Why do people get so worked up about selection in schools?

[Itisnoteasybeingdifferent]

Genuine question.
We all know selection is part of life. Last week there was a conversation about Emma Watson for getting her breasts out. But she is only famous because she was selected to play Hermonie. No one knows all the other hopefuls who were rejected. Likewise, if you apply for a job and get nowhere, it is because the employer selected someone else to do the job. Selection is a real part of life.

Yet when it comes to school we seem to think the opposite should apply.

"Oh right. So because some poor parents don't want or know they need to tutor their children all of them should get a shitty education"

No. they should get a good education. Which means a good comprehensive education because they wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting into a grammar school.

There are actually some "world faith" places at the school that have the same requirements as the christian ones (proven by a letter from your religious leader) and the school also has some music aptitude tests which it runs to allow children who are gifted at music to attend the school without being religious. It's really quite complicated.

I always wondered how they are allowed to do these music places without being limited by the rules that limit grammar schools. Out of interest, those who object to grammar schools, do you object to testing on things like music? The students have to listen to music and repeat beats, rhythms and identify instruments from listening. They don't have to actually play an instrument - but if they gain a place from their music ability the do have to play/learn one.

There is no excuse for any school being 'rotten'.

But

That doesn't mean that the way to improve them is to bring back grammar schools. A rotten school needs changing/closing. But ultimately changing the pupils that it takes won't do that.

As a measure of how good a school is, is it really fair to choose attainment over progress

Three of them are not even the best comps. It's fair to compare them against the three best comps. And two of the schools don't even measure up in those terms. Progress does not measure standard. It measures improvement. It can indicate that a school has progressed from the worst in the country to mediocrity. It certainly doesn't indicate it is one of the best schools or even best comps.

I would be loath to send my child to a school 'that had made lots of progress' because I would automatically wonder how very rubbish it had been in the first place, in order to progress so far?

It can indicate that a school has progressed from the worst in the country to mediocrity.

Progress 8 isn't about the progress of the school, it's about the progress of the kids in the school. I think you misunderstand the measure.

And, as some moaned up thread, if the vast majority of children are tutored before sitting the 11+, then still only the brightest/quickest get in.

Many, many children get tutored and still fail.

Complete misunderstanding of the measure...
Good grief...

I'm also not convinced that measuring on 'music aptitude' is fine for anything other than a music school. Again it is more hoops that the well organised can jump that the less organised / less able parents can't.

Still not the measure of the best background. In fact in this context, and the one in the league tables, it's one which deliberately obfuscates that comps with children from wealthier backgrounds do better. So you do better than all the other schools with more children from massive council estates, but not better than the schools with lots of wealthy kids in leafy suburbs.

It doesn't matter which way you look at it, that figure does not show that the best schools are in poor areas.

But we don't have good comps outside London and nobody has ever achieved good comps across the board. And it's poor children who go to the crap ones. So basically you want to continue with the system of education by house price. And poorer children stand a hell of a lot better chance of being tutored than they do of being able to move to a wealthy area. Basically you want to sacrifice almost all poor children in pursuit of an ideological pipe dream.

If London can do it, why not everywhere?
Might take time and money but it's doable.

How about this. Take the worst performing comp in each area and turn it into a grammar school. Don't change the leadership or the teachers. But the brighter intake will automatically means it instantly turns into a good school as its results will shoot up. Everyone happy now?

Patents can tutor their own children and it isn't rocket science, just time and effort. I don't see so much as a money decide, more an effort divide between parents. I can't see that spending time listening to your children reading, talking to them and buying some tutoring books so something that we all can't manage if we care enough.....?

Sorry, horrendous typos. But another thought, as someone said the other day, perhaps if you're area doesn't have grammar schools then you should thank your lucky stars. Less stress, just get on with learning

Rabbit The single parent of 3 children one of whom has special needs may or may not have the time and energy and confidence to do what you suggest. The parent who has EAL may not realise the requirements for 11+ until it is too late. And still we are back to tutoring, not picking up the children with aptitude.

I do thank my lucky stars that I ended up in an area with good comps and no grammars. Schooling wasn't a consideration when I settled in the area I followed my job to.

