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.

I think the best system would be a fully comprehensive with no grammar or private schools or free schools etc and then LA allocates places by lottery so that all schools have top achievers

Good idea. Let's continue to teach all children at the rate, and to the slanders of the thickets students in their class. People privately educate their children because they are sick of the continual dumbing down of our children by the public school system. Still, at least everyone's a winner, eh? Everyone is special in their own way. Until we learn to separate academic excellence and practical aptitude and channel them and build on them, we will continue to have very well educated hamburger salesmen, youth unemployment that we need to conceal, and fretful parents wondering where they went wrong and trying to blame the state. We are responsible for our own children's education. Not the sate. The state is an educational tool to be used as you need it to supplement your own responsibility to educate your child. The system does not fail, the parents do.

You should try taking a maths paper for 16year olds in Asia vs England. It is much harder. In HK, most 8 year olds know their time tables by heart instantly. Having been educated in HK, and seeing the level of (top set) work set for my DC at local comp, it's pretty limiting in my book. I'm going for private tuition or moving to private school. How are we supposed to compete on a level playing field internationally, when quite frankly we need to make more progress here. This has massive impact for our UK economy/jobs etc in the future.

results of yr 6 SATs and yet people want to put them through a life changing test at 10/11 yrs and make sure that 75% know they have failed! ( A most ridiculous system when many wil be wrongly placed by it anyway)

Until we learn to separate academic excellence and practical aptitude

Why? Do we not need clever engineers?

I can't see any point in having academic excellence if you don't have practical aptitude to go with it. Those people can't hold down jobs. I think we all know the person who has a very high IQ but is fairly useless at everyday life.

I don't know anyone who is very intelligent but can't hold down a job. Is that a thing?

I think we all know the person who has a very high IQ but is fairly useless at everyday life.

To the point of not being able to hold down a job? No.

"Fairly useless at everyday life" is relative. I know several people who are smart in various STEM subjects and live on their own in what one might euphemistically refer to as "idiosyncratic"housing with what is (yeah, I know, I'm not a professional, etc, etc) fairly obviously assorted ASD conditions that today would be diagnosed but fifty years ago weren't. But they all held down decent professional jobs throughout their working lives.

Until we learn to separate academic excellence and practical aptitude

You're assuming they're zero sum. In reality, academics can learn to do practical things when they need to. It's no accident that the only popular beat musician to make his own guitar is also the only popular beat musician to have a proper (not honorary) PhD (Brian May).

"I think we all know the person who has a very high IQ but is fairly useless at everyday life."

Well, possibly,but I also know people with a fairly low IQ who are useless at everyday life too!

I think the academic excellence and practical aptitude thing is a red herring, frankly. In the old days, the idea was that public schools produced the bosses and senior professional people ,the grammar schools the managers and lower level professionals and the secondary modern schools the workers. That worked while we needed loads of workers. We don't any more.

It is a red herring. I don't know any who don't hold down a job but I certainly know some who lack common sense.
My point was that I can't see why you need to separate them. You still need practical aptitude to go with intelligence. It isn't enough to have academic excellence. A doctor may be brilliant, but will be very upsetting if they don't have the emotional intelligence to know how to talk to the patient.

And a doctor is far more likely to naturally know how to talk to a patient if he has come across all types at school.

Agreed on the practical/ intelligence being irrelevant. I think if we're going to promote a comprehensive system with not even the very top few % taken off, then the entire standard needs to go up, so that the most able do stand a chance of being stretched. And make every comprehensive offer Latin, separate science etc to those who want it. The system also needs to allow for the fact the more able a child is, the quicker they learn, not this rubbish about every child should progress the same amount.

mehit I don't see any evidence that doctors from the comprehensive system are 'better' at communicating than those from selective schools.

There isn't TheWordFactory but it must be one of the advantages of a comprehensive.
I agree that every comprehensive should be able to stretch the top in the way that the many, many good comprehensives do at the moment. My DSs school did separate sciences - otherwise I don't see how he would have been able to do a science subject at his first choice university.
I have never seen why sec mod pupils can't do Latin. I would have liked to have done it. My brother failed 11+ and it was only when he passed at 12+ and was introduced to Latin and Greek that he excelled and became a high flyer in the top stream, within a year. Had he stayed in the sec mod he would never have woken up to his abilities. It seems very weird to me that you fail one particular exam at a young age and you are not capable of Latin.

It is rubbish that every child progresses the same amount. The good point about the old sec mods were that they treated pupils differently and didn't expect the bottom streams to do the same as those who should have been in the grammar school.

I am all for separating at 14yrs - with the pupil having a choice with advice from the school.

