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.

Were they "uniformly sink", IonaNE because of offering the same education for all? I strongly suspect there were other factors at play...

So do you think some children don't deserve a good education?

Children in a comprehensive school don't all get the same education. My son is at a secondary modern school- they are divided into 7 sets. Set I does not get the same education as set 7!

"You're never going to level the playing field for disadvantaged children."

Well, you certainly won't if you tell them they're failures at the age of 10!

So what's the difference between separating children into sets, and educating them at different sites? All that happens here is that the top 15% (ish) go to a different school rather than be in 'set 1'. Isn't it hypocritical to dismiss GS as being for the MC, when children are being streamed at school anyway?

Bertrand - that's not aimed at you, just in case you think I'm having a pop, I'm not at all, I'm enjoying reading your posts.

"Same education" is shorthand for same opportunities or same standard, I would've thought.

Much easier to move between sets than to move schools, Stratter5.

I'm yet another one who can't see any good whatsoever in the grammar system, even though my children would most likely have passed the test for a normal (not super selective grammar) had we jumped through the hoops and tutored them. I find today's news very concerning.

But there isn't a sense of failure here. Take Skegness, there's the grammar, the academy, and the college. I know nothing about the college, but the intake between the grammar and the academy is surprisingly fluid. It's not at all uncommon for children to move between them at 13, and after GCSEs.

Maybe the difference up here is that the population is so much lower that a substantial proportion of children get into the grammars, and there's not such a hot house environment? I don't know, either way it seems to work. Far better than in Essex, where I come from. There you have the grammars, where only a tiny proportion go, and the comprehensives where kids in the top set get teased and called snobs (from experience), and the bottom set is simply biding time until they can leave.

Maybe we simply need more schools, more teachers, and a lower pupil/teacher ratio? Maybe we should be looking abroad to the Scandinavian countries, who tackle education in a very different way to us.

Either way, with the exception of small pockets in the country, I don't think our system works.

it surely doesn't take much imagination to see that failing a test, being sent to the school with the other kids that failed, wearing a different uniform to the kids that passed, publically going to the 11+ failures school is much more socially and psychologically damaging than all going to the same school, doing sport and extra curriculars with all the others and, incidentally, with the chance of moving sets.......?

I am not surprised by the Labour Party suggesting that everbody should get the same education !. This is because it is easier to reduce educational inequality by bringing people down, rather than raising the bar at the lowest level.

I do not understand why we can't have all types of schools catering for different types of pupils without the subject causing frowns .

Comprehensive schools , educate the majority of pupils to an acceptable level provided these schools either stream or are located in leafy areas.

However, why can't we have a selective academic option available to any child who is capable of benefitting from it.

Why do we have the supossed utopia of Comprehensive schools forced on 87% of parents and pupils , who have no other options available to them.

I live in Fenland, Stratters, and I know people who send their kids to grammars your way. A fairly long journey, but if Wisbech Grammar didn't serve they moved up. For me, as a teacher and parent, I'm always sad to see a bright child leave the local pool. I never get to teach them again, they never mix locally again. I am always mindful that some of my primary students will vanish to the eleven plus. So are they. It affects their friendship groups and so on but one thing it has never affected is their ambitions . My grammar/ non grammar kids are equally aspirational. I don't write them off. Selection does. I speak as a teacher with some heavy pushing mums for grammar with kids of middling ability who will get it and some kids who are brilliant, self educators, probably dealing with other shit who won't. It isn't fair. No teacher in the comp system who has taught a range with tell you otherwise.

But why can't you read the cogent and sincerely expressed opinions against the grammar system on this and the other thread today (and the thousands of other threads still stored in the Mumsnet archive) and take a bit of what is said on board without having to have it spoon-fed to you OP?

For simplicity's sake what it boils down to is:

Very bright children will do very well at school.

Average children might pass or fail the 11+, just by chance on the day. Also, a lot of it will come down to those who have parents who can afford to pay for tutors. But those who pass will find themselves in a school with mostly very bright children and could well find it a struggle to keep up academically. Not ideal for them. They will feel like the outsiders.

The average ability children who fail the 11+ (again, luck on the day or whether M&D have enough spare cash to pay for tutoring) will go to the secondary moderns with all the other "failures" (hideous word to apply to 11 year olds don't you think?)

The below average children academically will go to a secondary modern with the rest of the "failures" too.

So the grammar school contains only the top set of a comprehensive school and maybe some who might have gone private.

The other schools contain all the rejects. What a terrible way to view the 75% of kids who are not in the very intellectual band at the top of the tree.

I couldn't support an education system which segregates children of 11 years old in this way. Not at all.

FWIW I failed my 11+ and went to a comprehensive. Probably one of the roughest in the area. I did NOT, and do not, feel a failure for not passing. Maybe I'm just pragmatic, but I simply accepted that I want clever enough, and got on with life.

It's only a failing if you sell it as failing. Why not look at it as realising that not everyone is academic, but we ARE all good at something. That's what school should be about, learning the basics and finding out what you are really good at. Why is it 'failing' to be good at the performing arts, or being creative? Why is it failing to be really talented at making something? It shouldn't be, everyone should be valued for what they're good at, not simply judged on their IQ :(

I failed miserably myself !. My DS now goes to my old school, which bears no resemblance to the one I attended.

