To think that condemming the grammar school system , because it cannot give 100% of pupils a brilliant education is wrong.

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I was watching the 'Secret life of the Grammar School' on BBC four last night and it occurred to me that the majority were successful because of a grammar school education. The debate on grammar schools is centred around the 75% or so who don't pass. The ideology expressed from many, is that if 100% of children can't get a highly academic education either though ability or resources than no one should have the chance. This is surely wrong and ultimately does not do the less academic any favours yet it significantly reduces the chances for bright children, who may need a structured and highly 'disciplined' environment to achieve.

I know many people on this site will disagree with this post and will cite the excellent 'comprehensives' their children attend. The truth is the best comprehensive schools are 'covert' grammar schools operating a more 'acceptable' form of selection .

The grammar school system needs to be applauded for its contribution to the United kingdom from politics , commerce to science and engineering . There is no part of life in the UK that has not been influenced or improved by grammar school educated people.

However, if you read the constant 'diatribes' of people on the left you would believe that grammar schools are worse than 'public schools' in their effect on society. Grammar schools have provided the backbone to society for over 70 years. I believe that it is morally wrong to prevent academic children from all sectors of society a 'grammar ' education just on the basis of it not being available to all.

MNers vastly exaggerate the difficulty of the 11+ and therefore the requirement for tutors, nightly reading etc etc etc. It's bollocks. None of that is required because if it was my DC wouldn't have got in. I used to line them up on the sofa and they fell asleep watching a video. No reading at all, there were too many of them. In the same way the Oxbridge interview thing is blown out of all recognition. Perfectly normal questions are asked and all the private school confidence in the world won't help you if you're not fairly able. And if you are fairly able, why shouldn't you get in - private school or not? These threads get ludicrously over the top.

My view is that there is no way of making the 11+ fairer - once the genie of tutoring, and private schools coaching for the test from 4, is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in.

My personal view is that there is a role for a very tiny number of special schools for those so able they cannot be educated within a comprehensive system because their needs are so rare - probably 100 children or less per county, those of 1 in 10,000 level of ability, who would have no peers at all in a normal-sized comprehensive, and whose needs (e.g. university-level Maths at 11 or 12) cannot reasonably be efficiently met in a comprehensive. Ability at this level could usefully be treated as an SEN, and should be assessed by a range of tests administered by ed psychs, in the same way as ability for the small percentage of children who attend Special Schools are assessed and 'statemented' (new name now) by ed psychs.

So there would be Special Schools for those at the genuinely extreme ends of the ability range, for children 'statemented' at an individual case level, and comprehensives for the rest. The 'Extreme high ability' special schools could usefully be sited in university cities, for the sharing or resources, and, like many good special schools, co-sited with comprehensives so that students could attend 'normal level' lessons if their ability is very spiky. Those in need of university-level Maths, for example, might well need the same art as any other 11 year old, and the disadvantage of the current grammar model is that children in grammars are assumed to be equally able across the curriculum, whereas many could very well be taught with non-grammar children in a large number of subjects.

On the point of teaching - I was 'lucky' enough, a little while back, to observe some teaching in a very highly regarded grammar school, meant to be 'an excellent example' for us plebs who teach in non-selective schools. All of us were genuinely shocked, as nobne of the lessons we observed would have been regarded as above 'needs improvement' had they been delivered in our schools - they relied on the children's uniform high ability and compliance for progress, as the teaching and lesson design was DIRE in all the lessons we saw.

MNers vastly exaggerate the difficulty of the 11+

I suspect that Kent, Wirral and and Buckinghamshire residents and Birmingham and Gloucester residents are talking past each other.

I could have a huge list of very able who didn't get in but have done excellently later. I don't think that fairly able stand much chance.

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Why do you assume that a sec mod would have served you better, Lily, or are you just assuming that you would have had the grammar part of the system?"

people always do!

No selection at 11. Everyone goes to their neighbourhood school. Deprived areas get extra funding for Sure Start, pre-school, Primary and Secondary, for improved staffing, smaller classes. The ILEA used to give an extra allowance to encourage teachers to teach in high-need areas, on top of the London Allowance.

