To think that if grammar schools were more available , private schools would almost 'vanish'

[smokepole]

The percentage of pupils educated in private schools is about 7% of the school population, similarly 4% are educated in grammar schools. I am wondering if there was a 'nationally' available network of about 350 grammar schools (including Boarding provision) , what percentage of parents would still use private education.

Diet. I am pleased you commented on my post about ASD and how Comprehensive Schools are in many cases the wrong places for 'bright' pupils with SPLD.

I personally know how daunting a 1500 pupil school is for a child with ASD having suffered with undiagnosed (1980s) Aspergers/Dyslexia/Dyspraxia myself.

Sassy. The very fact that Wirral has 6 3 Boys and 3 Girls Grammar schools means that 'Birkenhead High School'was facing a difficult future being a selective private school.

There is also a belief among many private schools in the North west in particular Liverpool (Belvedere) that many schools would like to join the state sector. This could be done by either using an Open Access scheme, which is a modern take on direct grant type schools, or by allowing such schools to remain selective if they choose to.

However, I think 'Bradford Girls Grammar' may have been affected by demographic changes to the city, forcing it down the road to joining the state sector.

My two remaining school aged daughters are at a comprehensive. They have never mentioned chair chuckers, so I doubt they have encountered any. They themselves are not chair chuckers. If they were then I am sure I would have heard from the school about it by now.

I, on the other hand, remember being a brick chucker. It was 1971 and I was in reception (aged 4). It was a plastic toy brick from a toy building set. A boy the same age as me was being irritating so I lobbed it at him. I earned myself a trip to the headmaster's office for that and never did anything like it again. I never became a chair chucker or anything like that though.

"
That doesn't make it acceptable to make nasty comments about private school kids though does it? Or do you think it does?"

No. But I can't remember the last time I saw a "nasty comment about private school kids". The "rich thick" moment on this thread wasn't one. But the characterization of state school children happens daily.

LOL, I went to a very posh / academic girls school, a direct grant school - half county scholarship places (sort of super-grammar) half selective private.

A chair was once thrown, we used to put lolly sticks in the fans to make a terrible racket and interrupt the lesson, there were fights behind the science block, a pregnancy following a ski-trip...

Some of the U.Ks biggest institutions are run by my contemporaries from this hell hole, a raging example as to why selective schools, private schools and scholarship places should be abolished! ;)

(happy parent of successful comp-student)

Hakluyt @ 07.59 it's not because of snobbery or grades even that I don't want my level 6 kids mixing with level 3 kids - it's the bullying and life long residual anxiety from my own secondary comp days (where I was the level 6 kid) from which I want to protect my kid

Please don't take someones comments to heart, as far as I am aware from previous posts she was home educated and has absolutely no idea what its like to go into school scared every day. So try and ignore.

If every single posters on MN came on and careful and painfully spelt out all their issues with comps/secondary moderns, she would totally ignore every single one, ask you repeated questions, then ignore again as she doesn't like your answers, as they don't fit with a narrow and rigid view she has forced herself to believe.

I have seen many posters describe really upsetting things and then being ridiculed or have their experiences totally written off. I wouldn't mind so much if one had been in this, but knowing it was cosy home ed, it riles.

blu your posts suggests nothing else than your not protecting your children in a bubble by sending them private.

Your gaining something else but a bubble from humans with problems will never be achievable.

At heart, my objection to both independent schools and grammar schools is that, by separating some children out from the majority either by parental wealth or ability to pass the 11+ (interpreted as 'intelligence') it encourages them to believe that they are 'better' than the others. I'm sure all parents of children at these schools would profess to be horrified at this thought, but it is inescapable.

What I love about my DS's comprehensive school is that while he is rewarded and admired for his academic ability, he has many friends who are not in the top sets but can be equally if not more admired for their sporting, artistic, or musical ability -- or liked because they are funny, kind, argumentative, or have an ear for accents. Sometimes, if students are badly behaved, there's a sort of horrified admiration for that too. He learns from them; they learn from him. No one is sizing up anyone else's money or class position. They all wear the same (horrible) uniform in the same distressed state.

At heart, my objection to both independent schools and grammar schools is that, by separating some children out from the majority either by parental wealth or ability to pass the 11+ (interpreted as 'intelligence') it encourages them to believe that they are 'better' than the others."

