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.

I've got a partner who did children's care cases in the Family Court for over thirty years. And another relative who is an expert in the science and psychology of fetal and neonatal development.

If you can't support pregnant mothers and babies in the first year/18 months of their lives, children from dysfunctional backgrounds are irreversibly damaged.

No amount of Latin classes or special coaching is going to address needs that should have been dealt with at a much much earlier stage.

prepared to uproot themselves from all they know and go halfway across the world to try and find a better life

The largest place we have had immigration from in recent times is poor eastern Europe.

Thank you, Marianne.

you might expect me to think that they should be educated separately....

I wouldn't know I guess it depends what sorts of schools are available to you?

I mean the like that Hair was talking about earlier, sexual assault, stabbings and so on.

I also assume your a parents who will support your child.

Are there a lot of stabbings in British schools?

Beyond, I suppose what I mean is that, in general, supporters of grammars end to have children who would attend those grammars. They don't tend to be people whose children would end up in the secondary modern schools which are the inevitale resuyl of having grammars.

I have found it more unusual, in my time on MN, to find parents of children of 'clear superselective ability' who are against grammars to the extent that they send their children to comprehensives instead - which is what we do.

Hak, I can't find much data - I do think it is a very tiny number,. 2 members of staff in 20 years?

No amount of Latin classes or special coaching is going to address needs that should have been dealt with at a much much earlier stage.

and are these needs going to be sorted out by a few top academically bright children being in their class?

teacher it's very nice for you that your local schools have those things.

Many don't. That's why I call provision patchy.

My local town has three comps. One has setting, one streaming, one neither; that is the epitome of patchy provision within about a two mile radius!

And it was my list of what I'd provide in comps, not super selectives. The main thing that super selectives need to provide is...drum roll please...a like-ability peer group.

No matter what a comp provides, no matter how superlative the provision, it cannot provide a like-ability peer group for the outliers, a collegiate expereince. Critical mass, innit?

Hack

Here we go again, on the one your saying 75% of the parents left behind in a different building hate it, and then here is Dr Jekly or is it Mr Hyde appearing to say: are there stabbings in school?

why are you un happy with your children being left behind as one of the 75%?

"Here we go again, on the one your saying 75% of the parents left behind in a different building hate it, and then here is Dr Jekly or is it Mr Hyde appearing to say: are there stabbings in school? "

No, I didn't say they hated it. I said (not in these words) that giving 25% what they actively want means giving Hobson's choice to the other 75%. Which doesn't seem quite right to me.......

And I was just curious about the stabbings, that's all. The iniquities of non selective schools seem to be growing with the thread- starting with a bit of name calling and ending with sexual assault and stabbings. I know that's what many people thing goes on on a daily basis in comprehensive schools- but I do find it hard to believe.........

nit I'm not a supporter of schools putting pupils in for GCSE early with a view to wracking up pass grades for the league tables, when those pupils may have done better if they'd waited.

I think Gove put a stop to that, though?

I am in favour of DC doing GCSEs early if frankly it is a nonsense to keep going with the syllabus. And there's a purpose for the pupil.

This is another reason why a like-ability peer group is necessary. You need enough kids at the same level to make these decisions worthwhile.

DS took two GCSEs early. It made sense. And he did them along with other kids for whom it made sense and afterwards could do the next thing that made sense. Does that make sense?

I can see the argument for super selectives. I am not sure whether I agree with it, but I can see it.

But it is a completely different argument to that for 25/75 grammar schools.

Forty primary school pupils are expelled every day for attacks on staff, shocking figures revealed yesterday.

The violence is so endemic that exclusions for assaulting teachers are now more common in primaries than in secondary schools.

Official statistics show that 8,030 pupils aged five to 11 received the sanction in 2010/11 – a 15 per cent rise over four years

www.standard.co.uk/news/education/violent-school-pupils-attack-900-london-teachers-a-year-8440965.html

"
"Teachers in London have suffered more than 4,000 assaults from pupils over the past five years".

Information obtained by the Evening Standard exposes the shocking scale of violence in the classroom, including the case of a woman teacher in Kingston who was knocked unconscious after being headbutted by pupil of 15.

Data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that councils recorded 4,372 alleged assaults by students on teachers at primary and secondary schools. The figures include incidents where teachers have been bitten and scratched, as well as those injured when breaking up fights or restraining unruly pupils.

