous sounding continuation of 'one' but I can't see how else to phrase this), one reads and responds!

I am surprised, because usually you seem to me to be arguing that the gap is largely the fault and responsibility of the schools. I've been on and off (mainly on ) this thread today, and have replied to quite a lot of posts, so please don't feel I'm making a special case for yours!

talkin I don't say it would be easy to get poorer students to apply. But with effort and contextualised offers and bursary help (which I bet you could whip up from old boys/girls) you could make a real dent.

The Kipp schools in the states came up against all these arguments, yet their reach to the most disadvantaged students is phenomenal.

Actually did I use the term 'buying advantage', come to think of it?
It's the dishonesty of it I don't like: we had to, everyone does, it wouldn't work unless they were clever anyway, we didn't even need to, it's just for a bit of confidence.... Etc etc.

But then I also dislike the endless 'leafy comp' crap, the bullying of top sets crap, and various others.

It is possible to teach somebody how to pass the test.

That's like saying that it is possible to teach somebody how to pass their GCSEs.

I think you'll find that most tests are prefaced by a period of teaching and learning. And I still say that you can't teach someone how to do something they are not capable of. It's as though tutoring is seen as something akin to some awful foie gras factory.

The issue I have is that the teaching of how to pass the test should be available to all children in selective areas - at primary school, like it used to be when the 11+ was first introduced.

hak what are universities if not selective education (and state subsidised at that)?

Any argument against grammar schools can be equally levelled at universities, particularly the most selective.

They exclude most of the population . They are full of the middle classes. They provide an advantage that far outweighs any other type of education.

Yet no one calls for their closure.

Universities are
A) not compulsory
B) not for children.

To me that's the important difference.

They are not segregating children.

We'll obviously there is an issue with access to the elite universities that needs to be addressed.

But Further education is not (wholly) state funded and compulsory.

nit I agree the dishonesty is baffling.

Because we all do it. In one way or another.

And coming from such a disadvantaged background I can't understand the faux coyness of it all.

I also can't see why buying your kids an advantage is worse than giving them it for free. It's all the same to me. It's all consciously providing our children advantages that others don't have.

Well the difference you draw hak seems laboured at best and a bit convenient.

"I also can't see why buying your kids an advantage is worse than giving them it for free. It's all the same to me. It's all consciously providing our children advantages that others don't have."

I don't think I do either. The problem is perpetuating an education system where the fact that you can either buy or give your children an "advantage". You shouldn't be able to.

Ps. What are the reasons people think top set children need to be educated in a separate building to the others?

"Well the difference you draw hak seems laboured at best and a bit convenient."

I don't understand. Are you saying that if I am opposed to selective school education for 10 year olds, I should also be opposed to selective university education for adults?

TheWordFactory - nobody is calling for the closure of universities, but lots of people are calling for the most oversubscribed universities to examine their selection procedures so as not to exclude state educated and working class applicants with huge potential. And universities are - to some extent - responding to this.

I think the problem with grammar schools is that selection is done so early.

State educated teenagers have many resources they can access without recourse to their parents - public libraries, internet tutorials, etc. By the age of 16 children can start to take hold of their own destinies and become independent learners, and there is lots of opportunity at get onto A-level courses at very good state schools, FE colleges and sixth form colleges. At 11 a child is completely reliant on the choices made by their parents, and has a much more circumscribed range of choices other than grammar school.

But hak the very worst perpetrator of division and inequality is probably university.

They provide an advantage that many cannot access not through lack of ability but due to their circumstances.

As for the need for seperate buildings: critical mass of peer group and efficient use of resources.

For me a lot of giving my daughter such advantages as I've given her is unconscious. It's natural for me to talk to my daughter, and ask her questions and listen to her, and generally give her attention. It felt natural to read to her and take her to the library. Buying books - often second-hand or from charity shops - is as natural as breathing. Going to galleries or museums or looking for fungi in the woods was natural. Watching Time Team and Scrapheap challenge and talking about what was going on, on the screen felt natural.

I suppose what didn't feel natural was shelling out a significant sum on purchasing something - coaching - which didn't feel like a beneficial thing in itself, but merely an end to some other goal. (Which was in any case a goal I felt ambivalent about.)

I don't think it's false or convenient to observe that schools are different from universities. They just are.

I also think, as I have said time and again, that because life isn't fair (my children are warm, clothed and fed, some aren't; mine have a smaller house than some, larger than others, etc) it's especially crap to have a system of segregation at 11 which follows these lines, perpetuates and confirms them.

How does it help a c/d student to have a critical mass of his or her own peer group? Stops the temptation to deck clever children at lunch, I guess some would say.

mini I have done sympathy with the age of selection argument.
10 is young.

However, wait any longer and the gap between the advantaged and the disadvsntGed becomes even wider I think? The disadvantaged would have even less chance of getting a place.

nit it helps for anyone to be with like ability peers. The class moves at the correct pace and resources can be stock piled.

When you have to dilute your resources to cover too many abilities, you end up with insufficient resources.

To this end I would really recommend schools to cluster. It seems bloody stupid to me that my nearest town had thee schools within spitting distance of each other all with under stocked libraries, crap sports facilities and creaking learning support units. If they could pool their resources they could be fabulous.

Well, or if they had better funding, I would imagine! But surely the 'pooling of resources' in the case yiu mention is an argument for the joining up, not the segregating out, of schools?