To think that the decision of the education secretary to sanction the proposed grammar annexe will lead to a number of grammar schools applying for annexes.

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This is a conterversial subject, particulary on mumsnet about whether grammar schools aid social mobilty. This however is surely a victory for the parents of Sevonoaks. They have campaigned for at least the same opportunity of grammar school education as other towns in a selective county.

I personally think it is fair and correct, that parents are able to ask for a type of school they believe to be in the interest of their children. That includes selective, academy or religous schools.

I am wondering though whether now that a way of getting through legal problems about expanding selective schools, there will be a flury of applications from other grammar schools.

The Head teacher of Knole Academy doesn't seem to be quite so sangunie about the new school, pearpotter: www.theguardian.com/education/2015/oct/15/kent-grammar-decision-bad-day-education-says-head-nearby-school

Mind you I read that as part of the application they have said they will be bussing pupils and staff between the two sites, 9 miles apart. I wouldn't fancy this sort of regular disruption and waste of time for my child to be honest, but there again, once the school is built you wonder how long the bussing will continue.

A total family income of £25-30k does not equal a middle class income.

Families who have that kind of income , either through one or both parents working are only marginally better off than those eligible to claim FSM .

The suggestion that because a family earns over an arbitury level of money,they are classed as no longer being deserving is wrong.

This is why income and class are difficult to relate to each other !

There are plenty of people who are educationally and socially middle class, but financially poor and vice versa many people who are educationally and socially working class but financially in the top 1%.

Therefore class has nothing to do with income, however a family income of between £25k-30k could not provide what is percieved to be a 'middle class' life.

I also think Knole Academy will be fine regardless of the grammar annex- it has an excellent head and top facilities.

You may think that, but the Head herself has spoken out against it - with the exact fear that she will lose her grammar ability children.

For those who think that grammar schools promote social mobility - how about this idea - reserve say 20% of places for those on FSM? (I chose 20% because that's the number that Knole Academy has.) I can't see it happening somehow. Allowing one or two bright children to advance from the Working Class - fine, but wholesale encouragement of a whole cohort? Got to keep the lower orders in their place!

but there again, once the school is built you wonder how long the bussing will continue.

I expect they would stop it as soon as they could decently get away with it. Most split site schools I know of, with usually only a couple of miles between sites, tend to operate as a lower and upper school. Even then, it's a pain for the staff to have to move between the two and they seem to consolidate onto one site if the chance comes up.

So if your argument is that the FSM is an arbitrary cut off point, which it obviously is, and grammar schools are full of kids from families just above the threshold, that still doesn't explain why very few kids from just below the threshold don't get in................

The stAtistics for our town are: Grammar school- 1.9% FSM. High school 22.5%

The schools are a mile apart and serve the same catchment.

Your concept of statistics isn't very good if you seriously think IQ of people who qualify for FSM is the same is people who don't qualify.

Take 2 groups of people with a normal distribution of IQs. Now take all the doctors (who have a high IQ) out of pool A (FSM) and put them into pool B (non FSM). Now do the same with all the lawyers. And all the..... And what's left is significantly more people with a high IQ in pool B than pool A.

Less FSM pupils in a grammar school does not necessarily mean they're being discriminated against.

Bertrand I don't think anyone has extrapolated that apart from you, I gave the example because I live in what is officially designated as a deprived area. Have you ever been here? Been to Skegness? Because, believe me if you had you would not be quibbling over FSM percentages, or whether the area is MC. It's not. It's rural, with a sideline of bottom of the barrel tourism. The only thing going for it round here is the schools, plus it is a ridiculously beautiful part of the country where I am. And it's quiet, quiet because there are no motorways, and fuck all dual carriageways. It takes me an hour to do the round trip school run of 30 miles because the roads are small and windy.

Grammar schools here are loved. The children who go there are incredibly proud of their schools - to the extent that you see them wearing their logo'd sports jackets at the weekends. Any bright child can get into them here, the primaries are feeder schools, and they are set up to get as many in as possible. Regardless of class. That's one of the things I love about here, there's not this class divide that seems to be perceived elsewhere. And the other schools are pretty good too. For us, it's a win win with schooling.

Stratters, you said that your grammar schools have a very high % of children on FSM. All I did was point out that they don't. I don't think I extrapolated anything.

I live in the area where the 'main school' in this story is. I travelled to sevenoaks today , the south side not where the so called 'annex' will be. Usual awful traffic, 50 + minutes each way ..add another 10 minutes to get to the new site . There is no way this is an 'annex' it is disingenuous to suggest it is anything other than a way for the government to pander to its voters and flout the law.
Dd1 best friend mum is head of a local primary , she is constantly frustrated that her 'naturally ' bright children from poorer backgrounds fail to get places because they (the primary cannot help practice for the exam ) the places go instead to kids coached from age 7 every week , minimum £20 a week for a year . Small change for those prepared to pay thousands if they don't get a place , an impossibility for many often brighter poorer kids. The whe thing is just wrong. Dividing children on the basis of parents ability to pay . State funded education should be open to all. Knole Academy is fantastic and over subscribed. I want MY taxes spent on schools where all have an opportunity for the best education and to be 'stretched academically' when they are able, that does not always magically happen at 11 yrs old. This is about a certain section of mc parents who want to be able to brag that their children are some how 'better' than others . Appalling, put the money into an annex (you know, actually next door or nearby !) Knole and allow ALL children in the area to benefit.

