To think most of the people bemoaning grammar schools are hypocrites

[pleasemothermay1]

That's just it's really I don't mind people who have the courage of there conviction but I have no trux with champagne socialists

Like jc or Diane Abbott or Tristan hunt

Who's children all went or will be going to grammar or private

Even bloody James o Brian moaning about grammars when he rountinly says he wouldn't rule out private for his girls 😕

Its a distraction, get the country back on one of its hobby horses and they will not notice what a fucking disaster brexit is becoming.

I am feeling partly smug because I told DH when Theresa May was "elected" that she would bring back selection. He argued back naming all the people noblegiraffe identifies. So, partly smug, partly furious.

Did you vote for brexit then smallfox?

I reminded him that the country is "sick of experts"...

Ha !

Not for me Small Fox, then again i don't live in London (loathe the place ) am not a 'leftie' neither work for Channel Four or in Education!

"sick of experts"

It always comes back to bloody Gove doesn't it? Still, this will properly screw over his legacy, he must be totally pissed off at it all. Which is a smidgen of a silver lining...

Oh yes indeed.

Where are the comprehensives anyway these days? Haven't heard that word since around 1979. It's high school people

Me and dh went to grammar schools. They were frankly crap but perform well now 30 years later.

All of ours older ones went to high schools and have degrees.

our youngest one has just done GCSE and outstripped all her friends who went both private and grammar.

Money and tutoring can't buy solid hard graft,

Seem to remember Dianne abbots hilariously defending her child needed to private school but she is a massive knob anyway

Hopefully sense will prevail and this is a distraction.

"I reminded him that the country is "sick of experts"..."

I do think we're entering a new era where informed opinion and evidence will count for fuck in politics.

The Trump era.

But sadly Yorke, they can. The most able poorer students have far worse education and life outcomes than the least able of the middle and wealthy.

Who cares. There will always be inequality but I'd take our country's set of inequalities over those of a woman in say, Afganistan any day.

"The most able poorer students have far worse education "

Depends on ethnicity and background. I read somewhere that a poor Chinese child in the UK is more likely to attend university than a rich white English child.

Really the children whose potential is most unrealised in the UK are children from white working class families who are massively underrepresented in grammars. Opening up grammars to children on FSM won't affect these children significantly as this group are underachieving at primary.

In general though the data suggests as I said above.

There will always be inequality? But we can lower it, and do things to change i

It is a laudable aim to lower inequality, but not by preventing able DC from reaching their full potential in order to protect the egos of the less able.

"It is a laudable aim to lower inequality, but not by preventing able DC from reaching their full potential in order to protect the egos of the less able."

No - the aim of reducing inequality is to raise education standards OVERALL, not to 'protect egos'.

Once again - the pro-grammar lobby seems unable to see beyond their personal ambitions for their own children to the wider issues beyond.

Bobochic - those able children would reach their full potential in a comp - mine have so far. Grammar schools are a product of the past and firmly belong it!

There is a certain irony in grammar school supporters talking about protecting people's egos!

Well Bobo I'm unconvinced about equality of the grey scale of Bertrand's utopia, where all children are dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

mini people everywhere know that those children need to be targeted from the start in order to achieve. Secondary reforms are entirely separate. The secondaries need the primaries to work for those children and the best universities need the secondaries to work. I know that's bleeding obvious but to give up on any access work because these kids appear doomed at the start isn't massively helpful to them. Also, people on these boards (especially those railing against grammars) hugely stereotype the intake of grammars. There's no doubt they're currently not representative, hence the drive for reform, but there are plenty of those who are not well off in the 'middle class' sense of the word. At our own school the numbers coming in eligible for the pupil premium mirror the numbers of those children in the wider local community achieving L5 at KS2. You're absolutely right that therein lies the problem, but those numbers in themselves are interesting. The grammars don't take kids achieving low L4s any more than UCL takes A Level grades of CCC. That's why I asked about those kind of statistics in Bucks. As Coe says, these are murky areas, but as noble says, no-one whose working in the field in insincere and people like Bertrand are coming at the same problem with the same motives simply from opposing angles.

mini I don't have a single child of my own left to take the 11+, so have no vested interest whatsoever.

Ah, morning Bertrand :)

RedHelenB - it has been demonstrated time and again that similarly able DC perform less well at GCSE in a non-selective school than in a selective school.

"Also, people on these boards (especially those railing against grammars) hugely stereotype the intake of grammars. There's no doubt they're currently not representative, hence the drive for reform, but there are plenty of those who are not well off in the 'middle class' sense of the word."

No they don't!

Nobody here is saying 'all children at grammars are m/c, privately educated, non-white'. What they are saying is that some groups are very significantly 'over represented' and some groups are very significantly 'under represented', and that this view is supported by the evidence.

The issue which nobody in the pro-grammar lobby wants to acknowledge or address which is fundamental to this argument, is that children who form the cohort which makes up the grammar school intake also appear to do extremely well in non-selective schools, and that there isn't evidence that grammar schools make a big difference to educational outcomes for this group. This is what the Sutton Trust research says, and also what the research done by the Institute of Fiscal Studies says.

This is what the Sutton Trust has to say:

"Most of these analyses suggest that pupils in grammar schools do a little better than similar pupils in other schools, with the
difference somewhere between zero and three-quarters of a GCSE grade
per subject."

However, when they say 'similar pupils' what they mean is 'pupils with a level 5 or above in reading, writing or maths'. They don't control for sub levels or for the effect of parental motivation and input.

And even though they don't control for sub-levels, grammars still don't seem to make a big difference to outcomes!

I live in an area with 3 fantastic Comps....I don't think anyone here would wish for one to become a Grammar because all abilities are catered for, there is no ceiling for the late developers, the higher ability pupils are stretched and those with special needs are given the attention they need. I think all this talk of Grammar schools is just a distraction, what we all want is excellent schools for all our kids, we need the failing schools to be properly fixed and we need to support the schools that are successful.
But that all requires money and what better way to avoid spending more money?
Create an environment of finger pointing and blame, it's all their fault - the parents who have enough money to move, who have enough money to tutor, who wish to cream off the top....it's time all schools were better and Grammar Schools will not make that happen!

We all know that the Sutton Trust has An Agenda.

I think it's a frightfully misguided organisation. Putting all that information in the public domain enables educated MC parents to imagine clever strategies to further their own DC's education.