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?

I don't know any children so staggeringly bright they can't be educated with others. I do know some children struggling so hard they would be better off having a school tailored to their needs though. In my experience, the kids who are bored are often not the most gifted, just the least interested.

I have kept out of this as a RQT whose eldest child is at a grammar (though it is hardly a Kent situation, we seem to have a random one here). My son's school is excellent and he loves it and thrives. But I know that he would have done so at at least 2 of the local high schools. I did some of my teaching practice in one of them and it was excellent. The children who go there are by no means "also rans" because of the local grammar, there were so many children with CAT scores (I know, I know) in excess of 120/130. They were extremely well behaved. It was a dream to teach there, the results are well ahead of national average. My son chose to go to a school where more of his friends were going. And they had an astroturf pitch . He wanted to sit the test and we worked within the system we have. I was actually quite worried about it all as I favoured the non-grammar pastorally, it's smaller and has a warmer "feel".
I completely agree though with smallfox about these amazing (only found on MN) uber bright pupils not being stretched in non-grammars, not my experience at all.
I also agree with Multivac, we should be teaching ALL of our children to not fear failure, to keep trying, keep questioning. Have had some limited training on growth mindset, but I would like to delve deeper.

almond - when all schools are offering a similarly excellent education, we can abandon this ridiculous pretence of 'choice', too.

Well indeed. But it will still be the case that not all schools will offer the same subjects, and not everyone will end up at the school that offers the subjects they want.

DD will leave her comp at the end of the year, not to transfer to the grammar school, but to move to a sixth form in another county as it offers an A level subject not available locally. It isn't as 'excellent' as the grammar, but that's not all school is about.

Not everyone can study everything. Obviously. But we're talking KS3/4 - there's really no reason why every school can't offer a similar, broad range of subjects beyond the core necessities. And you're rather missing my point, anyway, which was - as I've already repeated once - about not restricting access to courses on the grounds of flawed summative assessment. There could be other, perfectly reasonable grounds.

If there's no reason why all schools can't offer exactly the same range of subjects at KS4 in non grammar areas, why don't they?

Surely that is an issue having an impact on far more students than the existence of grammar schools.

Unless access to courses is restricted more by the existence of the eleven plus than by other methods of sorting kids into schools, what is the relevance of subjects available to the debate over the eleven plus?

almond, I think we are talking at cross purposes; my point was originally made as part of what I would like to see genuinely comprehensive education look like, and referred to what happens within school, more than between them. OK, an example: very many comprehensives restrict students' access to language GCSEs, because they are recognised as particularly demanding - and the grades learners end up with are taken into account when deciding whether a 'good' school can be moved to 'outstanding'.

And learners in grammar schools are regularly steered away from courses they might enjoy, towards those in which they can pull in the top grades.

Yes, I agree with you.

There's a huge problem around pupils being encouraged into subjects where they are more likely to get higher grades, which is a consequence of league tables and universities.

There are, surely, very good reasons why a secondary modern can't offer the same range of GCSEs as a grammar school?

In January 2015, I heard Nicky Morgan speaking at an event. She proudly announced, to a room full of teachers, that in future, the government would be able to link GCSE courses to future earnings "so that we can tell what subjects are really worth."

It was chilling.

Are there?

DD's school is, in the sense of being in a grammar school area, a secondary modern.

It doesn't offer Latin or Italian, but then one of the grammar schools doesn't either.

The grammars don't offer dance or drama, and not all of them offer Computing, which DD's school does.

I wonder if we need GCSE qualifications at all.

I was reading a Sutton Trust report linking degree to earnings, and it was largely influenced by class background.

For example, for those who did not attend private school, a media studies degree led to higher pay than an English degree. The reason that English graduates do better than media studies graduates is because so many of them are privately educated and have connections.

It completely changed how I viewed degree courses.

almond - yes, I think qualifications taken at the age of 16 are increasingly redundant (despite increasing weight being given to them when judging schools).

BertrandRussell - how can your Ds be an outlier in his school when he's at the cut off point between grammar and non-grammar? One point more and he'd have got a grammar place (I presume), but its not as though he's the only one who didn't get a grammar place for the want of 1 or 2 or 3 (or 4 or 5) marks. Maybe he's at the top end of the ability groups at the school but he won't be alone there.

Do you think he just had a bad day when he took the test or the other kids around his ability level all got tutored and found places? But if its either of those, then why didn't you have him sit the 13+?