Russell Hobby, of the National Association of Headteachers, said more needed to be done to protect teachers. He said: “A worrying trend is that it is happening much younger — with assaults from primary-age pupils, which are particularly hard to cope with.”

Latest national figures show there were 8,030 assaults on school staff in England by pupils aged between four and 11 in 2011.

One of the most notorious attacks on a teacher happened at Westminster City School in 2004 when a teacher was raped by Dwayne Best, then a 15-year-old pupil, as she was marking books in a classroom.

Actually, the point about taking GCSEs early, or repeating modules and so on that Gove stopped is an interesting one. It impacts very badly on schools like DS's, where for a lot of the kids 5 GCSEs at C is a real achievement. If academic work doesn't come easily to you, if you come from a family with no tradition or understanding of revising for or taking exams, having to do the lot all in one go is a massive hurdle. Our results have plummeted this year for that very reason. If you're on track for As, then the format you take your exams in isn't going to make much difference- or if it does the worst that will happen is you lose your . If you are struggling to hit a C, then the consequences could be disastrous.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/ann-maguire-killing-teachers-across-britain-reveal-horrifying-tales-of-classroom-violence-9303146.html

Another teacher, from a school in Waltham Forest, London, said: “A student turned up to a practical lab session late, drunk and belligerent, put his foot in the door so I couldn't shut it, argued with the lab technician who tried to get him to leave, and attempted to hit security when they came to remove him.”

And a woman teaching at a primary school in the north of England described how she became “a hollow shell, wracked with lines and grey hairs and perpetual knots in my stomach” due to the presence of a boy who ‘ruled the classroom’ and made her 'feel scared'.”

So Hack you wont hear of any problems in a state settting, and yet you dont like them. ummm

Of course there a problems in a state setting! When did I say there weren't?

"So Hack you wont hear of any problems in a state settting, and yet you dont like them. ummm"

Actually, I don't understand that sentence!

www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/sep/10/support-parents-pupil-agression-schools-teachers

More than half of teachers face hostility in schools – from verbal insults to threats. It’s time to look at the cause of these problems rather than playing the blame game

Of those experiencing aggression, 84% said they had been verbally insulted and 70% said they had been intimidated or threatened, while almost half said they had suffered physical violence – most commonly pushing and shoving, but sometimes being attacked with an object such as furniture, and being kicked and punched.

It’s a depressing picture, even despite the fact that teachers were evenly divided over whether pupil behaviour has deteriorated in the past two years, and less than half believe the problem has worsened over the last 10. ATL general secretary, Mary Bousted, described the findings as shocking, and added: “Although the vast majority of students are well-behaved and a pleasure to teach, poor behaviour is now a daily reality for most staff.”

So what are the problems I am struggling to understand.

You wont hear of them being criticized but you are saying those left behind in a different building are not happy.

How do you feel about all the literature posted above?

While egregious, the data requested was about stabbings in particular, because they were seen as such an issue in non-selectve comps.

Word, I perhaps have a slightly different understanding of what constitutes an 'outlier'. In DS / DD's comp, in Year 7 children with Level 6s in SATs are in the second maths set - simply because there are too many of them for them all to fit in the top set [local primaries get upwards of 20% level 6 Maths]. So there is a 'critical mass' of very able pupils. What constitutes an 'outlier' in that comprehensive is someone who gains, or is capable of gaining, a Level 7 in Maths early in Year 7 - there are some, as the Christmas tests show, but not very many.

An outlier, to me, is the child of friends of mne, who did university maths in Year 8, having finished the A-level astyllabus (attended via video link_) in yeasr 6 and 7). But they would be an outlier even in our local super superselective.

Hak agreed it is different.

And I'm not saying SS schools would need to be compulsory in any way. For parents like teacher who prefer a comp for their high ability DC then that's cool.

But I think they should be available to ensure that the outliers can access what other kids can access.

To be honest, I think you'd get fewer parents looking to Kent style grammar schools if there were SS schools for the true outliers and huge efforts were made to deal with the problems in comprehensives.

But of course one of the issues is that parents don't all want the same shizzle. You and I might have a common picture of what a good comp would look like, but many others would disagree.

Look what happened when I listed what I'd like to see. Nit tells me I'm boring her, despite that fact that she asked the question. And then promptly starts finding points of disagreement .

What grammar schools seem to provide (even the Kent style ones) is an education that more or less encompasses what a certain group of parents are looking for. Perhaps less about the actual selection process and more about the style and tenor of the school?