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.

well it does say play ground knife crime.. I am assuming its in the play ground

DS orighinally thought that he might want to go tio the boys' superselective. Then he visited. He was TERRIFIED - and that was at an open day. Little pupil-teacher violence, but a LOT of pupil on pupil violence in the name of 'boys will be boys' and 'it's just horseplay'.

but you see if we did have a super selective in our area (there is one a fair trek away but too far to travel, would need to leave at 5am or somesuch), then it would attract all the straight A* students out of the good comprehensives, but the ones that would actually need it (imo) would be the A grade students from the poorer comps. I'm not at all sure it would work properly.

Of course there's violence in schools. I am a school governor and I have been involved in excluding children for violence.

And I don't mean the actual, physical building! What I meant was that giving 25% what they actually, actively want means that the remaining 75% get what's left. Nobody, or very few people make an active choice to go to a secondary modern. It's just where you go if you fail the 11+.

Word, normality is exactly what I wanted for mine as well. My entire reasoning behind sending them to selective schools.

People like to generalise and stereotype and say that it's about the uniform, not mixing with the hoi polloi or a number of other inanities, but really, being normal is all I wanted for them. And in a school where 30% of the cohort gets at least 8 As and A*s, the schools they went to enabled them to be "normal" in their environment. My children are resilient, settled, assertive, happy and high-functioning in a way I never was until my mid 30s, largely due to bullying throughout my childhood (which, combined with a toxic family environment, wasn't a great start). My self-esteem is still not that great and I have tremendous lows, but my children at least do not appear to experience them.

But duchesse my children are also resilient, settled, assertive, happy and high-functioning and go to a completely non selective school. I'm really not sure the two are connected, or if they are that it is the school system that makes it so and not wider societal issues. dh and I both went to academically selective independent/ public schools and I'd not say either of us were as happy or confident during our school days as our children are right now.

"And in a school where 30% of the cohort gets at least 8 As and A*s, the schools they went to enabled them to be "normal" in their environment."

It is really interesting that you quantify it in this way - because an environment very similar to that you feel was only available in a selective school is available to me in a comp. Which is why DS and DD's ability, probably very similar to your children's, is as 'normal' in their comp as it would be in your selective school.

Neither of my children aspire to normality though, ds is quite an iconoclast and dd stands out in her own way too.

talkin I have never ever tried to give the impression that my DS attends state school. I've been very open as to where he attends!

Why would I do that?

I've also never claimed my son is a genius. Quite the contrary.

But the evidence indicates that he is an educational outlier. Not what I've been 'led to believe' but the blindingly obvious facts!

And at school I want him to be a regular school boy, not unusual! Clearly you just don't get it...

Nooka, just smiling at the idea of DS being 'normakl'. His ability is 'normal;' for his environment, but it is lucky tha he does not aspire to 'normaility' in all ways as I think it unlikely that he could ever achieve it!

Could you quantify hs 'outlierness'? Olympiad?

These threads always come back to most of us being really happy wkth our school choices. I have been really pleased with the very selective top private schools where my children have gone and there are plenty of parents on the thread with children at comps who are delighted too - which is great. What is unfair is that some parts of the country have selective state schooling and others do not. That is inconsistent in what is supposed to be one nation.

If parents want normal - wow that's amazing and shows how different we all are. I would have assumed most parents wanted their children to do better than others. If most are instead out there wanting to bring their child down to some unsuccessful mean then that's great news for parents who want their children to do better than all the others - there is less competition. In the big bad world of jobs the best do better.

As for whether children from selective schools do better than comp children at university the studies are not clear.

"UPDATE 6 JULY 2013

The Telegraph reported the findings of Higher Education Funding Council research into “the degree outcomes and employment circumstances of young UK-domiciled students starting a full-time first degree course in 2006-07 at a higher education institution”. This found that privately-education students were more likely to obtain a first/2:1 degree than state-educated ones. They were also more likely to be in a top graduate job. The latter finding is unsurprising – privately-educated students are more likely to be able to access networks unavailable to state-educated students. The research also made the unsurprising finding that higher tariff points (based on A levels, AS levels and Scottish Highers) translated into a higher quality degree. The research looked at 24,360 students from independent schools, 184,580 from state schools and 16,830 students whose education was “unknown”. "

Apologies, pressed send too soon - educational attainment in terms iof exams taken so far? IQ [outmoded butoperhaops relevant]. It is not sufficient tio state that because he attends a selective schiool he is an ouitlier - do you mean a 1 in 10,000 type level of attainment? Or simply a top 1 or 2%?

Interested in this idea of "normal"

My ds is not academically "normal" in his school (although I hasten to add that in a good comprehensive school he would be top sets, but probably not top of the top sets.He is only not "normal" because of the type of school he's in) He is not normal musically either. He is at the higher end for sport but certainly normal there. But he eats pizza for lunch, gets into trouble for chatting and for not doing his tie up properly. He likes Marvel superheroes and skateboarding and awful teen comedy on UTube. He loves football and is fanatical about LFC. He complains about his homework and loves his skateboard. He has friends over and they eat their body weight in doughnuts. So the "normal" things about him outweigh the "not normal" I do wish he had more academic peers- but I think that's more my problem than his. I think he feels perfectly "normal". Even if he was doing other people's homework for money before I found out and stomped.......

