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.

[Badbadbunny]

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.

You forgot to include no faith schools and no selection by other criteria either. In my opinion/experience, faith schools have a more profound impact on the comps around them with being perceived to be better, so parents pretend to be religious to secure a place. Your utopia would only work if all schools were open to all applicants without ANY form of selection.

[teacherwith2kids]

Finland is interesting, because it is a system expressly designed to equalise attainment, partly by deprioritising the stretching of the very able.

That fits with Finland's national ethos, its national 'way of being' - but it does not mean that it would work in Britain's very different framework of values.

[teacherwith2kids]

Badbad,

The thing is, unless we absolutely randomise admissions, schools will continue to reflect the surrounding postcodes. Even without any form of selection, schools serving naice leafy postcodes will tend to have better raw results than those serving deprived estates. Unless and until more is done to equalise the intake, and parents and Ofsted learn to value the value that a school adds, rather the simplistically looking at raw results, even without selection there will be schools perceived to be 'better' than others (even if in terms of progress, that perception may be entirely wrong).

[Andrewofgg]

noblegiraffe The ECtHR decided more than fifty years ago that you cannot have a state monopoly on education. The idea may be interesting but it's a pipe-dream.

And if we randomise admissions across wide areas and make children travel long ditances (providing the transport? You tell me, teacherwith2kids) what chance for out-of-school activities, what chance for children forming friendships for out-of-school hours? Much less if they have a long journey home and in different directions.

Both ideas reek of the idea of children being the property of the State. No thanks.

[RhodaBull]

The Finnish thing trotted out is not very useful. The Finnish language is apparently easy to learn - spelled and pronounced phonetically - a bit like Italian. Once it's learnt, it's learnt. No struggles with spelling and quirky grammar. Also the population of Finland is 5 million. And the culture is quite homogenous. Immigration is historically low and class distinctions are less pronounced.

Furthermore the teaching has been traditional (all sit facing front with teacher teaching) - something at which lots of MNers and educationalists would howl with misery.

[HPFA]

I understand the theory behind randomized admissions but I wonder how it could work in practice. ? Witney, a town near me has two very good schools and usually neither of them is oversubscribed - people seem to divide themselves between the two all by themselves! So would there really be any point in forcing kids to go to one or the other?

By the way, how come we're thirteen pages into a grammar school thread and no-one's mentioned their great, great grandfather's second cousin who went to Oxford from their little fishing village and that proves we should bring them back? And how come people on both sides are making reasoned arguments? I mean, stick to Mumsnet tradition people!

[EllyMayClampett]

Shouldn't he unit of measure for educational success be individual students, rather than schools. Schools are there to serve pupils, but the other way around. Parcelling kids out to schools so that schools have a "fair" mix of able children, and supported children, and middle class children. Makes things better for schools, but does it make things better for the children? Do lie achieving DC do better? Or is their poor performance just averaged out in a better overall school performance?

[teacherwith2kids]

Elly,

I absolutely see your point. If schools really WERE measured and valued for the progress made by individual children, then there would be a very significant re-arrangement ofb current league tables, and if this could be accompanied by a re-evaluation of what the word on the street says about schools, there would be no specific need for 'adjusted' admissions.

The issue is that, at present, some schools have 60%+ PP children, others have less than 1%. The latter are almost always regarded as 'Outstanding', the former as 'sink schools'.

I don't think that it needs randomised admissions so much as a re-evaluation of what a good school does.

However, I do think that an evening out of PP children so that all schools admit the average level of PP children in the wider community they serve (so the whole town / borough), with PP money being used for transport, would help significantly in defining whether a school is good because of its intake, or genuinely good because it adds value to the children it admits.

[EllyMayClampett]

Sorry for the garbled post above, I was on an iPhone and didn't notice the predictive text.

I can see how the measurement issue of schools drives teachers and heads mad. It isn't fair and it should be changed.

As a parent, citizen, and tax payer, I am more concerned with the students' achievement, not the perception of the schools' achievement, though. Sending DC hither and yon and breaking up communities of which schools can be a big part seems self defeating to me.