Locally 4 non faith grammars cover the whole of the local authority between them and the 2 faith grammars each cover the whole authority. DD and DS have friends from right across the borough some live in wealthy areas and some in areas of high deprivation (where we live) but I appreciate this does not happen in many areas at all.

London did it with massive investment on the back of under investment elsewhere for years. London is also an area with high aspirations and many immigrant families who are more likely to push their kids.

Interestingly I looked at the progress 8 for the local schools in my area. The comp near us is under adverage progress 8. The "secondary modern" according to posters on here in the same city as 2 grammars and a church school is in the top 5% progress 8, it's more able figures are better than the comp 30 miles away. This is a school with well over the average pp( 40s) in an area of low aspirations that has had years of underfunding. The comp has below average pp.

Surely if it can be done there it could be done in other areas too.

TeenandTween agreed, but I imagine that a tutor can only do so much for a child in an hour a week, which again would fall back to the parents time and energy.

And children's ability/inclination to get on and do hw and have a good work ethic. Unfortunately brains will only get you so far, I imagine....?

And, as some moaned up thread, if the vast majority of children are tutored before sitting the 11+, then still only the brightest/quickest get in.

The brightest and quickest of the self-selecting pool who coach their kids. Who themselves will almost certainly have had greater educational opportunity than average.

I suggest you google the term cultural capital. Education should, after all, be lifelong.

Indeed sleep one day, drawing lots then might be an option to level the playing field? I guess that unless you live in an area with a grammar you don't need to worry ourselves about them?! If you do do what you can to get in or move?

I'm not sure how a school that selects the top 1% of students could even work, that would become a postcode lottery for the students who got in. Realistically could you travel to any of the closest 100 schools to you? Even if they were half or a quarter of the size of the average school and therefore there were lots of little super selective schools thats still going to be a massive stretch. 10 is probably the smallest number you could have and still have the grammars available for students living in most areas.

Extremely gifted kids have a special need. If a child needs to attend a specific school due to special need, then transport is the responsibility of the state.

I should add that I have a disabled child who is gifted, but not enough to make it into a school like that. He would do just fine in a good comp from the brains perspective - his disabilities mean he couldn't cope with the sheer size and bustle of one, though. When I say it should be for kids whose needs require a special sort of school, I'm talking extreme end of that spectrum.

I know a kid who had to sit in Reception learning phonics when he was already reading Roald Dahl and Harry Potter in his own time. And understanding them. At four. There is no skilful teaching or brilliant level of differentiation that can address that in a class with 30 kids, one teacher, and 1 TA. That child has a special need. Pure and simple. He deserves to go to a school that will challenge and stretch him - and he now does, because his parents are from a background that means he's now going privately, with a large bursary. But a child with those gifts whose parents didn't meet at Cambridge might well not have that option. Which means they will end up incredibly bored and disruptive, and never reach their fullest potential. They exist, and as far as I can see the best use of grammars is to identify and support them. Not to give already advantaged kids even more of a leg-up in life.

At present, grammars do in practice tend to provide kids from affluent backgrounds with a superior state education - a sort of middle way between state and private, in fact. All the argument about the provision of a ladder out for bright working class kids ignores the rather profuse quantities of data showing that they instead act as a ceiling, because poor kids almost never go to them. That's not a sensible use of resources, and on the whole it condemns those kids who didn't get in to schools that have low aspirations and low outcomes, from the age of just 11. That can't be sane.

At present, grammars do in practice tend to provide kids from affluent backgrounds with a superior state education - a sort of middle way between state and private, in fact
Evidence please?
Links to research that shows anything of the kind?
I can link to research that shows the opposite

And having been to private school, the education my kids have had at a comp isfar superior in every imaginable way.

As someone with a bright but lazy ds with an extremely spiky profile (easily obtained a level 6 in maths SATS with no homework, maths practice, tutoring or parental input, but got a 4a in his writing) I HATE the idea that bright children need separate schools.

My ds needs to be in a school with high achievers in maths, science and music, but couldn't cope in a grammar because his writing is awful and he's not studious or hard working.

My dd is also bright but rebellious and lazy. She wouldn't do the 11+ but would die of boredom in a setting where most of the bright kids have been siphoned off.

I'm so glad I live in London where the comprehensives are genuinely 'comprehensive'.