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.

wordfactory
Comparing the UK and US systems is a red herring
because the USA has
(a) rigid catchment rules
(b) no choice at all within catchment
(c) higher private school rates than the UK
(d) no state funded religious schools at all

KIPP schools are mostly within urban areas
fuel in the USA costs 1/10 of the UK I was born there and most of my family are there including shed loads of teachers : I can data mine till you are blue in the face

You are into widening participation in Oxbridge : I wholeheartedly agree
BUT
the easiest way will be for the Uni to speak out against any and all selection in state schools
WHY?
Because then every school would have the brightest few so would need access to the careers advice for them
and shite careers advice is actually one of your biggest hurdles

BUT
having been at a CofE Christening last week that was chock full of "payorpray" parents
the CofE and the Catholic churches would die on their arses in a day if they did not have control over school admissions

which is reason enough in itself IMHO

It does make me wonder sometimes listening to how to some people that grammar schools are like this mysterious and mythical place, that either people despise or love. Like Marmite....

Most Children at Grammar Schools are just "Ordinary Bright" not genius or very bright. Bright kids of any classification though need to be educated amongst themselves.

No, a comprehensive in a nicer area is no more selective than any other comprehensive. It still serves the community in which it is situated, and educates whichever children live near it. Since some areas are wealthier than others, you're going to get comprehensives with wealthier and less wealthy intakes, although that doesn't correlate to 'good schools' as clearly as some would have you believe.

smokepole I don't think so much about grammar schools themselves in terms of what they're like as 'places' as the actual principle and ideology behind them. Which I abhor.

I am from a rough background and went to a rough school - although it served me well. I am anti grammar because I recognise that grammar schools are likely to fail children like me. Now that I have been lucky enough to make choices for my children I try not to make choices that are a huge "fuck you" to my former self. To me attending a grammar school would not just be burning the bridges now that I have escaped but also chucking down a flaming cannon ball.

We live in quite an advantages area but but our catchment area is actually quite mixed. We have a few council estates within catchment and serve a lot of agricultural families living in poverty. I would have thought that was fairly typical.

Yes of course people will try and buy advantages for their children, but that is why is why societal systems should not work in a manner that feeds that tendency.

Even posters who want to keep their children away from the great unwashed are talking about flexibility of intake , moving children at 12,13, widening access. All of that would be so much easier in a comprehensive.

Theoriginal that simply isn't true and Sutton worry far more re the selection by money comps than they do grammars.

My dsis has more chance of getting her kids into her local grammar than the local comp as it is Outstanding and the major bunfight to get in means only the richest who can afford £££££££ for a house in catchment down the road will get in.

There are towns where the rich kids go to one comp and the poor go to the shite comp near the cheaper housing.

The selection by money comps are far bigger in number than grammars.

"Bright kids of any classification though need to be educated amongst themselves."

Why? And where does the bornederline between those kids who are 'bright enough' to meet your mythical definition of 'needing to be educated amonst themselves' and those who 'are 0.00005% not bright enough to need this separation' fall? And what about those children who are 'bright enough to need to be educated separately' in 1 or 2 subjects, but not so good at others?

And why is the top set of a comprehensive not sufficient separation? DS, in the top set of his comp, is surrounded by bright, motivated children working to targets of high Level 8 at the end of Y9, and A* GCSEs. Does he NEED to be in a separate institution? Does the presence of otheer sets in other classroom somehow diminish his education? Conversely would the education of the child who is on the borderline between the set below and the top set suffer from the physical absence of the set above that they will, in a comp, move into after Christmas?

There isn't one group of 'bright' children and 1 group pf 'not bright;' children. It is a continuum, and drawing an arbitrary distinction, based on a very small number of tests on a single day, between children of essentially (at the borderkline) identical intelligence AND THEN PHYSICALLY AND ACADEMICALLY SEPARATIBNG THEM for tghe next 5 years is at best artificial and at worst iniquitous.

TalkinPeace I am really surprised to hear you say that the US has higher private school rates than the UK. Where are you getting thus stat from?