[teacherwith2kids]

Elly, the thing is, the process is somewhat circular.

if a school is perceived to be 'poor' as a result of its raw results, which are a function of its intake, it becomes harder to recruit good staff (especially in key shortage subjects such as Maths), employ good senior leadership and attract the brighter students from the community. Unless it is an area where all schools are oversubscribed, it will probably be somewhat under-subscribed and thus get less money (funding is per capita).

It therefore becomes harder to ensure that the students there achieve highly, so the raw results may fall a little further ... and the school spirals slowly down, or at best remains in a holding pattern of working desperately to stand still.

Whereas if there is a focus on added value instead, the very same school with the very same raw results might well be perceived as 'doing very well at adding value'. Ambitious staff, and heads who want o go somewhere, apply to join the school. Fewer students who might once have avoided it go elsewhere, so the intake spirals slightly up...

[teacherwith2kids]

I should clarify - I am not in favour of randomising admissions. I would prefer people to be much more intelligent in the way that they interpret raw results and how they rate a school. However, I believe it is probably quicker and easier to juggle with pupil premium numbers in schools than it is to change public perception, which can take decades....

[Kennington]

I don't see why state primaries can't do some passed papers and prepare the kids a little. Surely this is good for all kids regardless of whether they take the exam.
I agree though that until a child is well fed, safe and in a low stress household they will not reach their educational potential because they will not be as physically and mentally supported. If the kid is worried about mummy and daddy they cannot spend as much time on other things. How this is done I do not know.

[teacherwith2kids]

kennington, at the moment, this is not allowed in state primaries.

I suspect the issue might be one of slippery slope - it would start with one or two past papers, and then some schools would offer half a term of special lessons, and then the next school would do them for a whole year + special lunchtime sessions ... and then it would be a bit of an arms race and end up like the private primaries, where they start with VR and NVR from the age of 5 and spend the months leading up to the 11+ teaching to the test...

[Lurkedforever1]

Yy elly. Dd's primary was exactly that type of school, stats looked bad but in reality was amazing. The problem was that ofsted were hardly in favour. However because the head etc were experienced enough to continue doing it their way, i.e prioritising children, not league tables, it wasn't a problem. But if it had been a less experienced head, with less experienced staff, let alone a bad head, I doubt their attitude would have been the same.

I don't think if we're looking at getting more mixed cohorts pp is enough. There is a world of difference between a school with eg 15% fsm, mainly comprised of run on pp, but then 70% of dc from wealthy, educated homes, and a school where the 15% are mainly from breadline income homes, and 70% of dc are from homes that are just over the fsm cut off.

Perhaps instead of reorganising the intake, funding alone would be easier. The average funding per head could be based on council tax band or similar, so a school that had large numbers of dc from low income homes would have much more funding than a school with large numbers of wealthier dc. I know pp is meant to cover that, but as I say pp alone is too blunt. And the funding I descibe would just make up the schools budget, rather than being for the individual.

Of course, that's also in addition to the fact funding per head needs to be allocated more evenly across the country to start with.

[teacherwith2kids]

Lurked, yes, I can see that that could work. The funding alone cannot compensate for e.g. neglect, poor food, poor housing, entrenched worklessness etc but it can go to fund the teaching and support / pastoral staff to mitigate some of their effects, and to manage the meetings, paperwork and sheer emotional energy that can go into supporting such pupils effectively in school.

[Lurkedforever1]

That's what I was thinking too teacher. It would also make it easier to attract (and keep) the staff, because their job wouldn't be so much harder.

Plus you could use those starting stats to form some type of league table that actually represented how good or otherwise the school was, and any ofsted, targets etc could be applied for the actual cohort.

[Longlost10]

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.

The two biggest factors i am aware of that I see which impact educational achievement the worst are lack of parental support, and cannabis use.

1, Stamp out cannabis use from the country completely

2, hold parents accountable for all homework coming in on time and done to an acceptable standard

obviously there would need to be some exceptions to 2, such as for foster parents, or parents with learning difficulties, but no exceptions to 1, cannabis possession = automatic prison sentence, including for minors, who will then attend lessons in prison.

