"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?

Top set pupils don't work with lesser able pupils. It's still segregation

That's not true of all comps. Not when options are chosen, your not going to have top, middle and bottom technology or ict classes are you? Whereas be default the grammar would through having cherry picked.

Lots of comprehensives stream. It's called banding these days.

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.

This comment was addressed to another poster, but it jumped out at me due to it being bollocks.

A comp is not, and is nothing like, a secondary modern.

A comp has all the catchment children of all abilities.

A secondary modern has the bottom 80% of academically able children (the top 20% having been creamed off to the grammar).

They are not, and will never be, equal; it is a nonsense to keep using them in comparison to each other.

I am with Bertrand too.
Why should those who are good at IQ tests be creamed off and have better teaching, better sports facilities, better music lessons, better this , better that?
Perhaps the ones left behind at 11 plus would benefit from those things as well. Actually not perhaps.

I will repeat again: the huge advantage of the comprehensive system is that a child can access the appropriate sets subject by subject. If the appropriate set for a subject is in a physically distinct institution, as happens in the selective system, that child's education is not as good as it could be.

The child of a colleague, who attended a grammar on the basis of a VR test but, it turned out, had a specific difficulty in Maths (and thus was no allowed to sit the Maths GCSE at the grammar school, having to enter it elsewhere as an external candidate, as she messed up their statistics) could not access the help she needed, because it was in the secondary modern elsewhere in the town

bert I know you are equally opposed to both grammar and secondary moderns. I'm confused by the fact you aren't equally opposed to the genuine comprehensive or secondary modern (but called a comprehensive) system, with selection by postcode instead of exam.

Re none mainstream, i agree re top %.

"Lots of comprehensives stream. It's called banding these days."

Do you mean admission by fair banding?

My DCs' comprehensive has 2 'bands'. They are an administrative and timetabling convenience. They are equal in academic terms, and each have the full range of sets (with the exception of top and bottom sets in a couple of subjects, which cross bands for efficiency of educating those pupils at the extremes of the ability range)

I don't know much about book learning, unless it's a good Philippa Gregory, but it's disingenuous, that's what it is. And arrant nonsense. I'm off to a gastropub for dinner.

"bert I know you are equally opposed to both grammar and secondary moderns. I'm confused by the fact you aren't equally opposed to the genuine comprehensive or secondary modern (but called a comprehensive) system, with selection by postcode instead of exam I don't know what you mean by a secondary modern called. Comprehensive, but yes, I am equally opposed to "selection by post code" and have said so frequently. In My Glorious Reign selection would be by lottery. I think. Unless someone comes up with something better.

Bertrand, have agreed with what you & teacher have been saying throughout, but am confused as to what's wrong with entry by catchment area?
Why is that not ok?

limited

There is a problem with some school ending up with a tiny catchment area of very expensive houses- which prices a lot of people out of the school. Equally, a school in a very disadvantaged are will have a disproportionate number of children in poverty, which is the main marker for academic under achievement. If you want, as I do, true comprehensive education, then the current system doesn't always provide that. Some areas have tried quotas and other things, but it seems to me that a lottery is the only absolutely fair way.

Sorry- that was to Mango.

But it's not creaming off the top 20%. Again I refer you to super selective areas (which are in the majority of grammar areas)

Someone very wise posted this earlier.

I think it's worth sharing again to catch the tea time crowd.

I really admire those teaching assistants who toil away in hell hole comprehensives.

Whoever they are

"But it's not creaming off the top 20%. Again I refer you to super selective areas (which are in the majority of grammar areas)"

But not, I think, the majority of grammar school pupils.

And have you missed the fact that, in my experience, most people opposed to selective education recognize that there are arguments for super selectives- even if, like me, they do not agree with them.

mango in an ideal world, possibly in berts glorious reign with a lottery system, where all comprehensives are equal, that would be the case. But in reality it's not. A comprehensive that doesn't provide for the top 20% is a secondary modern, regardless of what you call it. You might be lucky enough not to have experienced them, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

And I can't answer for bert but my issue with catchment is that it is responsible for the huge disparity between the best comps and the worst.

bert if that's how you feel, then I genuinely apologise for reading you wrong. It's just that you are so vehemently against selection by 11+, selection by paying for private, and selection by religion, but you never seem as outraged by selection by postcode, despite the fact it is the greater evil in terms of the numbers who are disadvantaged by it. I'll vote for your rule, even the banning private schools, as long as you are also willing to either provide ss for the most able, or revise your view that in mainstream they can be understandably side lined for the other 99%. Failing that I'll run in opposition for glorious reign

Ah! Thanks Bertrand, I understand.

I live in a semi-rural area (leafy west Oxon!) so our comps are true comps as you've described - the v rich use the private school in the next town, everyone else (middle class middle earners down to unemployed, FSMs) use the same local comps.

I do think that a selective system, where, say, the top 5-10% are creamed off and catered for is probably better, more fair etc. With more technical schools offered alongside too.

I think this is the system they use in Germany, pretty much, isn't it?

Thanks lurked, I get it now.

We've been lucky to only have experienced true mixed ability & mixed income in all the areas we've lived since having the kids.

I suppose I've taken that for granted tbh.

Ah, in that case then yes I also agree that a totally randomottery might be fairer.

But location still plays a role, too. At least our grammar have huge catchments with every possible housing stock in them.

I do know of plenty of comps, with smallish catchments where the house prices are ridiculously inflated as a result. No chance of getting in those schools unless your parents can buy their way in.

That should read 'plenty of successful comps'.

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'.

You're not a teacher MaQueen. You were a teaching assistant. Why on earth would the school put you in charge of the most able pupils?

therealadalovelace your post is just not true for the Southend grammars:

• the tests are not IQ based - they are maths & English
• they do not have better facilities - they are underfunded and really struggle for any extras. The non-grammars locally have far better facilities.

I'm not saying I agree with grammars, a well setted comp would, I believe, be the ideal scenario but not for the reasons you state.