"I could never send my dcs to grammar school....

[winkywinkola]

...because I think it's unfair on all those children who can't get in because they couldn't afford tutoring for 11+. But I will send them to prep and boarding school."

I was a bit perplexed to hear this from a mum at the school gate. Aibu?

Bertrand you don't half talk a load of bollocks.

If grammars didn't exist my child would be bored at a comp, would likely drift and likely flunk out of school - as is the way with children from their/my/our background. They need the push of a grammar, they are perfect for the grammar system. If we were rich they'd be thriving at a private school, but we aren't, so we made sure we lived in an area with grammar schools.

Intelligence is a special need and what is actually wrong with having specialist schools to cater to this? We have sports colleges, music schools (chethams etc), drama schools (sylvie young) so why not specialist schools for bright children!

On this and other threads teachers example of a comprehensive does always sound genuinely comprehensive, and a perfectly reasonable alternative to grammars for the most able educationally, without any of the negatives of the 11+. If they were all like that then I would be quite happy to see grammars go. But too many bear absolutely no resemblance to that ideal.

Bert Suprisingly on a thread about private and grammar, I actually agree with you about something, the morality in the op. After that, I'm as confused as ever by your stance. On the one hand you hate the secondary modern part of the system. But don't seem to mind secondary modern schools and education provided they are in comprehensive areas, selecting by address and called comps. I don't know if that's because you don't truly have the experience to realise that is the reality for many, or if it's because you know full well that in a fully comp area, your ds wouldn't be in the group that end up with a sm education.

Secondly I'm as ever confused by your concern for deprived kids. Whilst I agree with a lot of what you say about their chances in the grammar system, you don't seem to be as up in arms when it comes to giving them the shit end of the stick in the comprehensive system. I also can't reconcile your opinion that deprived but able dc should come bottom of the educational pile with someone who wants dc to have equal educational opportunities.

Fwiw you did have a choice. You could have sent your dd to a sm, after all you think they provide a good enough education, for able but deprived dc in comprehensive areas like mine. Or is that a view that is only applicable to other dc, rather than your own?

If grammars didn't exist my child would be bored at a comp

The vast majority of secondary school aged children in the UK go to a comp, do you think all the bright ones are sat there twiddling their thumbs?

I know from seeing the statistics relating to people from our background they are pretty grim reading thanks.

I know from visiting lots and lots of schools and meeting lots of high ability young people, that the provision for them is absurdly inconsistent.

Many of them are being woefully served.

Bertrand a correction based on reported research and borne out by the statistics for our school certainly and no doubt many similar grammar schools too: highly able DC from less well off backgrounds do disproportionately well at grammar schools. They can and do get in and no doubt will in increasing numbers with the new CEM tests and the determination of the grammar school heads to push that agenda forward in other ways too. Indeed our area has been awarded a governmental award for precisely that thing (helping less well off DC achieve at the highest levels academically). Sorry to contradict you with evidence based on fact :)

I'm sure that's right Carl, about inconsistency, which is why a superselective in each area would be extremely helpful, provided the financial side of transport was fixed.

I am always pleased to read of comps that have 10 sets for every subject, with the vast majority of pupils going onto good universities, with lots of Oxbridge places taken as a given...

It's just that after working as an agency TA and Cover Supervisor I never worked in a single comp like that. And I worked in a lot of comprehensives...

Not to say that such glossy, twinkly comps done exist...but I suspect they are few, and far between?

In my experience of comps they were 'teaching to the middle' at best, and formalised crowd control at worst. The proportion of academically able pupils had a hard time of it.

As an English graduate myself, with post grad study under my belt I was never tasked to work as a TA with the most able pupils in an English lesson, giving them extra input...oh no, instead I was always put with the lowest ability pupils, while the teacher 'taught to the middle'.

Just a brief point on Bertrand.

She objects to the selective system. So, obviously, she objects both to grammars AND secondary moderns, because BOTH are part of that system.

However, she has to live where she lives, and thus has to send BOTH her children to schools she would rather didn't exist, and objects equally to their existence.

It is no more inconsistent to send one child to the grammar part of the system, than it is to send one child to the secondary modern - neither, in her view, should exist, and she would prefer to send neither child to either.

To me, that is completely consistent with her expressed views, because she objects to the segregated SYSTEM, not one part of it or other.

