To think that grammar school places should not be allocated just on the basis of an exam

[ReallyTired]

A super selective school should be a specialist school for the ultra bright. At the moment wealthy parents are able to give their children an unfair advantage over working class children by paying for tutoring. Grammar schools are no longer a leg up for bright working class kids. Many children who attend grammar schools are not super gifted.

If we are going to have super selective schools then we need to make sure that places go to the right children. I do think that an eleven plus exam is useful to weed out those who do not stand a chance with coping with a faster pace of learning. However such a major decision should not be solely based on an exam

Maybe the work that a child produces in class, previous test results or school recommendation should be considered. Maybe as a final stage a child should be assessed by an educational psychologist to be sure that the child is ultra bright rather than hot housed. Some universities take into account the secondary school a student has attended. I feel that grammar schools should look at the background of the applicant and their school.

A superselective school should have a curriculum which is tougher than the national curriculum. Children who cannot keep pace should be transferred to a mainstream school.

So dancer, what happens to children whose parents lack the skills to self tutor them in the manner you describe? One of the brightest people I know had a father who was almost totally illiterate - how would he have had the wherewithal to self tutor his daughter?

The thing that always angers me about these threads is the perception that only children from parents that are either well resourced or educated can access grammar schools !.

The vast 'majority' of families have access to the internet where they are a large no of free 11+ resources available.

The other point is obvious but seems to be either lost or ignored . This is if you have ability at sport 'nobody' would say it's not fair because child A is training harder than child B because they want to get in to higher team. Therefore why is it unfair because a child /family are prepared to put effort in to trying to access a higher level school.

A pp recommended using interviews as well as exams.

Interestingly, our local superselective used to use interviews, but they were stopped by a previous Education Secretary. The thinking was that the teachers would definitely be biased in favour of well-groomed, nicely-spoken, well-prepared children with good public speaking skills.

So, they changed to an exam-only system. And, guess what? The cohort became less diverse, both in background and in ethnicity.

It turns out that the interviewing teachers had actually been quite good at spotting the over-tutored types and at identifying the kids who might have been overlooked at Primary School, but had the spark of potential.

Of course grammar school children don't exist in an academic bubble. Well...maybe whilst at school, but their actual school time doesn't take up that much time.

My DDs regularly socialise with all their cousins, and their cousin's friends (none of them are at grammar). They also both belong to sport teams, outside of school, where they mix with dozens of non grammar kids. Same for extra curricular music groups, or drama groups.

Actually quite a few of their school friends have siblings who didn't also pass the 11+, and my DDs mix with these siblings too.

However, there's no denying that 'predominantly' my DDs do live in a pretty protected MC bubble with all that entails...and there's no reason why they don't continue to live in that bubble for the rest of their lives.

Grammar school...university...professional career...their socio economic status is unlikely to alter that much.

The vast majority of dc doing sports training, even the ones at county level and above, won't be future pro's who make a living from it. It is unfair from a pleasure pov, but in terms of adult prospects, access to high quality sports training has v little advantage for the majority. Unfair educational provision however has consequences that not only impact that individuals whole life, but future generations too.

Therefore why is it unfair because a child /family are prepared to put effort in to trying to access a higher level school.

It isn't unfair.If I lived in a grammar area and had no choice of a comprehensive I would tutor DD to avoid the secondary modern, so I don't blame other parents doing the same in that situation. The unfairness is in having "higher level" schools for 20% of children. We haven't yet reached the ideal of having good schools for everyone but re-introducing secondary moderns will take us in the wrong direction away from that ideal.

I have said before that I believe that grammar schools should essentially be treated as 'Special Schools' for those who have the special educational need of being so academically able that they cannot efficiently be educated in a comprehensive school.

In the same way that some children who have e.g. severe learning difficulties cannot be educated efficiently in a comprehensive because the specialist teaching, knowledge and equipment that they need are most efficiently used if they are concentrated into a single location to which pupils are transported, the same should be true of those who are academically so advanced that the teaching, knowledge and equipment they need (e.g. to access university level Maths in early Secondary, or a totally different curriculum than that for conventional 'GCSEs at the age of 16') can only efficiently be delivered in a few locations to which students are transported. Music schools like Chetham's, or dance schools like White Lodge are essentially a similar model, but based on 1 particular subject.

Ideally, these would also be co-located with normal comprehensives, so that if a child is advanced only in a single subject (Maths in particular is something that a child can be gifted at 'in isolation', while having very normal ability elsewhere) they could attend a normal comprehensive for the remainder.

The identification should be by the same process as for the transfer / entry of a child to an existing Special school - collaboration between parents and school to detail need and why the existing provision for them is insufficient, then a range of tests and pupil / school meetings administered by an Ed Psych.

Although existing Special Schools do have c. 3% of the school population in them, that is for a range of SEN, not just for learning needs. I suspect therefore that the 'Special Educational Need' of being so able in one or more subjects that a conventional comprehensive cannot meet their needs is much rarer - certainly less than 1%, possibly down at the 1 in 1000 level.

Yes, there are very highly selective grammars at the moment, who may take only 1% or so of the cohort, or even less where there is a very large effective catchment. However, they don't accurately identify - or need to identify - the actual top 1%. Instead they identify 10% of the children within the top 10%, as anyone in the top 10% can cope perfectly well with their curriculum because it is still predominantly based on conventional curricula leading to conventional exams - which is not what those who genuinely are able at an SEN level need out of their education.

