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.

National average is 59% A*-C I think. Anyone care to name and shame the 17%ers?

A grammar chose my DS (well we chose to apply, he passed and was offered a place) but we chose to turn the place down. The GS didn't choose for us to turn the place down.

Ihate don't you live in Bath?Hope you don't mind me mentioning it,not being nasty but as an ex Bathonian can I just say that many poorer residents have been pushed out by Londoners buying up property. You need a certain standard of living to live in Bath.We couldn't afford to buy our old flat now in Bath,it's worth more than our 4 bed house. One of the reasons we moved out.You have mentioned previously how hard it is to afford property there and are on a HTR.

Honestly not being nasty but your comp situation isn't a good example of the country as a whole. Also those bussing their kids in need to be able to afford said bus.Where we live the bus to the non feeder comp is £100 a month per child.Poorer families can't afford that.

The sutton trust found that areas without grammars and those without comps did pretty similarly in terms of entrance to good universities by the way.

I want children of all abilities to go to a good school. I want children of all socio-economic backgrounds to go to a good school.

I understand why people in areas with less good schools want the grammar life raft for bright kids, but that is a pragmatic solution that only solves part of the problem, while worse, creating other problems. Including in full grammar areas actually creating the match Ed bad school!

So in principle my vote goes to improving all schools for all students. Ensuring that all comps do well by high flyers and by medium ability and vocational- orientated kids.
Then there will be no need to tinker about with FSM score thresholds, no house price hierarchy, no parental panic.....

It can be done: the high number of good comps in different areas and types of area proves that.

Yes I do LePetit, and I do agree, we do have good schools in Bath and for that I am very grateful. House prices are ridiculous. We have an ex-local authority house and were lucky to afford that, so I do know where you're coming from. You are also right about Londoners moving here. We seem to have a lot of ex-Londoners at our local primary. The bus fares for dd1 will be really expensive, around £700 a year I believe, but that is our closest school.

A list here of the schools which were performing badly around the time my neice was applying for the 17% school. Some of these schools might now be doing better especially as some have converted to academies and have new management systems in place (I'm still not sure that academies are a good thing).
Sorry it is a telegraph link but I was trying to find something relevant to the time without needing to name the school directly and out myself.
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3356423/Full-list-of-failing-schools.html

So many questions skated round on threads about selective education. For example.

1)Why do bright children need to be educated in a different school, rather than in a different set of their less academic peers?

2. Why, even if bright children do do marginally better in grammar schools, should the entire system be geared to benefit that minority, to the detriment of the majority? Why is the right hand side of the bell curve more importand than the middle or the left?

Define a bog standard Grammar School ?. 96%-98% GCSE Average of 230 Points : A level Grade B- ...

That is a good standard and the term Bog Standard is unfair....and untrue

Hak . A Comprehensive from 'Hull' Endeavour High School 14% GCSE..
Parklands High School Liverpool 11% GCSE. both 2014 results

No Grammar Schools in Hull or Liverpool (except Bluecoat Liverpool)

I looked at the Sutton Trust but decided not to link because it doesn't matter what the evidence, people will ignore it if they don't like it!

People prefer to think that comprehensives are all bog standard and that you would need outreach programmes to even think of Oxbridge. If you happen to mention a successful one it is dismissed because of house prices.
163 grammar schools is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Those educated privately are an almost as small percentage. It glosses over the fact that over 90% go to comprehensives- many doing very well indeed. They at least have opportunities to improve- no one says 'you can't be a doctor because you only got level 4 when you were 11yrs old'!!

I know of at least two schools on that list that have turned round and are now "Ofsted Outstanding", Superexcited. But predictably, a lot of the failing schools are in grammar school areas.

Why, even if bright children do do marginally better in grammar schools, should the entire system be geared to benefit that minority, to the detriment of the majority? Why is the right hand side of the bell curve more importand than the middle or the left?

Isn't it more the case that all children should be able to do their very best without negative impact on others. Shouldn't the system be capable of getting the best out of all children. Why should even a tiny majority of pupils be hindered (even by half a grade) for the benefit of other children?

I also wonder if that's why the local comps here are good, as we don't have grammars. Everyone who doesn't go private goes to one of the comps. They therefore are representative of the population as a whole.

"He would stick out like a sore thumb and likely be bullied and be unhappy. It's a hard hard place to be different at teenage years when you are tying to fit in. He would be different. "

So let's stop supporting systems which create and perpetuate this sort of social and academic apartheid!

Miele- what are the results like at your local sink school?

On the '17% comprehensive'...

It is hard to do the analysis - from www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/ - because the tables incorrectly deem the 'other' school in grammar areas to be a comprehensive, and also classify academies separately

Also tricky because a large number of independent and grammar schools have 0% on the key 5A* to C including English and Maths measure, and others have depressed results, because iGCSEs are not counted for the purpose of the table.

However, a very 'finger in the air' guess would be that there are a very tiny number - perhaps 5 in each region, 45-50 nationwide, out of 6310 secondary schools in total - of 'normal schools' [what are studio schools???? They do NOT do well] who got less than 20% on this key measure in this while taking GCSEs not iGCSEs. The number would be MUCH lower for 2013 - the government fiddling with Maths and English GCSEs last year did pupil at the lower margins n favours.

Some of those 50ish may well be the 'other' schools in grammar areas - it is hard to tell without local knowledge of each.

mrsShad I'm glad that some of the schools have turned around. It fills me with great hope that the education system can get better despite all the constant changes and new ideas like free schools which drain resources from other schools.
Smoke poles schools are based on very recent results though. I had rather hoped schools generally had all improved since my neice applied for senior school but clearly some are still crap.
Why do London schools get such better funding than other schools around the country? I appreciate that wages are higher but even given that difference the levels of funding around the country doesn't add up and is leaving schools in some deprived areas way behind.

Hak: Miele has said: 40% A* to C. She hasn't borken out the results for high, middle and lower ability children. I would say for a school with 66% FSM it is actually doing not too badly in terms of results.

Sorry, Miele, missed that.

miele's posts kind of inadvertently say it all... She's not choosing the grammar for academic reasons but because it's an effective and efficient way to avoid the children on FSM who talk differently and behave badly!