I have often said on these threads, by the way, that I would have no objection whatever to a 'special school' system for the exceptionally able who are so rare that they cannot be effectively educated in a comprehensive system, in the same way as there are special schools for those whose level of difficulty or disability is so rare that they cannot be educated efficiently in a comprehensive system. The percentage of children currently educated at special schools is about 3%, but that is obviously for a range of disabilities and SEN, not just 'low academic ability'. Perhaps 0.5 - 1% max of children might fall into this 'special educational' need of being exceptionally able. They should be identified inexactly the same was as pupils for special schools - not on basis of family income or coaching or school of origin, but on the basis of ed psych reports. In my ideal world, like certain special schools, they would be co-located with large secondaries, so that for subjects outside their special abilities, they could attend appropriate lessons in the 'mainstream' school.

I just don't believe that, in Kent, 25% of children can't effectively be educated in a comprehensive. 1% - yes perhaps. A quarter? No.

By the way:
"It really is hard to explain just how different the education received is to a comprehensive school unless you go see for yourself!"

"does it really matter though, what method of teaching the teacher employs, or how lively, engaged and spirited they are in lessons, so long as the pupils still get excellent exam grades?"

Is it just me who finds those two rather inconsistent? one minute, the teaching and education at a grammar school is so amazing that it can't be compared with a comprehensive, the next minute it doesn't matter what the teaching is like, just look at the results?

The point is that the results from grammars are what you would expect given their intake - in fact, in some grammars the selection is so extreme at 11 that any child who DOESN'T get 10 A* has failed relative to their starting point.

What should be the measure of a good school is the value added by the school, not the absolute results, and on this measure, many grammars fall short.

Yeah, sounds good teacher but I doubt anyone is going to buy that, are they?

If you object so stridently to 'the system' then surely it is, by far, the lesser of two evils to reject the grammar school part of the system, and let your DD take a chance at the secondary modern...?

" surely it is, by far, the lesser of two evils to reject the grammar school part of the system, and let your DD take a chance at the secondary modern"

Why? Why is the grammar part more evil than the secondary modern part? They are two sides of the same coin.

Thank you, teacher. You explain my position very well.

i do find it fascinating that there only appear to be clever children in grammar areas. Is it some sort of selective evolution?

It's like - to use a silly example - being a pacifist and someone saying 'Oh, your child should go into the navy rather than the army'. No, because both are equally objectionable, and if you HAD to send your child into one or the other, both are equally non-pacifist!

[]www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn01398.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwji1v7vu_jNAhVDWRoKHf3WCZkQFggiMAI&usg=AFQjCNHq3fMa3x-ymi1m7NPGM_AoQdH22w This parliamentary briefing paper about grammar schools makes for interesting reading]]

Ma, I am not saying that children do not come out of grammars with good grades.

It just doesn't make them better schools.

My children go to a grammar. I went to a comprehensive (I didn't live in a grammar school area). There wasn't much difference regarding the education. I think there was more pressure at the comprehensive as we were streamed from 1 to 8 for many subjects up to year 9. I was in the top set for all subjects and was always stressed that if I did badly in an exam I would get moved down a class. There is no streaming at the grammar school my children go to.

Sorry, meant to add...

It's hard for grammar schools to give good value added when their intake is already of a high calibre.

Take our DD2 in Yr 7. In the top 1% for mathematical ability, nationally, according to her HT at primary school. Level 6 Maths, obviously. She could walk GCSE Maths now, with minimum prep...but, the very highest she can get in Maths at the end of Yr 7 is a 7.9. The tracking just doesn't go any higher.

And if a comprehensive has value added for high achievers which is as high or higher than the grammar school's, then actually those children will be leaving the comprehensive with pretty much exactly the same grades as they would have done from a grammar. Just the headline results won't look quite as stellar, because the average grade is averaged across the whole intake.

MaQueen, how did she do in the Junior Mathematical Challenge? It's that kind of thing that all schools can do to enrich the learning of the most able - and if, like our local comp does, you get children through to Kangaroo / Olympiad, then they are extended further in the company of their peers.

Well, teacher if your main objective for sending your child to school is for them to get excellent grades, then, yes, a grammar school is your best bet for them getting those grades.

Not guaranteed, of course, but at least you are protected from the disengaged and disruptive pupil elements that are far more likely to be present in a comp, than at a grammar.

I note, by the way, that you haven't explained why you see grammars as being more evil that secondary moderns?

4% of year 7s nationally went to grammar school in 2010 according to the institute of fiscal studies which puts them on a par with SEN school statistics

Confucious, but that isn't evenly spread across the country - many of that 4% will be in Kent (where they will only be in the top 25% of ability).