Agreed. But worse than that, I think is that the children who aren't so separated feel worse than the others. Being labelled a failure at 10 is a very hard thing.

AIBU: To Think the (11+) is Kent's equivalent to Capital Punishment !.

VR TEST

1. 11+ is to a *** As PTSD is to a Soldier (answer )

Or you could discuss it sensibly? Just a thought.

'Sorry ' It is just that many posters get so 'uptight ' about it , you would think passing or failing was a matter of life or death.

The fact that I have been on both sides of the Kent 'Pass/Fail' myself/DD1 Fail DSIS ,DD2/DS Pass line means I understand the 'relief/jubilation' of a pass or the desperation of a Fail...

"Neither system is better than the other just different."

Say more? How does the selective system benefit the 75% who don't make the cut?

Why does it have to benefit them?

2 of mine will be going,1 won't.Should my dd's school benefit her sibling's at grammar?Niether impinge on the other and both choice of school will have nothing to do with the other.They're miles apart and both will suit bith type of kid perfectly.

Hak

It isn't the fault of grammar schools though if parents allow their dc to feel failures if they don't pass.
two of mine wouldn't have passed but I certainly wouldn't have let them believe they had failed.

FriendlyLadybird I feel the same about comprehensive, (My DD goes to one) but it just wasn't like that for my son.

He wasn't admired for anything - he was bullied by the kids and written off by the school. He isn't sporty - he is just a struggler. The top set kids don't want to know - and their patronising parents were not keen for their "bright" kids to be mixing with the thickos in the bottom set - even if they were good at sport or kind and gentle. There was no flexibility, no adaptation. No attempt to actually find out what he was good at. No-one gives a shit about my child in State schools. Why would they?

In a private school if they do not make an effort to educate your child and keep him happy they don't get paid. I would like not to have to pay as I am neither rich nor posh - simply desperate.

'Parents allow their children to feel like failures', morethan? That's balls and quite offensive: offensive in that I should imagine most parents whose children fail do all they can to make sure the child doesn't feel a failure, and keeps their self esteem intact. And quite probably feels rather bad that such reassurance is hard to give. Balls in the sense that a ten year old knows if he or she has failed: if the mark wasn't a clue, the closed doors will surely make it apparent by September.

Wot the nit said.

And please can we drop the sodding term Leafy? If you mean 'in posh catchment areas' just say so. Though leaves are hard to come by round where we live, and my daughters' comp is characterised more by grime and a healthy level of free school meals. I am pretty sure neither of my children have chucked a chair too. They seem in the main to be educated with a bunch of delightful high-achievers, despite the lack of leaves.

TOSN

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend. I have no experience of grammar schools and thought that was the point being made.
Who does make them feel like failures then? Why does it happen?

To me it would be just a test to see which school you went to and many of those who don't pass the 11+ could be smart cookies and they would know this surely?

I used to feel so sorry for anyone living in a grammar school area. 'What stress' I thought, 'what pressure, what a crazy way to have to live.'

Then I realised that some people actively choose it

To me it would be just a test to see which school you went to and many of those who don't pass the 11+ could be smart cookies and they would know this surely?

I would never have passed 11+ I have never felt inferior due to this. Its not the 11+ that makes dc feel inferior if they fail.

The point of grammars is supposed to be to identify the brighter kids and give them a better education: better in the sense of more academic, more likely to get them a decent set of grades, entry into more selective universities, all that. And to segregate off the kids who want to learn, allow them to flourish in atmosphere where learning is respected, etc etc, insert chair-throwing cliche as required.

Oddly enough the kids who don't manage this are not, I think, going to be consoled with reassurances of their own Very Special Qualities. You can't have it both ways - if you support a selection exam, you also support the idea that a large number of kids will feel like failures. Because, er, they've failed.

It depends on the house hold, imagine one sibling getting in,and huge build up and excitement and pats on back, huge expectation for second sibling to get in and Uh oh......FAILS.
In that sort of circumstance I suppose the child may feel like a failure esp if the child could see more dc like HIM/her, in the other school. More "him/her" in other hobbies and outside interests.

I guess from the get go we just need to build dc esteem, never put down the schools they may end up in, always push the right/best for YOU, if one gets on and one doesn't and be open and positive.