He's level 6s, top 10-15%. Failed the 11+ catastrophically(not by one mark!) for no reason anyone has yet been able to explain. No 13+ round here!

Off topic; but how on earth does everyone on here seem to know exactly what centile (nationally?) their offspring falls into in terms of academic attainment?

Level 6s in year 6 and he still failed the 11+?! Wow! That must have been a huge shock for everyone.

What sort of exam was the 11+? I test type things or a maths test and an English exam?

IQ test I meant!

And anyway, by 13 he was settled where he is, and I knew that he'd do OK.

In my case, Ds was tested for a learning disability and that's how it came up - they profile everything as the learning disability shows as a spike. Also he did ukmt last year and got a merit which only 1250 out of 1.5 million get.

"Off topic; but how on earth does everyone on here seem to know exactly what centile (nationally?) their offspring falls into in terms of academic attainment?"

I know about one of mine because we were so amazed about him failing the 11+ we got an Ed psych assessment in case he had a "hidden disability" we needed to think about.. (He didn't)No idea about the other-apart from CATS.

There's a huge problem around pupils being encouraged into subjects where they are more likely to get higher grades, which is a consequence of league tables and universities.

This is correct. But it is caused by the fetish of getting as many people to university as possible. It would be far more useful to have league tables that show a school-leavers' success in getting jobs, either immediately or after three years of study.

I said upthread that in Britain there is a fetish about separating academic from non-academic children. The assumption is that it is better to be academic and go to university. This is a simple nonsense, and all it creates is a bloated tertiary sector and a generation of young adults crippled with student loan debt, fighting over jobs that don't require any of the skills they acquired in their degrees. It is a colossal waste of time and effort, both for them and for the taxpayer who subsidises those degrees. Grammar schools are the wrong solution because they perpetuate this fetish of sending kids to university - in theory, the kids from the local council estate but in reality the rich kids whose parents paid for them to attend prep school.

The theory behind grammar schools is that they improve social mobility. The reality is that unless there are plenty of decent jobs for people from all backgrounds there is no social mobility and grammar schools will not help one iota.

Better to leave school at 18 and get an apprenticeshop than be an arts graduate scrapping for a job at 21. The latter may be able to appreciate Jane Austen, but the former will not only already have a job and reasonable prospects but should also have some savings and no debt.

toadinthehole is right - except I don't think grammar schools are there for the kids from the council estate alone. They are for everyone, irrespective of background (or at least they are supposed to be).
If it was just the council estate, you could make the entry criteria something like must be a council tenant, or parents must earn less than £x.

I like the idea of school success being judged on how many have paying jobs by the age of 22.

I guess one of the issues is that teachers have mostly never experienced life outside of the academic sector, from one side of the fence or the other, so it would be unfair to ask them to prepare pupils for the workplace as they couldn't know what employers need and want. TBH ditto politicians who these days tend to go straight from university into politics, or related jobs, like quangos.

In my case, Ds was tested for a learning disability and that's how it came up - they profile everything as the learning disability shows as a spike.

We are having testing for dd2 (yr5). In her case for dyslexia. Her reading has improved, but still slower than siblings, but spelling and writing still around yr1 level. She is good at maths, verbally very articulate, great at musical composition, a great story writer.

She may well fail her 11+, not overall - because she is likely to pass her maths and non-verbal reasoning, and possibly verbal - as she can spot hidden words because she isn't always seeing the whole word anyway. If she fails just one paper (in her case English) she will not pass, even if she got top marks on the others. Even at appeal she is likely to be deemed 'not of grammar school standard', because of concern that she won't be able to keep up with the pace due to dyslexia.

Fortunately our 'secondary modern' options are outstanding too, but she will lose her peer group of friends as the top 25% disappear off to grammar school. She will also at age 10 have failed in something and will see her friends and family access schools and opportunities denied to her. Passing might be more disastrous as there is less SEN support in the Grammar school (according to school who said that they don't really cater for children with dyslexia).

Grammar schools don't select the actual top 25% on IQ, they select all rounders whose parents have sent them to private school and tutored them since yr2 who will need less input across all subjects. With a spiky profile var12 your ds might not have passed the 11+ and so go to a school with the top set stripped away.

"toadinthehole is right - except I don't think grammar schools are there for the kids from the council estates alone"

I don't think anyone is suggesting they are-or should be. The problem is that at the moment they are definitely not for "the kids from the council estates"...........