to ask would you send your eldest Dc to a grammar school?

[var12]

Hypothetical question... if there were grammar schools in your area and your DC1 was offered a place, would you accept it?

And it shouldn't be perceived as a failure to qualify in a technical trade rather than an academic career. We have this all wrong too.

Secondary moderns don't exist. We were supposed to have a tripartite system.

We should be investing more in comprehensive schools and not cutting funding, rather than having yet another flipping reorganisation and siphoning of funding for pet projects.

Want to know how much Gove's flagship academy 6th form in Westminster cost? Just for the building? £45 million!

I have no reason to feel anything but proud to support my own DC's education to the best of my abilities. We should be encouraging all parents to do the same, not holding back some children so as to save the egos of others.

"holding back some children so as to save the egos of others."

Which is exactly what the grammar school system does, thanks for agreeing.

Nothing can be everything to everyone and this particular comprehensive tends to not bother to differentiate the work for the most able. In fact, they frequently pull and good teachers out of the top set classes (with 35 students) to focus on the lower ability sets (with 10 pupils in them)

^^ But this is well known? Its been reported many times over the years that many comps cannot handle and bring on their top sets.

I!ll bow out here, because I think that with limited resources, the most able have, pragmatically, to be a lower priority than the less able. Which, on Mumsnet is worse than admitting to cannibalism!

I live in Northern Ireland! We still have grammar schools which through two external agencies run 11+ exams. Until recently school were not supposed to prepare children for these exams but usually did. Boy my eldest children go to Grammar. Our fees are minimal and it was the best decision I ever made as both are thriving in both academic and non academic areas. Go for it!

var12 Tue 13-Sep-16 00:23:40 There seems to be a lot more grammar counties in England than I thought.

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/11plus/viewforum.php?f=64

reddotmum Tue 13-Sep-16 11:14:07 Boy my eldest children go to Grammar. Our fees are minimal and it was the best decision I ever made as both are thriving in both academic and non academic areas. Go for it!

Now if you had said that you had a DC in a Grammar School and a DC in a sec. mod. and they were both thriving, I'd be more sold on the idea.

This document makes for interesting reading. I wonder if the contents reflect the true state of play with regards to the NI education system today:

www.unescocentre.ulster.ac.uk/pdfs/pdfs_alan/2000_The_Effects_Of_The_Selective_System_Of_Secondary_Education_In_Northern_Ireland_Main_Report.pdf

" Comps cannot handle and bring on their top sets"

Drivel, why do so many children in top sets at comps get As and A*s?

The data that you are referring to is an OFSTED piece from 2013 which found that in 40% of non selective comprehensives, two thirds of children who achieved high grades at KS 2 didn't go on to get A-A* grades.

However, that means that a) 60% non selective comprehensives did achieve these grades as expected.
b) The points regarding students from middle class homes out performing those from poorer backgrounds stands. A further drill down on this information shows that the 40% of schools were overwhelmingly in areas of economic deprivation, and further to this that the lowest ability middle class children start to out perform the more able poorer children throughout secondary.
C) KS2 data is not a good predictor of outcomes at GCSE, which there have been numerous studies to prove.

smallfox2002 Tue 13-Sep-16 11:32:34 40% of non selective comprehensives, two thirds of children who achieved high grades at KS 2 didn't go on to get A-A grades.*

So what % of children at Grammar Schools don't go on to achieve A-A grades? All the figures presented in league tables are based on A-C grades.

and when you are an outlier, the comprehensive system doesn't work

Possibly, though I would dispute that this is necessarily true. I think that other characteristics of the individual school, individual teachers (plus the curriculum and exam system) are far more important than the pure fact of whether the school selects on academic ability or not.

But even it was true, it doesn't make sense to design a whole school system around the needs of outliers. You have to design something that works the best it can for the majority.

The vast majority of those 20% are not outliers, and there is no reason why the can't be well served in a good comprehensive school. And teaching the true outliers with those top 20% is in all likelihood not going to make all that much difference anyway - no different from being in a top set.

