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.

Dancegirl You are making the same mistake that I used to make and that is assuming all other things are equal, being poor is no barrier to helping your child into grammar school.

That was because I am from a country where the poorest are the most fiercely determined for their children to succeed and not suffer like they have through no fault of their own except lack of opportunity. Most of the poor in my home country are from two parent families, not addicted to drugs or alcohol, desperate for their children to succeed. They are mostly iiliterate or semi illiterate but don't let that hold them back and go to church every week or the mosque. My grandmother cannot read, yet it didn't stop her telling DM to read letters or her to her everyday, whilst she nodded along.

The demographics of the lower so economic groups in England are very different. Some have addictions, MH issues, fractured families, all of these are huge obstacles to supporting a child to get any form of education never mind getting into grammar school.

Of course children with supportive parents generally do better. Which is all the more reason children without that background should at the very least be able to have equal access to state education. If education is the one hope you have going for you it's all the more important you get it.

I said on another thread that I believe that one way of equalising performance of secondary schools - and eliminating the very high statistical linkage between low Pupil Premium % and high Ofsted ratings - would be to require all schools within a geographical area to take the same % of Pupil premium children. So Grammar schools, rather than just prioritising PP children who pass the test, once they have passed the test, should take PP children up to e.g. 26% if that was the average in their effective catchment, even if that meant that the pass mark for PP children was very much lower than for other children.

What, whole cities of children all see a private tutor every night?

But this is not unusual in a number of countries. Leaving aside countries such as Korea, in Greece almost all children go to private tutoring classes after school. Greece has a parallel education system: school ends around lunch-time and then children go to private tutoring classes in the afternoon. The vast majority of children (even from poor backgrounds) go to private tutoring as it is perceived to be impossible to succeed if you don't and education is very highly valued by everybody.

You're quite right that education isn't valued in the UK teacher which is why some parents want their children at schools where education is really valued, by everyone.

And I don't think that is the case for everyone using the comprehensive system.

OP, I am not sure what good it would do. It still wouldn't be fair. DC with supportive parents tend to do better in their school work. Introducing a subjective event would certainly cause some problems too.

Maqueen but you're moaning about the Uk's international rankings while arguing for something that does nothing to address that, in fact more likely the opposite.

If all the kids of bright, engaged, powerful, well-off parents get to send their kids to X school, then what do you think will happen to Y school?

MaQueen,#

the city i was thinking of was Shanghai - all evidence is that a) only certain children from certain social classes get to go to school in the city; b) after school tutoring is universal and c) China submits this as evidence of their education system country-wide.....

Soprry, Maqueen, I meant to add that, like noblegiraffe, I am uncertain as to how a move to a grammar / secondary modern system would improve our Pisa rankings, given that the best statistical evidence shows that grammar/SM and comprehensive counties with similar demographics have indistinguishable education results at a cohort level?

I sduppose it's not that i don't see our low position in the Pisa tables as a probklem 9though i am uncertain as to whether the tables compare like with like in any meaningful way at all), just that i don't understand the link between

"We are 20th in the Pisa table" and "We must re-introduce selection, so 75-95% of children will be in schools designated as being 'for the less able'"

All this angst about "fairness" of the process for getting into grammar schools, assumes that a grammar school place is some fabulous prize well worth winning.

My children both go to grammar schools that are generally considered "super selective". I wasn't totally sure about my choice - we have a good local comprehensive as an alternative. And it is a comprehensive, not a secondary modern. My husband was keener than me.

On balance, I thought that my ultra-conscientious, routine led, socially insecure daughter would find the grammar easier socially, and that was probably right. And I thought that my very confident but slightly lazy son would get a useful push by not being a "big fish" (I'm still withholding judgement on that).

I'm not UNhappy with the schools, but I'm not yet convinced that the children there do significantly better than they would elsewhere i.e., most probably they mainly get superb results by selecting very bright children, not through any amazing teaching. Some boys in my son's class arrived in Yr 7 with an A* at GSCE already - how can the maths teaching fail . Obviously I don't really have anything to compare with, but I've not been wowed.

Of course, if I needed to save my children from a really poor local state school, then that would be a different situation. Suddenly the fairness or otherwise of the selection process for the grammar would seem a lot more important. But then the real unfairness would still lie not in the nature of that selection process but in the quality of the education provided elsewhere. If all schools were high quality, then the 11+ would be a non-issue (as it was for us really). Yes, there would always be some parents getting themselves in a tizzy about it, but that would be more to do with wanting to show off how clever their darling children are, rather than anything to do with the educational benefits.

I'm ambivalent about grammar schools, both personally and socially. I don't care that much about the fine details of the 11+. I do care that all children go to great schools. Unfortunately that isn't always the case.

Irregular, i agree. I think that the best way to improve results for all children would actually be to invest in social care and support throughout children's lives, rather than in inventing / reinventing specific types of secondary schools.

Some children arrive at primary without spoken language - not because they come from a home where English is not spoken, but because they are never spoken to or expected to speak. Some have substance-addicted or imprisoned parents. Still others see no point in education because what they see around them is worklessness. Many come to school hungry or over-fed a non-nutritious diet, or are inadequately housed. At the moment, too often schools are required to compensate for ALL of these ills ion their surrounding community - and unsurprisingly, some of those schools where many, perhaps even a majority, of their pupils face these disadvantages daily become overwhelmed and fail to maximise potential.

