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.

Miele, what if the nearest grammar and sink school were to merge and form a comprehensive led by the grammar SLT, if the head is part of the problem?

Sink schools are not inevitable in areas of socio-economic deprivation. And sink schools are turned around all the time. But reputation and gossip take years to dissipate.

A high number of PP children does mean a lot more money for the school. When the school is inspected, the inspectors will forensically look at what the school has done with the money to close the gap for the PP children. Those exam results are not good. Improvement is necessary and I think it would be useful to see what is in the school's PP statement on their web site! It should be there.

Yes of course some are bad. However, it's interesting tthat the catchment of the bad ones seems to be entirely made up of mumsnetters!

There are lots of mumsnetters on here who are clearly very happy with their comprehensives. A thread about grammar schools will attract people who are interested in a grammar school for their child so you are likely to get quite a few people on the thread who want a grammar for their child and are not happy with the other options available to them.
I hat just checked the comprehensive where some of my relatives go : 23% A-C GCSE. It is by no means the worst in the region though and only features as 10th worst on the LEA boroughs league table. The worst one in the LEA gets 10% A-C GCSE. These are mainstream schools. They are not the sort of schools I would be happy for my children to attend.

I can't believe there is a mere 163 Grammar schools in England! The number of threads on here suggest far more.
Hakluyt your comments made me laugh!!

And the school in the LEA with the most value added and therefore deemed best for improvement only achieves 17% A-C GCSE. Obviously the primary schools are also at fault here because if the school is adding lots of value and only getting 17% good GCSEs then clearly the children are arriving at high school at a very low level. I don't think the schools are entirely to blame as I assume that there is a lot more home life and social problems impacting on these children's learning, but that doesn't mean I want my child going to a school where so many children are unable to reached good academic level.
I have worked with deprived children in the LEA and a lot of money is spent on various support and agencies to try and improve both social and educational outcomes for the children but sadly it isn't making much difference.
That is why I was prepared to have my child sit for the grammar and independent school. My child being in one of those schools isn't going to make much difference to anybody but him if the billions spent trying to improve things for others isn't making much difference.

Perhaps the primary school is not at fault, perhaps the children come from such a low starting point of social deprivation and lack of intellectual stimulation in the home that the primary school has barely enough time to make any impact and improvements don't start to show or be quantifiable until secondary school?

In which case the 'fault' must lie (for whatever reason) with the parents. Tthis is almost always the case in the end. 'Failing' schools are overwhelming found in 'failing' areas populated by 'failing' people. You can throw all the money you like at the schools but it will only change the outcomes for a few.

Can someone explain to me what PP actually achieves?

Is it stuff like breakfast clubs? What else? If you were in charge of allocating the PP budget in a school with a very low ratio of PP children how do you decide what to spend it on that directly benefits those children?

I thought there were 164 left but someone in Kent corrected me and said it had gone down to 163. I agree that reading MN you would assume that everyone's child was sitting a selection exam. I find it very weird, it takes up so many threads and yet is irrelevant to the vast majority of posters who thankfully don't get their child's future prospects decided at 11yrs (or 10 yrs in many cases).

crossfit I agree that a lot of the problem is due to home life. I have worked with some of the families as a lot of money is spent on early intervention and trying to improve outcomes. Part of the problem we saw with primary aged children was attendance as the children are reliant on parents getting them to school at primary age. I personally used to collect some children and take them to school each day but even then I was often unable to do that because nobody would answer the door in the mornings.
Whatever the problems are for those families (and I am well aware of the problems) I don't want it impacting on the education of my children. I don't want my children at a school where vast amounts of teacher time and school financial resources is spent on helping large numbers of children who have social problems at home. I don't want my bright and motivated child in a school which has 10% of students getting A-C at GCSE. I know my view isn't popular but I won't change my view at the risk of my child's schooling.

I completely agree that much of the problem is down to home life.

There are and always have been numerous threads on her complaining about the existence of grammar schools and the impact they have on children, but poor parenting is like the elephant in the room that no one wants to mention despite the fact that it is the thing that makes the biggest difference in a school.

I find the 'a bright and motivated child will do fine wherever they go' argument so frustrating! Being bright or motivated or both isn't a reason to think it's fine to send a child to a school where there experience will be harder than it has to be, and it's not a reason for a parent to decide they don't have to worry about finding the best school they can for their child.

Absolutely Miele. It is so easy for children starting secondary school to either feel out of their depth and miserable despite their academic ability or to be led by others in a negative way because it isn't seen as cool to stick to the rules and work hard.

Children, like adults are all different, and I think having a different schools to suit different needs is a good thing. I don't understand the mentality of some that see the only right way of educating children is by educating them all in exactly the same way in the same building. They aren't all the same, and that's fine by me.

A previous poster asked "what does pupil premium actually do? What is it spent on?"

I have 2 DCs on FSMs (and therefore they get pupil premium) at a super-selective grammar school. At their school there is no queue-jumping because of FSMs, so the numbers who get in, who are eligible for pupil premium are tiny. Only 19 children out of 900+ have at any time in the last 6 years been on FSMs!

Every term, the Pupil Premium Manager meets with my DCs, reviews their performance and discusses with them where they would like the money spent. DC2 has additional needs. His needs are not so serious as to warrant a statement (although he's on the SEN register), so the school does not get any extra SEN money for him; instead they are able to spend the PP money supporting him. This includes paying for one session a week with a TA; after-school classes with a teacher etc.