The Govt should finish what Maggie Thatcher started and get rid of all Grammar schools. Independents? Well, Tony Crosland, Wilson's Education Minister said that his dying regret was not to have abolished them, but too late now. Their main advantage is in Oxbridge entrance. Oxbridge already has targets to meet regarding state school entry. (Not entirely altruistic. They're concerned not just because they don't want to miss out on able state school applicants who won't have been as intensively taught but there's research that shows that state school undergrads cope better with working independently.) Comprehensives have proved that they can do as well as grammars in this respect - that one in Hackney? Current Ofsted chief's old school?

Schools can't do everything. They can't solve the problems of social deprivation and parental neglect. But the education system can avoid making it worse. And I think some posters might be surprised at the high levels of aspiration in many parents from deprived backgrounds, particularly first and second generation immigrants.

"A secondary modern can serve you just as well - there are some superb ones out there. As long as your child makes good progress, that's all that matters"

The difficulty is for the children on the borderline between the two schools - the perhaps as many as 10% of children who, on another day, might have fallen the other side of the pass/fail line for purely random factors.

It is hard for them to make as much progress in a SM as they might have done at a grammar, because the higher level teaching / exams etc may not be available to them. Whereas in a comprehensive they might have started in e.g. a middle maths set and moved up to a higher one, thus accessing e.g. higher tier Maths, additional maths etc.

I am glad that we now have some common sense with teacherwith2kids and Thymeout .

The Govt should finish what Maggie Thatcher started and get rid of all Grammar schools.

It isn't interesting to see the number of people who think that the closure of grammars was a Labour policy. It's worth remembering it was executed by a Tory education secretary, to the wild enthusiasm of her own voters.

Everyone goes to their neighbourhood school.

Selection by income, then.

It isn't interesting

Isn't it interesting, of course.

In the 'good old days' of grammar schools they could be very poor - my friend who went in 1950s was put into a form labelled 'remove' and virtually ignored!

At the start of the thread we established that selecting children is still done by income. I was taken to task for saying that children did better at grammar school and it turned out that sec mods in 'good' areas were very different from sec mods in ' poor' areas.

Gem - well, unless you want to introduce bussing, which I think would be a mistake?

But if the schools in less affluent areas had more resources, smaller classes and some recognition that it was harder work to teach there, possibly the gap could be narrowed. I know in London that there are some v successful schools in poor areas. And even some complacent ones in leafier areas.

bussing, which I think would be a mistake?

It worked quite well in New York. I'm not sure that it's a mistake without more examination.

But if the schools in less affluent areas had more resources, smaller classes and some recognition that it was harder work to teach there, possibly the gap could be narrowed.

Indeed. Which the Pupil Premium starts to achieve. Leafy schools are squealing.

Grammar schools would still be a vote loser for any party - they would only be wanted by those who thought their child would get a grammar school place. The 75% who would be excluded are hardly going to vote for a system that favours a minority that doesn't include them!

You could do something creative with catchment areas. I know there's a comprehensive near me that used to have a catchment area that cleverly avoided a large council estate. You could do that in reverse.

I would love to see a school league table 'normalised' by levels of attainment on arrival - for example, say the average across the country is, 20% low ability, 60% middle ability, 20% higher ability, then every school's final results should be normalised to this. I think we would see how small the effect of 'school' is compared with 'pupil profile'. I used to sort all league tables by contextualised value added, for the same reason - fascinating to see which schools plummeted to the bottom, and which came top.

Normalising by parental income would also be interesting, but much trickier!

Glad you find it so humourous Bert.Being bright in a comprehensive was no picnic for any of us which is why my DC won't be going through the same if I can help it.

I don't give a shiny shit who that offends.

Lily, comprehensive or secondary modern?

My brothers were bright kids in a just-turned comp secondary modern, and they had a hard time. All of us send our children to comps, though, with the exception of the child in a specialist music setting.

Current secondary league tables are broken down by level of attainment on arrival. Each of the measures is reported separately for low, average and high initial attainment.

I used to sort all league tables by contextualised value added, for the same reason - fascinating to see which schools plummeted to the bottom, and which came top.

The problem is that a school that does a good job of getting weak students through the C/D boundary isn't necessarily going to do a good job getting strong students through the A/A* boundary.

Compounded by the (now hopefully mostly solved) abuse of "equivalence".

Camel, the issue is going to be making Progress8 the measure parents 'see' and value, rather than raw exam results. Value added has been there in league tables for a long time, but is ignored in favour of the raw figures by a disappointingly large number of people who ought to know better!