Priority admissions to grammar for free school meals

[polycomfort]

I'm pretty much not a person to start hand-wringing over low income families getting breaks. Happy for people less fortunate to get the odd leg up. Fine.

But I'm really angry to have just read that the local grammar school has just started giving priority admission to children claiming free school meals. I understand they get an extra £900 per child so I get that there is probably a financial benefit for the schools themselves. But I've been practicing with my daughter every evening (can't afford a tutor) using books I've bought cheap on Amazon and was thinking she might be just about good to go after lots of effort from both of us and now I'm just thinking what's the point? There are 20 applications per space as it is, and now just because I'm not poor she has even less of a chance. We don't have a high income but I work full time and so she doesn't get free school meals. For my efforts I may end up having to send my really rather bright daughter to the crappy (and it is crap) local comp even though she may be brighter than a child whose parent doesn't bust a gut to work every day of the week.

I don't think it's okay for grammar schools to be crammed full of wealthy kids who could go to private school, but couldn't they do a household income cut off rather than using a free school meal as the criteria? Then all the kids who can't afford to go to private school could be assessed for grammar school. I don't see why kids from the middle income should be penalised.

YABU I think it's fantastic that FSM children are being made a priority. As others have said if your DD is bright she will do well anywhere.

You mentioned smoking etc OP.
I agree ihatelego. If it makes a difference to OP's DD then she was never a strong candidate and probably not suited. Passing 11+ is the start and not the end.

• nothing to do with the quality of the teaching, though it may have something to do with them having an awareness that there is is two tier system - and they're in the bottom tier. Way to go in letting kids know where they are in the pecking order. No wonder so many have low expectations

^ this of course would be the tier system that exists in her own school wouldn't it which is far more relevant to her life than some other distant school.

And your blaming her failure on just this are you?

YABU - from what I have read, this doesn't just apply to kids on FSM. It applies to anyone on PP. You seem to purely be talking about FSM because it offers you a daily mail type approach to criticising this attempt to give people an opportunity to have an equal playing field.

You don't seem to care about the challenges faced by kids on PP, as long as your daughter gets to go to GS. Other people move house in order to have access to their preferred school, or they apply and their kids travel. Why not do this, rather than moaning about other kids having equal access to a range of opportunities.

I genuinely can't believe what I am reading on here tonight

"Kids all smoking right outside, always stories in the paper because someone's been excluded for drugs, or weapons, poor grades, high exclusion rates."

That would be our local private schools.....

Comprehensive entirely different.

I can't believe the OP stated
Surely if she is that bright then she will pass the 11 plus and get in without a problem? Not necessarily. There is a cut off point which they have to achieve to be considered, and then the children who all achieve something above the cut off point will be put in to an order. The order will most likely be the very, very wealthy children who have either been to private primary school and/ or had an expensive tutor, followed by the children of equal or lesser intellect to my DD who get free school meals.

Followed my my DD and those in her situation.

And at no point has retracted this. Have you actually LOOKED at the admissions policy OP? Can't see that you have anywhere

Oh, and whilst we're at it

An annual report using pupil attainment data matched to pupil characteristics information from the annual school census to produce data on performance gaps at Key Stages 1 to 4.
Key points
The performance of pupils eligible for free school meals is lower than their non eligible counterparts at all key stages and in all performance measures.
Looking at the core subject indicator (see definitions), the gap in performance has generally narrowed over the last four years at Key Stages 2 and 3. At Key Stage 4, the gap in performance in the Level 2 threshold including a GCSE A*-C in English/Welsh and maths widened every year to 2009-10 before narrowing in the following three years, but the gap has widened again between 2012-13 and 2013-14.
The gap in performance increases with key stage level.
There is a strong link between achievement and the level of entitlement to free school meals: as the level of FSM entitlement increases, the level of achievement decreases.

gov.wales/statistics-and-research/academic-achievement-free-school-meals/?lang=en

At the grammar school my daughter attends (untutored to get in by the way including none by her Primary school, lone parent family so out at work and not home to tutor either, no entitlement to FSM and no sibling to assist in placement, also living a bus ride in so that went against us too) the FSM % is 1.5% according to OFSTED.

How many children do you HONESTLY think this is going to give an advantage to? But hey, you don't care because the're not yours. But I bet a pound to a penny if your daughter doesn't get in they'll be the scapegoats.

"And your blaming her failure on just this are you?"

Dd's failure is entirely her own. She is profoundly disaffected.

And to back up this

www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/our_projects/child_poverty/child_poverty_what_is_poverty/child_poverty_statistics_facts.htm

And yet it makes OP angry that they might get a bit of extra consideration.

I might see some merit in a grammar school system if someone could answer my very simple question. Why can't my non academic DS be educated in the same school as my academic DS?

If grammar schools exist (which I think they shouldn't) then the admission criteria should be strictly academic. Otherwise there's no point in having them.