DC1 does not have additional needs and achieves pretty well, so it has been harder to find things to spend the money on. At one point the school asked me if I would like it spending on a school trip, and I said no, because I would rather the school had the money to spend on teaching. This year he is doing his GCSEs and the school provided study/revision guides for him and also lunchtime revision sessions one-to-one with a teacher in a subject he is finding difficult.

Even if the school adjusted their admission criteria so that FSM children were prioritised, I cannot imagine this would make a massive difference to the numbers passing the test. As it's a super-selective, DCs can (and do!) take the test from anywhere in the country; so you do have to be very bright to stand any chance of passing. A whole busload of 50 children arrive every morning from a city 45 miles away. Other people living further away move house, if their child passes. One family even sent a note round the school asking if any local family would be willing to be paid to have their DC live with them Monday to Friday, to save the child travelling 60 miles there and back every day!

The OP's ire should, I think, not be directed at the very few FSM children this policy will probably benefit; but at the fact that there are so few GSs left that everyone is desperate to get in.

Tiggy, other children are helped, because people who work in schools are obviously going to want to support the children that need the most help. But when there's no extra funding for it, and there's only so many hours in a day and limited resources, that extra support does come at the expense of other children who although are well supported at home, still deserve to be well supported at school.

That's a good point too switchitoff, if there were enough grammar school places for every child that wanted one and was capable of achieving one, there wouldn't be an issue with some children being given priority over others.

We need more grammar schools IMO. The problem then would be that we'd also end up with more secondary modern type schools, which in itself is fine except for the fact that we'd have all the children from troubled, unmotivated families further concentrated in the same place, so standards would likely be lower in those schools. Again though, that problem would only exist because of poor parenting.

On the 'bright children cannot do well in a comprehensive with poor headline results in an area of social deprivation'...

I have some inside knowledge of an 11-16 school like this. Worst 'headline' GCSE results in the county but best progress figures. One of the highest FSM percentages in the country. Vast majority of the intake is low achieving on entry - so less than L4 in all SATs at the end of Y6. Very, very little employment in surrounding community, so families do not see education as a 'way out' because there are no jobs. Many of the pupils are 3rd or 4th generation workless. A search for the town or school on MN produces 0 hits, it definitely isn't a MN area!

All - all 3 - of the pupils who were higher ability on entry in a recent year got 8 or more A-A* GCSEs. One of those has gone on to get an offer from Oxford from local 6th form college (the school took a minbusload down to Oxford in Y9, before GCSE choices made, so that pupils raised aspirartions and made appropriate GCSE choices that facilitated their route forward).

It makes, statistically, very little difference to their 'headline' GCSE %, because the numbers involved are so small. But it doesn't mean that such a school cannot do well by its few HA pupils.

"Again though, that problem would only exist because of poor parenting."

Are you sure that families with good parenting skills never have LA children, who would also go to secondary modern schools?

Is Kent, which essentially has the system you describe, a beacon iof educational excellence???

As I have said on here before, if children fell into 2 polarised groups - 'very bright' and 'low academic achievers', then having a polarised education system of 2 sepaerate school types might make sense.

But academic ability is essentially a bell curve, though chldren can sit at different points on that curve for different subjects.

The 11+ essentially puts an arbitrary line down that bell curve - and in a wholly grammar / SM system it is at a point where the curve is quite high, representing a large number of children within a tiny mark range on either side of the line - and separates the two parts.

So a child with 1 mark more than another gets a totally different schooling. On another day, with a different version of the test, thousands upon thousands of children would swap places, because the change in marks needed to change side of the line is so small.

Children who are exceptionally able in 1 subject and not so good in another are not catered for at all - if they land in the grammar, they may never get the help they need in their weaker subject (I know of a child currently desperately revising for their 3rd shot at their Maths GCSE in a grammar ..only they are now entered at a different centre because the school doesn't want them on their stats...). If they land in a SM, they never get a peer group in their stronger subject. In a comp, they would simply be in different sets, and would get appropriate teaching in both.

Teacher, in that example, doesn't it strike you as odd that in an entire year group there are only 3 high ability children? It does seem odd to me, because low income doesn't equal low intelligence.

If I were faced with having to send a high ability child of my own to that school, the fact that three HA children got good GCSE results would be very little comfort. Who wants their child to only have two other people in their year group that are of a similar academic ability to them?

The majority of parents I met from DD1s 'modern' school were quite happy that their children were there!. There were not in the slight bit bothered about grammar schools. The parents of the children on the whole were not that concerned about grades, but wanted the school to enable their children were 'employable. .

I do think the posters on here , who decry selective education, are most unlike the parents who have children in 'modern' school. The posters tend to make sweeping statements of 'what' parents with children at modern schools want or require . This is a bit like Milliband saying he knows the working class and what they think.

'Metropolitan Liberial Left Wing Ideology' comes in to some posters when talking about selective education....

Are you sure that families with good parenting skills never have LA children, who would also go to secondary modern schools?

I think I might be missing the question here, because it can't think of why parents with good parenting skills would have looked after children. Maybe the criteria for being looked after covers more than I'm thinking of.