I was (arguably) an "outlier" once upon a time (top marks in my year of 300 at Oxford kind of thing...). I wasn't socially all that happy at my middle-of-the-road comprehensive. But I have no idea if I would really have been any happier at a selective school and to say that the system "failed" me in any real way would be ludicrous. There are certainly far, far bigger problems in the education system than a lack of optimum stretching of bright kids.

Yes I chose both my children to grammar schools. Would I have been happy if they had been abolished and my children couldn't go? Yes. But me opting out wasn't going to make any difference alone, so given the choices available I wasn't going to not send them on principle, though there were more highly principled and less pragmatic members of my family who thought I should.

Its not comparable, because it only looks at one set of data.

Like I said when you drill down into the data from 2013 that Wilshaw used you find that the 40% are overwhelmingly in areas of economic deprivation and have high levels of FSM etc.

A grammar doesn't have those issues in general, and don't tend to admit children with PP/FSM status.

var12 Tue 13-Sep-16 10:07:06 What I can't see is why the teaching, which is aimed at the middle and the c/d boundaries need change just because DS and others like him aren't in the classroom any more?

I don't see why your DC would need to sit in a different building to reach their potential but that is what is being proposed.

The idea that you can give 100% of students the best possible education by placing them all together academically is deeply flawed. You should separate out the top 10% and bottom 10% and deal with the three groups in manifestly different ways. My own kids were in the top 10% category and went into fully selective public education.

People say 'You only value your own kids...blah...blah'. I consider most of these people hypocrites who could not care less about the bottom 10% as long as they can take the top 10% and plunk them down next to their own kids in the hope a dose of 'the smarts' will rub off on them.

smallfox2002 Tue 13-Sep-16 11:40:48 A grammar doesn't have those issues in general, and don't tend to admit children with PP/FSM status.

Which is why I would be interested in seeing the A*-A figures ;-)

For Grammar schools to be seen for what they are i.e. Schools most successful in educating the top ability children, there should not be many C grades. Is there any data to suggest this is actually the case?

This thread is kindling the same feeling in me as Brexit and the earlier parts of the Archers on Sunday - despair at people's self-serving, short-sighted, fact-blind stupidity.

DadWasHere Tue 13-Sep-16 11:49:43 The idea that you can give 100% of students the best possible education by placing them all together academically is deeply flawed. You should separate out the top 10% and bottom 10% and deal with the three groups in manifestly different ways.

Do you think they need to be seperated out into different buildings?

It's phrases like 'the top 10%' and 'the bottom 10%' combined with disingenuous assertions that it's ludicrous that we don't recognize that a vocational qualification is just as good as an academic one in this country that infuriate me.

So: plan. We separate the bottom 10% and train them for trades, and then the bottom 10% should be very happy and pleased with their exactly equivalent status in society, and the respect their qualifications should earn them? Silly old bottom 10% not to be chuffed to bits that failing an exam gave them this wonderful opportunity!

So you think everyone should be in high powered academic careers then SeekEvery? What a great society that would be

No, what I think is that the decision about whether they have the opportunity to do so shouldn't be made when they are 10.

Some snapshots of the data:

The proportion of pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEN)
with statements or Education, Heath and Care (EHC) plans was less than
0.1% in grammars, but 2.4% on average in all other schools in England and Wales. The proportion of pupils with SEN, but not sufficiently
severe to be statemented or have an EHC plan was 4.2% at grammar
schools, 13.5% at secondary modern schools and 12.4% nationally.

In 2008 the then Department for Children, Schools and Families looked
at the intake of grammar schools in comparison to that of their local
area. This found that free school meal rates in grammars were not
representative of their local areas. They were around one-fifth of the
level in their local area in 2007. In addition they also had fewer pupils
from the low attaining ethnic groups, Black African, Black Caribbean,
Bangladeshi and Pakistani, than their local area

Grammar schools achieve 99% of students achieving 5 A*- C in English and Maths.

However for all the crowing about "academic excellence" on here, despite entering nearly 90% of their students for English Baccalaureate exams only 70% achieve it.

Yes I agree with that. What about movement between schools at ages 14 and 16? Isn't May proposing that?

What about being in the same school and moving up and down a set when necessary?

I don't think that will work either.

That was to Ells.

Setting does occur in Maths, English and Science.