LaQueen I am not engaging with you because you have had my posts deleted for no good reason. You, yourself, named the town your DD goes to school in on Sunday night, but that thread went tits up and was deleted.

You know as well as I do I was more than one incident that I named, but it's gone now. Everything I posted was true and what you had posted on here before. Well you'd posted the half truth, I posted the whole truth. Now I've got a sequence of deleted posts which makes me look like an arsey bitch, which I am not, and I was not being.

All over the site there are posts from you boasting about X, Y and Z. That is is what makes you identifiable not what I posted.

LePetit
The selection by money comps are far bigger in number than grammars.
BOLLOCKS

DCs school
10 mile catchment
over 20 % of kids come from the shitty bordering catchment
bucket loads of council flats in catchment
the area defines who gets in and house price mobility is an irrelevance for 90% of us

and yes DDs 3 xA* 10xA was nowhere near the top of her year group

holiday
wikipedia, sutton trust and harvard

That is your comp which by no means speaks for all.

Selection by money/ property is a huge problem.

Holiday:

The ISC says 6.5% of children in the UK (over 7% in England)
www.isc.co.uk/research

CAPE says 10% of all students in the USA
www.capenet.org/facts.html

Laqueen was on the receiving end of some rather bizarre posting which may have made her rethink her posting style- that may be why she has reported posts this evening.

I'm picturing a comprehensive with a squiggly boundary for catchment, circling round the detached wealthy abodes and avoiding the poor peoples hovels.

No nit we didn't buy a house that allowed us to access a grammar

LaQueen - you are always banging on about the fact that you moved to your village because your DH was adamant that your DDs would go to a grammar school!

Maybe selection by postcode is more of an issue in the suburbs than rural areas and cities - which is where my experience lied.

Oh and Teacher not getting the hysteria.

Bottom set comp kids are a world away from top set kids who get everything thrown at them in order to get the hallowed A*s.

I was a top set comp kid and never sat in a classroom with kids in lower sets.

Ohmy
Yup, Thornden !

the rest of us (despite le petits disbelief) are geographic and thus include scary people like petrol station and supermarket staff in amongst those who utilise them.
NO area is exclusively rich : even Virgina Water, Holland Park, Canary wharf.
THe school catchment will include cleaners and hairdressers and other "normal people"
but grammar school advocates seem not to see them

Original. What you, abhor a school that gives its pupils a high quality education?.

You can abhor the fact that not enough children get high quality educations, you can't "Abhor" a place that gives the children within it a high quality education.

Philoslothy. I think you mentioned about your schooling, if I am not wrong before your name change. ?

Why though would a Bright Girl be failed by a grammar school system, surely you could have passed an 11+ exam if you wanted to have done.
If you say the reason you could not have passed an 11+ exam , due to family background friends and the Primary school you attended, you are saying you were held back by aspiration because of your background.
The high school you went to, was I suspect only a similar standard to a poor "comprehensive school" yet you went on to Oxford.

If there had been a grammar school in your town, why could you not have transferred via a Maths/English test when you began to show academic potential.

LePetit, which is why I absolutely don't understand why anyone wants to take those 'top set' children away and putting them in a sepaerate institution. Why not just leave them in the comps? They do very well indeed there, and no-one else's education is harmed by their presence - whereas it is harmed by their absence?

Who gives a shit re the top set kids.They'll be fine anywhere.

It's the rest others bleat about and sorry I don't get the moral pontificating.The brightest are creamed off in comps and those unlucky enough to be in lower sets often have a completely different type of education.

KLePetit, so why are you a supporter of grammars?? That is giving advantage to the top set kids in spades. The children I feel suffer most in divided education is the ;'second set kids', the ones who have nothing to aspirte to in a secondary modern, but move into top sets in comps quite regularly.

I can't uderstand how anyone who wants to improve the education of 'bottom set kids' could possibly support grammars - since all the evidence from fully grammar counties is that it is the lowest achievers who do worst in the divided school system.