I'm surprised the figures are that low tbh. That's not what I was told, and I'll admit I didn't investigate, as it didn't really make any difference. DD is on FSM, as are a lot of her friends.

What I am trying to say, very clumsily, is that for the children round here grammar schools really do matter.

In some people's worlds, not being on fsm means being professional middle class.

Meh.

Well, in m house being on FSM means I can just about manage to get my child to school. As it is, we are middle of the month and I have £30 in my account left. That's life for most people round here, with the exception of the few landowners.

It seems very wrong to me that those counties which have retained the GS/Sec Mod divide as their system, don't allow primary schools to prepare children for the test. In the old days they were allowed to do that - preparation for the 11+ dominated my junior school days. However, it must have been pretty cr*p to know that at age 7 if you were in the B stream your chances of passing were slender at best, but mostly non-existent.

There wasn't the tutoring going on that there is now in Kent and Bucks, but a middle class parent was much more likely to go up to the school to protest if their child was threatened with a move out of the 'scholarship' stream, than the parent who left school as soon as possible and had no time for education.

"What I am trying to say, very clumsily, is that for the children round here grammar schools really do matter"

Do they? Not to the most disadvantaged children, obviously. They seem to be an irrelevance to them. As they are in most counties.

I know this my be my anedoctal and personal observation , but i don't see that much of a social difference of the pupils from my two DDs grammar school and those from DSs Upper School (Buckinghamshire).

The statistical evidence states 0.7% for the grammar and 8% FSM for the Upper school through i don't believe there is much social difference in terms of the pupils outside those numbers.

What I'm curious about is whether parents in non-selective counties wish they had access to grammars. I am not sure you see much of.this or do you? Where I am, even though it is basically non selective, parents who are into the idea of grammar send their kids to Kent or Bexley where they can so it is hard to judge whether people everywhere are crying out for grammars or not.

I am against grammar schools.

My parents (aged 79) eptomise both sides of the argument. My father was from a very poor family, he passed the 11+, went on to Oxford and has had a distinguished career. My mother, also from a poor family, failed whilst her four siblings passed. She has always had an inferiority complex and suffered MH issues as a result.

I grew up in an 11+ area (it still is) in the 70s/80s and my siblings and I all went to grammar schools. I actually didn't think that it was that great - some of the teaching was astonishingly incompetent. It also did nothing for social mobility, from my observations. There were some working class children but none of them went on to university - with virtually no exception the ones that went to university and then into the professions were those from middle class backgrounds. These were also the ones dominating the choir, orchestra and sports teams.

I have now moved to another area of the UK (non 11+). I have watched the anguish faced by my sister and brothers and their children over the 11+. Some have passed, some haven't. It is harrowing for the ones that don't get in. There is such a fuss made of those that pass that those that don't are bound to feel failures.

in the meantime my children go to a comprehensive, our catchment schoo, nothing special but it does the job. One of my children is very bright, another has various problems, the third is a bit eccentric and the school has catered well for all. The latter child was quite average until she was 14 but has really taken off academically just recently. That's another reason I am against grammar schools and being categorised at 11. And my children have been spared all that stress.

I am firmly of the opinion that good comprehensives are ideal.

The other thing it's important to remember is that the results of wholly selective LEAs like Kent differ very little from the results in wholly comprehensive LEAs. It seems bizarre to inflict the awful social and psychological damage that selection at 10 creates so that a few very clever children can get a couple of half grades better at GCSE........

Real great news. I left teaching because of the "the same education for all children" - all secondaries in the borough were uniformly sink. (I had a role in which I had to visit and observe lessons in all.) I wish the law banning the opening of new selective schools was overturned.

"The same education for all children"

What on earth do you mean by that? Did you work in Soviet Russia?

I am very much with Panettone on this. I could have written most of her post myself. DF passed the 11+ and went on to good things, although couldn't afford to go to University but later got an external degree. DM was ill, missed some schooling and failed the 11+ and always had a bit of a chip on her shoulder about it but was definitely bright enough to have passed.

I was very glad that my children didn't have the 11+ to contend with. DD would have been OK, DS - doubtful. Yet he's the one with the Master's degree.

My GS was at best, good in parts. I can't think of any working class child who went on to University; only a small number of the already few stayed on to the sixth form. But then it was a girls grammar school and very few girls went to university anyway - teacher training college was the default option. It was seen as a nice little filler in career until your real job of marriage began.

Well I'm in a non-selective area, have two very academic kids who I'm sure could pass the 11+, and I am so, so pleased that they/we don't have to deal with all the stress and pressure of the grammar system. Also pleased that their friendship groups don't have to be torn apart at 11 due to differences in academic ability.

You're never going to level the playing field for disadvantaged children. It simply won't happen, because they are disadvantaged by a lack of parental interest in their education. Parents who want their children to do well, parents who work with, and engage with their children's schools, they are the parents of the children who will succeed at school, no matter where they are, or who they are. Without that parental support, it doesn't matter where they go to school, they simply don't have the tools to succeed, unless the child itself is driven.

Bertrand Russell, you obviously did not watch C4 News tonight, where a Labour MP opposing the new grammar school said that all children deserve the same education.