It is no coincidence that some of the countries that rank highest in Pisa have the strictest control on cannabis. Five years with hard labour for first offence of possession for personal use in Japan, for example

grammar schools dont prevent secondary modern pupils being offered opportunities. There are many reasons why such opportunities might not be taken up. Some, such as academic potential, we can do nothing about. Some, parental support and cannabis use, we certainly could do something about.

[EllyMayClampett]

I didn't realise that cannabis use was such a big issue with youth in this country.

A hard line on cannabis in the USA hasn't really worked. It's criminalised the poor disproportionately, for what are mostly non violent crimes.

Now individual states are dabbling with leagalising it, which I don't agree with either.

[EllyMayClampett]

It think the "smart" people should be rethinking the measures and the funding arrangements. That's were the problem lies.

It's "arse about face" to be bussing dc all over God's creation to massage statistics, and not really in the dc interests at all. Schools exist for the benefit of children; children do not exist for schools.

[FayaMAMA]

In my area the super selective schools entrance is based firstly on location and then on the test results :( They will accept every child from within the town who pass the exam before they look outside, even if children just outside the town got full marks. This also gives wealthy families an advantage as they can (and often do) buy houses or flats within catchment areas for selective schools when working class families couldn't afford to do so. My brother recently did this for his children, which caused a bit of an argument between us as I completely disagree with his choice - especially as he can afford private school (not to mention that our parents would pay for private school if he couldn't).

[shouldwestayorshouldwego]

They will accept every child from within the town who pass the exam before they look outside in this case it is a selective school not super selective, and it means that local children can go to a local school rather than children being bussed in from miles away to a school that local children don't have a chance of going to. Most schools have distance as a criteria. I don't agree with just buying somewhere to jump the queue but he is exercising his right to chose the right school for his child.

[Lurkedforever1]

longlost my experience isn't that many fall into your two categories. After you include all the valid reasons why a parent can't, rather than won't support their dc's education, the majority of the 'not really trying their personal best' do so because they are disenfranchised, and don't have much reason to value good education. After all Jane and Jack will end up in shitty nmw jobs either way, so what's the point?

And when its the small minority of parents who really don't give many fucks in general, with educational support just being yet another area they aren't interested in, not because the parents themselves have complex backgrounds, my experience isn't that cannabis is the main problem. Its more likely to be drink round here. Not cos they are alcoholics, just because their access to a good time is their main concern. And I do genuinely think that is a very small minority, and one that exists in every socio economic group. It's just more obvious when they have small incomes.

I think more social housing, so there was less of a ghetto feel, and more of a society feel, with all the benefits it brings would help. A family with problems who live in an area where the only common denominator is low income, have a far better outcome than the same family in an area where the common denominator is having problems.

[Oakmaiden]

We don't have grammar schools. My daughter goes to a traditional comp, where they stream for ability. I'm not sure how I feel about that really. It is great for her, as she is in the top stream (out of 8 streams), with a minimal number of disruptive children in the class. They have superb enrichment and in Year 7 having been working on GCSE level maths. She gets to learn 3 languages and do science as 3 subjects rather than as generic "science". Children are moved between streams, so they are not "there for life".

I can see the downsides though - my daughter's maths is actually a lot weaker than her English, so strictly speaking she should be in a lower "set" for maths to learn with children at her own level (though she actually seems to be mostly keeping up). However, I am fairly sure I would not be quite so positive about her experience if she was in a lower set. Research shows that streaming and setting benefits the brightest, but is detrimental to those discarded in the "lower" sets. The teachers have told me that behaviour issues are far more common when you move down the streams, which offers children in those classes a disadvantage the top set children don't have.

And yet - the job of differentiating for a true mixed ability class in maths (when you could have a class with children who struggle with basic arithmetic and those working at GCSE level in the same lesson) would be enormous.

I don't know what the answer is.

I am rambling.

[Blu]

Oakmaiden: yes, and yet the endless angst is about grammar, super selectives and top sets, and which is best and what is the difference and how far the firebreak between the 25% most academic and the other students should be.

And yet perhaps a spectrum of ability, or where the fulcrum is positioned isn't the issue at all.

My academic DS doesn't choose his mates according to what set they are in, he chooses friends with the same interests and values.

The big divide is between the troubled and troublesome, and the focussed and aspirational, of all abilities.