If there was a better 'out of school safety net', and a decision to equalise the numbers of such children between all schools, then that would do more to boost performance than reintroducing more selection, because it would raise the attainment of some of the lowest performers.

Irregular, the only thing that makes me nervous about your post is the phrase "great schools".

All too often, people mean:

• Schools with high raw results
• Schools with high Ofsted ratings
• Schools with good discipline, nice MC pupils

As all of these are, essentially, linked functions of intake (ofsted results are tightly linked to % of PP children) one does always have to dig down to find out what the school does with its intake, even if it doesn't actually tick any of the 3 boxes above.

The thing is, even if Equality of Opportunity were achieved, how can you possibly arrive at Equality of Outcome? Some posters seem to think that the second is a natural consequence of the first.

And this "poor children" bandied about is such nonsense. Ds's friend's parents have had some terrible luck and frankly must be the poorest people in the town. Didn't stop their ds getting 10A*s. And look at the record of achievement of children from certain immigrant groups. It's lack of parental engagement and genes which carry much more responsibility for a child's lack of educational success.

I can't say I've spent a bean on my dcs' schooling. The only way to level the playing field here would be to make my dcs have to sit exams in half the time or write backwards. (That sounds a bit boastful, but it's just a bit of hyperbole to make a point.)

I wonder what the school system would look like if there was no opting out of a comprehensive state offering. No grammars, no private schools, no fiddling of catchments to exclude the poor kids.

If politicians and CEOs and so on had to send their kids to the same schools as everyone else, then we might see far more interest in those schools succeeding.

And this "poor children" bandied about is such nonsense

No, it really isn't. Anecdote does not equal data. Pupil premium has its faults, but there's no denying that statistically, kids on pupil premium have poorer educational outcomes than children with the same prior attainment.

And schools with the highest % of PP children have the lowest Ofsted ratings, while those with the lowest % PP children have the highest Ofsted ratings...

As other posters have said, the PISA scores are a red herring, unless you think that secondary moderns will offer a more effective academic education than comps.
The infamous Graham Brady who wants many more secondary moderns
cites Wellington School in Trafford as an example of how great moderns are. It does get great results but it's based in a very wealthy area and 40% of its students came in with a Level 5 in KS2 SATS.It's a comp in everything but name and evidently a very good one. But 99% of secondary moderns are not in such a favourable position.

Teacherwith2kids - I entirely agree. Based on raw results my children go to two of the best state schools in the country. They also have Outstanding Ofsteds. I think they are good schools. Are they that good? Probably not.

It's very difficult to know whether a school is great or not. Even harder to know how to make it great. But sufficient resources - with more resources going into poorer areas is a start. And great teachers above everything else. The Economists had an interesting leader article on creating great teachers a few weeks ago. Too much paperwork and silly grammar SATs probably don't help.

My post was a bit utopian, but I do think that playing around with the selection process for grammar schools is a distinctly second order concern.

I wonder what the school system would look like if there was no opting out of a comprehensive state offering. No grammars, no private schools, no fiddling of catchments to exclude the poor kids.

It wouldn't instantly mean we had a system as good as Finland's but I tend to think it would increase pressure on the government to make ours as good. Ironically I think the whole grammar debate has prevented us from seriously addressing issues around high achievers in comps. If I started a thread here titled "How do we improve provision for the more able in comps?" how long would it take for the first "Bring back grammars" post? Any newspaper that looks at the issue gets inundated with online comments saying the same thing.

If we tried to do what they do in Finland, there would be a huge amount of protest from many middle class parents and from many teachers as well. No setting or ability tables, desks facing the front, textbooks, little group work, lots of teacher talk.

The problem with talking about how to improve our schools, is that there is no real agreement on what should be done. Some people favour more traditional teaching, like Finland's (apart from the lack of setting), others want much more progressive methods.

The progressives have held sway for many years now, but their hold is slowly diminishing. Ofsted had a lot to do with that, but fair play to Michael Wilshaw, he did try to get rid of the idea of preferred teaching styles from inspections.

teacher I'm not saying increase grammars, and ergo secondary moderns. I am saying bloody improve standards in comprehensives.

Grammars and independents comprise only a very small fraction of pupils, so they don't impact on the overall performance of comps in the many, many fully comprehensive areas in the UK.

Children in the UK are, overwhelmingly, educated within the comprehensive system...and yet we lag behind so many other comparable countries in literacy and numeracy.

But you can't blame the comprehensive system for crap literacy/numeracy. It's what goes on in (and out of) the classrooms that is important there, the curriculum and provision, not the school system. That's an entirely different discussion.

MaQueen,

To improve literacy and numeracy, first you have to improve the safety and welfare of all children - until that is done, especially for the poorest, most vulnerable, and most marginalised groups, their educational attainment will not rise. Oh, and look at the communities in which they live - white, working class boys living in run-down seaside towns do not have low educational attainment because they attend poor comprehensives, they have low educational attainment because they do not see there as being any improvement in their lives and employment prospects in their local area even if they do pass their GCSEs.