Actually, thinking about it, Brian May is the counter example to all these "we should separate by aptitude" arguments.

Builds a musical instrument from scratch while getting top grades in maths, further maths, more further maths.

Starts a successful band while doing a physics degree.

Abandons a PhD in astrophysics to tour with band.

Completes a PhD while bind is on hiatus.

Academic? Practical? Creative?

but it must be one of the advantages of a comprehensive.

Who needs research and facts, anyway?

My experience of being relatively academic in a large comprehensive school was that my social circle was precisely as constrained as it would have been in a grammar.

I think that we are all distorting facts to suit ourselves!
One of my arguments is that the social circle is as constrained as it would be in the grammar school. I think it to be true, but you wouldn't think so with all those who think that top sets will be disrupted by those not interested in education.
You are however aware of the whole range of abilities and types- you are not physically separated by a building. With setting you might be in a top set for English or a lower set for Maths etc.

Apart from the fact that trying to hire Latin teachers for every school in the country would be a joke, it's hard enough convincing parents to get their academic child to take a language like French, what exactly do you think the take-up of Latin would be?

But it's not just the secondary moderns that don't offer Latin and separate science. Not all comps do. Offering separate science in my local comps ranges from offering it to any child who wants it within reason, to 'yeah we let the best 30 or so but here look at our range of catering courses'. And as for Latin provision, yes it sucks to tell a child they can't do Latin cos they didn't pass the exam at such a young age. But telling every child you don't get to do Latin anyway isn't how I think we should solve it. And that is what happens for the majority in comprehensives.
I don't think it's fair so much hinges on one day, but in none grammar areas it means even more hinges on it, because the option becomes a selective independent instead, and of course lots of children who pass don't get the funding they need, so even less children get the chance than if there was a state grammar. Not forgetting that if as a parent you are confident your child is able enough to pass but has no chance of doing well enough for a bursary you aren't going to bother, likewise borderline children who might stand a chance at a state grammar aren't going to try for it cos there's no chance. So ditching the grammars here hasn't decreased how much hinges on one day, it's just increased it a hundredfold.
The decision to let my child sit for an independent was the hardest I made, because I was basically showing her the education she needs, telling her yes you'll pass, but you need to get far higher marks than almost everyone else. Not in those words but that what it boiled down to. That's hinging far more on one day than for a state grammar. It paid off for us but it doesn't mean I'm not aware that many children, some of whom may be more able than my child and having a bad day, will have found out yes they got a place and yes they were eligible for the funding but sorry, not enough money left in the pot. That to me is far more unfair than the shot at a grammar

"My experience of being relatively academic in a large comprehensive school was that my social circle was precisely as constrained as it would have been in a grammar."

Can you put that somewhere in bold please? Many mumsnetters seem to think that even the top sets of comprehensive schools are populated by chair throwing knuckle draggers whose only joy in life comes from disrupting the education of any clever child who wants to learn accidentally placed there.............

We take the data we like!
Whoregasm ignored the league table of 2014 because it put us 6th and 2nd and Europe, but she seized on 2015 to say we were rubbish at 20th.
The schools were the same! In 12 months they would not have altered much. Either way they were not the sweeping statement she made that made me look it up.
Probably 2014 was a good year. In our local primary league table I visited one school who came top and they had lots of parents making enquires it made the staff smile because they knew that hadn't a hope of keeping the position the next year - they had a poor year 6, whereas the year before had been an exceptional year 6 in terms of ability.
Therefore I largely ignore league tables and Ofsted and pay a visit on a normal working day and ask searching questions.

But it's not just the secondary moderns that don't offer Latin and separate science. Not all comps do.

Very few state grammars now offer Latin; it's pretty much the preserve of private schools. None of the Birmingham super-selectives off it in class hours, for example (there's some after-school provision in a couple).

The "separate science" thing is mostly snobbery. I've seen people argue that offering science, additional science and further science (or whatever the three qualifications are called) isn't the same as "separate sciences". They take precisely the same exams (B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, P1, P2, P3) over precisely the same material.

With setting you might be in a top set for English or a lower set for Maths etc.

The vast majority of children are in the same set for each subject, and in many schools sets are the politically correct term for streams anyway.

For me it has nothing to do with children mixing with different ability cohorts.

It's about resources. And policies.

In my experience too many comprehensives make decisions which are not in the best interests of the most able. These are often the right decisions for the whole cohort ie the majority, but that don't mean a fat lot when you're an outlier.

'Sets' isn't 'the politically term for 'streams' - setting is a different thing from streaming!

Of course there's a lot of overlap in the top sets, as you'd expect - but my own experience and that of my dds is that in maths in particular there were always a few surprises, in both directions.