I know one of those 'top 0.01% type' children - and their learning needs are totally different to the norm: as I said, University level maths in early secondary, delivered in their case by a mixture of a university tutor delivering Maths puzzles by post, and streaming of university Maths lectures. In other subjects they were simply top set in a comprehensive, which met their learning needs in those subjects perfectly.

(I also wonder whether those who the Ed Psych assesses as not needing a Special school environment, but perhaps needing modifications within the alternative school could receive the equivalent of an EHC plan, detailing how the conventional comprehensive should make adaptations to meet their specific needs)

ReallyTired But they are hothoused for SATs. As a secondary school English teacher, we regularly get children with level 5 and 6 who are nowhere near that level. On the day they got it because they were absolutely drilled to the test.

I can, however, see that this would need a larger team of assessors.

One option might be to use the staff of the 'High Ability special school' to assess / screen potential pupils, through some offsetting of holiday compared with conventional schools. This would mean that those most familiar with very high ability children could assess them, which would eliminate some of the variation between e.g. what headteacher / teacher A sees as high ability in their school vs what headteacher / teacher B sees as high ability in a different setting with a different intake.

Right. Every parent has the ability and time to tutor their dc regardless of income

No of course not. But I was pointing out that lack of finance is not a barrier to good preparation. And yes I am fully aware that self tutoring requires an enormous amount of time, dedication and full parental support. But there are plenty of lower income families who do this and sometimes their commitment is even higher than well off families because they haven't got the option of private schools to fall back on.

So dancer, what happens to children whose parents lack the skills to self tutor them in the manner you describe?

There are plenty of 11+ resources available, both online and elsewhere. It's not about the parents having ability themselves, although that is part of it. It's about being engage and switched on to the process, doing research so you know the details and format of the exam your child is sitting and finding out the best way to prepare. Finding the right resources to prepare your child, suitable practice papers, mocks etc.

There are plenty of things my dc do at school that I am unable to help with because I don't have the knowledge. But I can lead them in the right direction to find answers.

Dancer,

But it depends whether we are selecting for children with families who can offer 'time, dedication and full parental support' - or for the most able (or potentially able) children out of the cohort.

At present, the selection system has a significant element of 'social selection for children with good parental support'. The grammar schools then benefit from this cohort of engaged parents, as well as having academically more able children. - a double whammy of advantage.

If that is how we want it to stay, that is fine - but we have to be open about it and say that we know that both types of selection are involved, rather than pretending that we are genuinely selecting the most able children.

Dancer, one of the brightest children i have ever taught was the child of a semi-illiterate single parent. I had to fill in the online forms for their transfer to the next stage of education, because the parent had neither access to the technology, nor the reading and writing skills, to fill them in, and came in in a panic near the deadline, having heard from playground gossip that there was a form to fill in.

Luckily, they lived in a comprehensive area, and so the child could access a group of 'near peers' at the local comprehensive. In a grammar area, the chances of that parent being sufficiently 'engaged and switched on' to access the correct level of education for that child would be zero.

Bright kids with parents who are engaged and willing to support them at home can do exceptionally well in a comp. I see it all the time.

I've also taught some kids who are really good at maths, but not so good at other subjects. Should they be denied access to top set maths because they're middle set English?

Yes I totally agree teacher. But surely academic success relies heavily on having parents who really value education and are supportive doesn't it? Being clever isn't enough. Attending a grammar school is not the be all and end all, there are plenty of children who do well academically from very average comprehensives (myself included).

But, if our comprehensive system is so effective then why is the UK ranked 20th in the world for literacy and numeracy? This is despite the UK having the 6th largest economy in the world...

"Attending a grammar school is not the be all and end all"

So why are they necessary at all (for anyone below the 'SEN level' of academic ability, which is a very high bar)?

But surely academic success relies heavily on having parents who really value education and are supportive doesn't it?

There are plenty of teachers out there working bloody hard to close the gap.

MaQueen, If you refer to the Pisa rankings, then the honest answer to that one is because we rig our testing slightly less than many other countries...

Some countries remove 10% of their lowest attainers on the grounds of 'SEN'.

Others enter only their top cities (where those from lower social groupss are not allowed to go to school in the city, and where every child attends private tutors every day after school).

Lots of people would argue that they are not necessary teacher. But the comprehensive system isn't perfect either, there are pros and cons of each.

Agree with noble about closing the gap - and closing the gap is made very much easier if one side of the gap has not been herded into a separate institution at the age of 11....

What, whole cities of children all see a private tutor every night? That's tens of thousands of children, which means tens of thousands of available tutors...logistically it must doesn't add up.

But, even allowing for some massaging of figures 20th in the world is still pretty crap.

But, if our comprehensive system is so effective then why is the UK ranked 20th in the world for literacy and numeracy?

Education is not valued in the UK in the way it is in other countries.

How would grammar schools change our literacy and numeracy rates? When people talk about grammar schools, there would be outrage if the suggestion was then that the good teachers, money and resources would be focused on the kids who didn't pass the test in order to bring them up to scratch.