I went to a girls' grammar (and I hated it) and we had classmates on FSM who had passed the exam fairly.

Of course the "awful" comps would be a lot better if the grammar didn't cream off the most academic DCs.

Interesting that the OP is not saying a)how the high attainers at her "crappy" high school do and b) what the admissions criteria for the grammar school actually are.

And also interesting that nobody is addressing Mehitabel's question.

Why can't my non academic DS be educated in the same school as my academic DS?

He can in a comp. Another reason to get rid of grammars.

He was MythicalKings and they both did very well. I don't think anyone is ever going to answer my question.

There is no fair answer, is there?

Both DCs went to the comp and did as well as they could have done anywhere. 5 degrees between the 2 of them.

Both academically outstripped their grammar school educated parents. We only have one degree each.

"Today 07:39 Mehitabel6

He was MythicalKings and they both did very well. I don't think anyone is ever going to answer my question."

Well, according to many mn, they are fundamentally different from each other and therefore need different types of school.

There seems to be a view that you can easily sort children into sheep and goats - 'academic' and 'non-academic', 'bright' and 'not bright'.

"Well, according to many mn, they are fundamentally different from each other and therefore need different types of school. hmm"

I think to some mumsnetters, and all grammar school supporters, "bright" children are fundamentally different and need a different type of school. I don't, frankly, think they care very much about all the others. There is lip service occasionally to "vocational" education, as though it's a choice between Latin and metalwork. But it's mostly about class. Grammar schools are now even more the preserve of the privileged middle classes. And any suggestion that the situation is unfair brings on an attack of the vapours.

I still haven't found a single person able to say why my non academic DS shouldn't be in in the same school as my academic DS.

Perhaps the reason the question went unanswered for so long is that there is no reason that both of your children shouldn't be educated in the same school. Grammar schools give a choice in the areas that still have a grammar school system but nobody is forced to put their children through the 11+ and send their children to different schools based on one being academic and one being non academic.
I, On the other hand have very little choice about sending my children to different schools because one is very academic and could have attended the grammar in the next borough where he was offered a place, the comp which we are in catchment for or the independent that offered him a full bursary place, my other child is a teenager with the developmental age of a two year old and therefore has to attend a specialist school for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties. I have very little choice over where he can go to school and it certainly wouldn't be appropriate for him to go to a mainstream school. I would love to have the choice of the two of my children attending the same school but as it couldn't happen I allowed the academic one to go to the school where he wanted to go, which is a selective school. Had he not got I to a selective school then I would have deemed him not to be a good match for that school and he would have gone to the comp. I wouldn't have been taking sharp intakes of breath and complaining about prep kids, tutored kids or FSM kids taking all of the places unfairly.

The are fundamentally very similar. I could have a huge list of similarities and a smaller one of differences.
They were in the same school, they had some of the same teachers. They both did very well.
Why do they need a different school?
Why can't the same teacher cope with both?

If you have 11+ then you don't have a choice of comprehensive. I wouldn't want to send either of mine to a school that misses the top end.
Both my children did very well at the same school.

They do play 'lip service' on MN but then get profoundly upset if the grammar school makes allowances for disadvantaged children!
They are fine with grammar schools promoting social mobility as long as it doesn't compromise their child's chance of a place!

So far no one has directly answered my question- just thanks to the 2 people who have tried to answer it, based on what they think others think.

Dividing kids into bright and less bright at age 11 is stupid and unfair on children with less engaged parents or parents who are unable to pay for private junior schools or tutoring.

11 is too young.

I'm amazed that anyone thinks it's a good or fair system.

All schools should accept all children in their catchment area and all schools should cater to all children. Sets within a school are accessible to all and allow children that mature later than 11 a chance.

The scandal in all of this is that there are some secondary school that do so badly.

^If you have 11+ then you don't have a choice of comprehensive. I wouldn't want to send either of mine to a school that misses the top end.
Both my children did very well at the same school.^

We had a choice of both comp or grammar because the grammar is in a neighbouring LEA and our own LEA doesn't have Grammars so it has comps. Many Children from out of catchment and out of borough go to the grammar. The secondary moderns in the neighbouring LEA produce better results than my three nearest comps.
There is no reason why children of different academic ability (assuming no severe disability) shouldn't attend the same mainstream schools but whilst choice exists some people will want to exercise that choice and I don't have a problem with people choosing to do that.
Like I said I can only wish that both of my children were NT and could attend the same comp together, but they can't. People who have an academic child and a non academic child don't have to (without choice) split their children into two different schools.

Mehitabel6 I agree, it's perfectly possible to teach the most and least able, and all in between, at the same school and, indeed, often in the same classes.

Really? Do you think it would be possible to teach my teenager with a developmental age of two (and zero verbal language) in the same class as other typical children of the same age? There are always exceptions.

"People who have an academic child and a non academic child don't have to (without choice) split their children into two different schools."

Well if they live in a selective area and want their child to have an academic peer group they do!