Are the .2% kids in the super selective going to spend the rest of their lives only with people like them?

When I say I wanted them to be normal, I mean I wanted them not to feel like freaks.

DS had attended 3 different schools by the age of 6, each keener than the previous to label him in some way. Apparently his biggest crime was that he preferred reading to going out to play football with the other boys.

Could you quantify hs 'outlierness'? Olympiad?

Presume this was to Word, but I thought we'd agreed 'outlierness' would be different for different schools?

Olympiad standard would be outlier at bad comp (by a good stretch at a very bad comp), but not at a good one imo.

And no, Hak, those 0.2% will grow up and doubtless evolve into adults who don't have to deal with being pushed around physically and rejected bluntly just for being themselves. They will engineer themselves into jobs and environments where they are appreciated for what they can offer.

Hak your ds sounds great. I think being good at sport is a great asset to him, in that imo, outliers that tend to have problems are the ones that tend to want to sit in the corner of the IT lab coding rather than those that are out on the rugby pitch mixing with everyone else.

I absolutely agree that 'outlierness' - and beuing treated as a freak - depends on the quality iof the schiool not the span of ability of its intake. DS was seen as a freak in his first village school he went to, but not in the much better town school he then attended. The spread of ability in each school was almost identical - though as the town school was larger DS did have more 'near peers. What mattered much more was that the town school was very well-run and the vllage school wasn't.

Xenia, the academic "best" don't necessarily get all the top jobs in life.

In fact, they will likely be managed by someone, possibly from a comp, someone with people skills.

Someone who is not arrogant and smug, for example.

Being academically strong but with poor people skills is not a guaranteed success in the work place.

Normal is a pretty good starting point for kids to take off in their own direction, without being pushed into a big money earning job by pushy parents and hothouse schools.

For a lot of people financial success does not equate happiness.

Hothouse schools can cause terrible anxiety stress and depression in their pupils.

Personally I avoid those kind of schools like the plague.

But I am glad others jump at any chance of getting into them, leaving spaces for my kids at the local comp.

See, you think we are fools, but I think people like you are the foolish ones who don't understand that there are many different ways in which to be successful and happy.

Not just as a top lawyer. Or banker or doctor. Not all of us dream of that for our kids!

My ds is both academically gifted and has SENs, so he is a bit of an outlier both ways. Nothing very dramatic though. He's just a very quirky kid really, and he revels in that, marches to his own drum really, with the issues and benefits associated. I think he rather enjoys having children around that might try to put him down because he is very quick on his feet and can run circles around them verbally. It was fun listening to him advising his much quieter cousin on how to deal with bullying behaviour in her school (she was wide mouthed and giggling at his suggestions, but apparently went back to her school with a different attitude).

dd on the other hand is very studious and quite academically driven, to be honest I'd be quite worried about her in a pressured environment, she already puts so much pressure on herself to perform I think she might quite ill. She seems to find the stimulation of the other high performing children sufficient for motivation, but in general it's the teacher she is looking to impress. She embraces her nerdish tendencies.

One thing their school is really good at, and I think this is partly a local thing is that academic success is not seen as the only way to achieve. They have a strong trades element too, and this is not seen as a second best option, just different (skilled trades can earn very high incomes here). So ds has had friends who aspired to be heavy mechanics when he was thinking about being a lawyer/doctor and his path was not necessarily seen as superior.

What's wrong with the IT lab my ds spends much happy time in his, where being a geek is considered a perfectly acceptable option. I wish that sports wasn't so bigged up at school, sure it's an easy way to gain popularity, but for those that are less gifted physically it's just as excluding as struggling academically, except possibly less obvious.

"When I say I wanted them to be normal, I mean I wanted them not to feel like freaks."

I do know what you mean. But my ds is just an much of a "freak" academically at his school as yours is- just at a lower level. Is there something specific about being at the very right hand extreme end of the bell curve that causes problems? Is it absolute, not relative ? The academic difference between my ds and most of his peers is, frankly, probably about the same in relative terms. He just isn't a absolute genius!

Funny how we can react to similar things in different ways. I was the 'freak' at primary school, posh in a very working class school, English when all my peers were Irish, and a bit odd too. I decided that the best way to avoid that for my children was to make sure they were schooled in a more diverse environment where there were lots of differences and so theirs wouldn't stand out so much. I didn't want them to be the 'one in a million' type child, but I didn't want them to blend in either because I think that brings it's own challenges.

I know what you mean Nooka. As soon as I realised that ds would not be going to school with his academic peers, I encouraged him to think about all the other things he is. So, he is a proud geek. But also lots of other people too.

But he isn't a real objective outlier-maybe i'd feel differently if he was.