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.

As I have said before th worst case of bullying I have ever come across was at a well known London prep school and continued on to a well known public school. It was sophisticated, psychological and racist. Qnd it was ignored by the staff. In one case, colluded with by staff.

However, thwt does not say anything about the sector. Just about the school.

That is all very true and very awful, smokepole.

What isn't true is that bullying is inevitable. Or that it will not happen in a grammar school.

It really isn't the type of school it is the ethos of the school.
I know parents of girls who have thought their DD would be happy in the 'safe' environment of an all girls grammar to find that they were bullied- and in a very subtle, hard to detect way.

We haven't had any real experience of bullying fortunately, but it can think of a couple of short lived 'incidents', which the GS have dealt with very effectively.

I think for us, the GS environment has been beneficial for our 'different' ds simply because there are so many 'different' children all concentrated in one place that being different doesn't make anyone stand out. There are a lot of students there with HFA who don't really relate to their peers in the same way that most teenagers do, but they at least all have each other to relate to. It is easier for them to find friends than it could have been otherwise, especially considering that social skills often aren't a strength in these children.

"And in my experience. Being different gets you bullied."

Miele, my middle ds goes to a state primary school in a very deprived area and is and always has been the only white boy in his class (actually he's mixed race but he appears completely Caucasian). He is tiny, smart, a bit camp, and a talented musician. He has never been bullied. My other ds is autistic, at the same school, and is very eccentric and opinionated. He has also never been bullied (he's had people say mean things to him, but he won't let it go when it happens, and people have learned to leave him alone if they don't want a shed load of shit descending on them).

Honestly - many state schools are so diverse that it's hard to identify what constitutes 'difference'. It's the private schools and grammar schools which don't appear to have much diversity around my way. Almost all the girls at the local private school look like they've been pressed out of the same mould - long skinny legs, swingy pony-tails, perfect complexions. The girls at the comprehensive my dd goes to on the other hand, come in all shapes and sizes, from massively obese to tiny and skinny. They have the leggy girls in mini-skirts, the girls in hijab with trousers under their skirts, the girls carrying huge book bags and violin cases, and the ones puffing fags 5 metres from the school gates dd sadly .

The diversity thing is interesting, I've found that there's far more diversity at the GS we use than the comp.

The comp probably has more economic diversity, but that's not something that can be easily seen on the surface. There is some ethnic diversity, but not much. Most people are either Christian or non religious. The GS on the other hand probably has less economic diversity, but ethnically and culturally the diversity is very rich. My ds at the GS routinely mixes with people who's parents come from all over the world and are well travelled because of that, and his small friendship group includes Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and children like him who don't follow any religion.

I think it might be super selective specific actually. If you're taking the top 2ish% from a wide area then the cohort isn't going to represent the local area quite so closely as a 25%er catchment grammar.

Tiggy, yes, my observation is entirely school specific. The schools I'm referring to are the only secondary schools I have any real experience of.

Coming across bullying and being bullied are two different things.

Your mentioning lots about experience H your experience of bullying, your experience of schools with bullying in, I do hope your giving us these instances from a professional point of view, are you working in the field, going into schools to help etc?

If not...not sure what value your limited experience has.

"If not...not sure what value your limited experience has."

Er- presumably as much value as anyone else's?

Of course your experience has the same value as anyone else's Hak. It would be helpful if you answered Mieles question to know what your personal experience is though.

Everyone's experience of schools - save for a couple of posters on here who have jobs that take them or someone very close to them into a very wide varuety of schools on a regular basis - is necessarily extremely limited.

We can talk about our own schooling, our children's schooling, schools we have worked in as teachers, and schools we know of through close friends and relatives : still a vanishingly tiny proportion of the total number of schools.

While some of our 'black swans' can show that they are not all white - to paraphrase someone much more famous than me - they do not allow us to generalise very far.

So I can use our excellent comp, and its journey from very lowly SM to oustanding comprehensive, to provide evidence that not all comps fail the brightest, or are full of bullying, or whatever. But I cannot use it to prove that ALL comps are fantastic. Equally, smokepole can use her local 'modern' school to make observations about some modern schools, but not to say that all 'modern' schools are like that, nor to say that all grammars are NOT like that.

Data - as in the report linked to earlier - can help us generalise further, but we have to be careful that those genralisations do not 'hide' specifics: so not lumping all 'other' schools in grammar areas with true comprehensives in a single data set, for examople.

That's MN - a sum of anecdotal evidence and opinion with some harder evidence and wider experience mixed in!

Really? Why me and not anyone else?

I am always happy to set out my personal circumstances in tedious detail, and have, on several occasions in the past, as I am sure some people on this thread will testify. It seems a bit of a waste of time when there are only 8 posts left though. Shall I wait til next time and put my CV in my first post?

I do suspect, though, that what some people are hoping to extract from me by cunning subterfuge is that one of my children did go to a grammar school. The other is at a secondary modern. This is probably the worst kept secret on Mumsnet!

Hak's experience (I'm a stalker, can't you tell - but the story is well-known in MN)

In Kent, unable to move. 2 children.

No comprehensives available (this is Kent), opt-out 11+. 1 child (slightly SATs at end Y6) passed 11+, went to GS and now at uni. Other child (slightly higher SATs at end Y6) failed 11+, now at SM.

hak involved, or has been involved, in SM as governor to improve it for all children.

Comprehensive supporter but no comprehensives available. Knows the disadvantages of the Kent system inside out, does not have direct experience of comp system as a parent.

Missed a 'lower' in that first bracket, sorry.

Own CV, so Hak is not alone:

Scholarship child at exclusive private boarding school, 2 siblings attend local ex-SM comp, all went to Oxbridge.

2 children take opt-in 11+ without coaching, as they are potential '0.1% mixed superselective' material and I do support small, very highly selective superselectives for those who are high ability to the point of having SEN. Pass for single sex grammars that are slightly less superselective, but send them to excellent catchment comp.

Not just you Hak, I gave my experience as well.

I wanted to know because I couldn't work out if you were the same poster I was thinking of from previous grammar school debates on here just with a name change!

Up to a point Lord Ptolemy, to coin a phrase. You did become rather tetchy when pushed!

Thank you, teacher- couldn't have put it better myself.

I've never had any problem giving my experience, which is what I did.

I just didn't want to over share irrelevant details on the Internet, especially when it would only be to defend unfounded accusations against people who have their own agenda.

I think I have the last post! You have to take each school on its merits and not think there is a 'typical' anything. What happens in one grammar won't necessarily happen in another, what happens in one comprehensive won't necessarily happen in another.