My two sisters both younger and older passed and went on to RG Universities.

I did not obviously. i still think it was right they had the opportunity to attend a selective girls grammar school. I also believe just because my school was crap was not a reason to have deprived them of a great school.

"It's only a failing if you sell it as failing"
Yeah well. It's an exam. If you get above a particular mark everyone tells you you're really clever, congratulates you and you get a new bike. Below that mark and people say "oh never mind- X is a very good school, I hear" and your old friends from year 6 push you off the pavement on the way to school....

That's kind of my outlook. I failed dismally too, but my sister passed and went to the local grammar. Academically, she's streets ahead of me, but I wasn't interested and never looked at it as failing, I just didn't care, had better things to do.

I'm ridiculously proud of my DDs though. And incredibly grateful that they will get so man opportunities they wouldn't otherwise get. For me, the grammar system evens out a bit the advantages that other children get from private schools.

What I'd really like to see though, is a system which identifies the individual talents that people have, academic or no. Rather than just focusing on IQs, exams, and academic achievements. We are all good at something, and that's what should be our focus. Not trying to shoehorn every child into a 'one size fits all' education, which patently doesn't work.

I honestly didn't see it that way, Bertrand. I just didn't pass. Neither did the DDs incidentally, we were living in a different county by then, with a different school system. They got in up here by passing the entrance exam in DD2's instance, and blagging her way in for DD1, who seems to have the ability to sweet talk her way into getting everyone to do what she wants. Now there's an ability.

OP talks about it being a victory for the parents of Sevenoaks, but surely, it's only a smallish subset? I saw one of the campaigners, Sarah Shilling, and quite honestly, to me her arguments seemed a bit thin.

Average children might pass or fail the 11+, just by chance on the day.

That's just isn't true in my experience.

All the children at grammar schools are academically clever, they won't pass the 11+ if they aren't. If they did have tutoring to help them pass, then at least they have shown the ability to put in extra effort, because plenty of clever children don't reach their potential simply because they lack the motivation to push themselves to achieve the most they possibly can.

It's also not true that all very bright children will do well at school. Many of them will do well no matter what school they go to, but plenty will also be lacking in parental support which stifles their chances, plenty will lack the motivation needed to achieve their potential, plenty will prefer to spend their time mucking around instead of working, plenty will go to schools that simply don't offer them a good enough education.

Grammar schools serve a purpose and they do their job well. In an area that is already selective, it is right that there are enough local school places to serve all children that reach the pass mark.

@Mintyy "Very bright children will do very well at school"
But can you define "very well"?

If you say they will reach their potential or even come close to it, then I am sorry to say that statement is completely wrong. However, if you mean that they'll probably get better exam results than average students, then I'd agree with the caveat that they mustn't become disengaged.

Too many people seem to think that grammar schools go hand in hand with secondary moderns. Surely after 40 years of comprehensive experience and a liberal leaning teaching profession, the non-grammar school students would have the same opportunities in life that they do now, including going to uni.

Are children on fsm mostly in the top sets at comps?

Choice in our education system for the vast majority is a misnomer. There are huge swathes of the country where children are struggling to get any place in a school a reasonable distance from their homes. Apparently there is not enough money to invest in education yet time and time again money can be found for vanity projects such as free schools and now grammer schools which appease a select group of people who shout loudest. It's really not fair on the vast majority of children in the UK.
I would have no problem with these schools if we had surplus funds and surplus places but we don't and funding for these results in even less funds elsewhere.

If you don't want to see grammar expansion in this way, then perhaps the thing that would prevent it would be to bring back Gove to education.

He blocked it in 2013.

It's not just that children who have FSMs don't get in (i.e. don't pass the test), fewer apply in the first place. We live in an area with only a few grammar schools (i.e. not fully selective like Kent) and I have lost count of the times I've had conversations with parents of bright children who get FSM (e.g. single parents on low income) who could have tried for the grammar school but don't want to- they don't want them to travel, want them to go with their friends, perhaps lack understanding of how a grammar education would benefit them. This is a poverty of aspiration issue and not about tutoring.

Conversely, we are friends with lots of immigrant families who don't have great jobs in the UK and they fight hard to get their children into the grammars, even if they have a higher chance of failing the exam due to only being in the country for a short time. They know an excellent education is a way for social mobility if you are an immigrant without a profession themselves, and so they are prepared to sit the tests, pay for tutors (whilst working long hours in crappy jobs themselves) and pay for travel to the schools which is often quite expensive.

I think the social mobility has got worse as everyone doesn't sit the 11 plus. My dad and his brother both got into grammar schools because everyone in the whole town sat the entrance. My grandparents left school at 13, worked in trades and my grandmother was semi-literate. These days they would probably not bother, because it would depend on them to push their children forward, which they would not do. When it was part of the system, there was more of an equal chance of poorer bright kids coming forward.

It was also not true that there was a huge segregation between technical skills/academic ones, my father went to grammar but did well in what is now called design and technology and was an excellent craftsman, so had more choices of career open. The curriculum is quite narrow now.

I went to a 'bog standard' (as in crappy) comp and there was a lot of bullying, disruption and general picking on academic children which made life quite unpleasant, some of my friends have really not got over their school experiences. I would like to say this has all changed, I fully believe people when they say the academic standards are better, but am unsure the behaviour has improved or that it's easier to be clever.