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.

Ta1kin that's good to hear that your comp is so good. I wonder whether comps might provide a better training for real life as well as a good education. Opportunity to mix and be friends with children from all backgrounds as well as the opposite sex. It has got to equip them well for the future I would think?

Children can be selected for their looks (Emma Watson)
At school you can be selected for Religion, Music, Football and many other things.
From birth you are selected by your parents wealth for private school.
The only thing you can not be selected for is having a brain.

What does that say to girls children?

11 year old is when children go to secondary, it might not be right but it is not an arbitrary time to select.

Children can be tutored to death but many don't need it to pass and many will never pass no matter how much tutoring. Its not just tutoring that enable children of wealthy middle class parents, its their whole privileged life, from the day they are born.

As pp said, high intelligence is a special need that is not catered for and I think should be, because of the benefit it brings society.

But we don't have good comps outside London and nobody has ever achieved good comps across the board.

There are lots of good comps outside London. But they aren't universal, anywhere which is what is needed.

Sorry, Talkin Peace, you misunderstand me. I'm not talking exam results when I say they provide the parents with a middle way between state and private. I'm talking snob value.

They only provide a better education in areas that have secondary moderns as an alternative, which is how they can also act as a ceiling to kids from poorer backgrounds. In those areas, parents don't have a heap of choice. It isn't snobbery to want your child to avoid a school where pupils are labelled low-achieving before they even walk through the doors - label theory shows that kids believe what they are told about their qualities and potential, and in a comp, a child can move between sets as they develop, and their abilities evolve. But there are areas with say one super-selective, which draws pupils from a huge geographical area (some kids have an hour's commute.. by train), that also have truly excellent comprehensives, rated OFSTED Outstanding and with stellar results that beat many less selective grammars... yet many parents still prefer the grammar, and send their kids privately at primary level to ensure it. That's for snob value, pure and simple. I live in one of those areas, and private primaries advertise their excellent admission rates as one of their selling points, alongside Common Entrance. It's a business, and getting kids into a grammar is quietly sold as being a private education for free.

I think there should be special schools for the extraordinarily gifted. That is the only justification I can see for grammars, and it's hardly what they are used for right now.

minifingerz if that was to me, I'm not talking ordinarily bright kids. I'm talking bizarrely bright - the truly gifted. I have an extremely bright child too, but he's nowhere near the level I think needs special educational provision in a dedicated school. My views have changed after knowing a couple of families who do have such kids. Honestly, I wouldn't want it for my child. It comes with a huge number of challenges.

Good comps meet the needs of most kids really well, I agree. The poor ones need to be improved (and better funded, too). I can't see how a shitty comp would make a good secondary modern, so the idea, when claiming grammars as the solution, seems to be that the less bright 75% don't actually matter and can be written off. Which would be pretty shocking at any age, frankly, but especially so when they are just eleven years old.

"But we don't have good comps outside London"

Utter nonsense. DD is at a good comp. An extremely underfunded one, but a good one nonetheless.

There's three good comps near me (3 hours outside London)

But we don't have good comps outside London and nobody has ever achieved good comps across the board.
Oh dear. and I'll ignore the fact london has preferential funding whilst northern, rural anf coastal schools have had years of underfunding which is getting slashed by £500-3000 a child in my area
I've worked in 4 excellent comps elsewhere in the country and all within an hour of each other. And (dare i say it!?) they had mixed catchment areas and took children from deprived areas. They're simply so awful and rotten that the ones with 6th forms send kids to russel group unis and lots of oxbridge. Others get kids into colleges and funded training routes with employers. Some work with local unis to do summer schools where if disadvantages kids attend they can get a lower offer if the uni sees potential in them. The kids get to do a range of extra currculars which a privately educated parent told me rivalled our local private schools. Our kids leave independent, resilient and well rounded. They are much more prepared for life and further study than little dahrlings who've been tutored for years to get them through.
But hey. Theyre just not good enough for some people. Heaven forbid they meet someone from a council estate.

(Yes crap schools exist. Ive worked in them. But the solution is to fund them properlh, train and recruit enough teachers and give them resources not slash funding yo existing schools whilst creating more pet projects to please whiny middle class folk)

I think there should be special schools for the extraordinarily gifted. That is the only justification I can see for grammars, and it's hardly what they are used for right now.
Why ?
What would they gain from neer having to muddle along with normal people in PE and Art and Music and drama and cooking ?

Lad from DD's college got 7 x A at AS and 5 x A* at A2
while appearing to do sod all work and generally arsing about
and because he was in with normal kids he learned proper social skills
UNLIKE the poor kids who are hothoused by their parents and get into Oxford age 13

And the debate rumbles on...

It's a good read but what's this with the "rotten northern comp" and "we don't have good comps outside of London" remarks.

Bill Sykes, I hope that dog of yours isn't a whippet and that you are one of those fake northerners, from somewhere like Chester, and not a proper one.

I live in the cultural and educational desert that is reputed to be Yorkshire. We happen to have some really great comps. Or perhaps that should be: 'Appen we 'ave some crackin' comps, sithee!

The story that only London has good comps is a myth perpetuated by Londoners to make themselves feel better about their ridiculous house prices and much poorer quality of life compared to what we enjoy in God's own county.

"and I'll ignore the fact london has preferential funding whilst northern, rural and coastal schools have had years of underfunding which is getting slashed by £500-3000 a child in my area"

DD's school is so underfunded, as are all the schools in the LA that they will get more funding, but not enough.

I think there should be special schools for the extraordinarily gifted

Extraordinarily gifted kids only tend to be extraordinarily gifted in one area though. You'd need a school for those extraordinarily gifted in maths (I've only taught 1 I'd rank as that in 10 years of teaching), then those who are amazingly gifted at English, another for those who are incredible at art and so on.

They'd have to be boarding schools because they'd have to take kids from across the country.

London has good comps. It's a matter of public record. The north and Midlands don't. Even the outgoing head of Ofsted said he thought bitterness over poor schools in the Midlands and North were a big factor in the Brexit vote.

I'm actually a Londoner who had to leave because it's too expensive. I live in a very working class area in Yorkshire. It's not really an issue for me personally as my children go to religiously selective schools which are good. But I feel sorry for my neighbour's who have literally no chance to get their kids out of attending a school where they won't have a chance. I've recruited from local schools. I've met bright, articulate, well presented, pleasant young people and when you sit them down to work they can barely write and although they can add and subtract and multiply and divide that have to be given specific numbers and can't apply it to practical everyday problems. And that was after 13 years of Labour education championing comps.

I've seen what schools are like in the South and in the North. I don't think a lot of Southerners appreciate how poor the schools are in poorer areas up here. But, hey, why not make jokes about whippets, those kids won't mind. They can't read anyway.

It's hardly surprising when you look at school funding though. Our LA gets £3661 per pupil, Hackney gets £7291 per pupil. This is before you take London weighting and pupil premium into account.

Under the Labour government most of the secondary schools round here were rebuilt as the old buildings simply weren't fit for purpose. So this means that most of the schools round here have the additional headache of massive mortgages to pay out of their annual budget.

Also, when you consider that the major part of any school's budget is teachers' salaries it's hardly surprising that they don't attract the best teachers because they can't afford to pay them.

DD's school is among the bottom 4 worst funded schools in the country and this has resulted in larger class sizes, no 1:1 tutoring support, poor SENCO provision, several teachers per subject, no textbooks etc.

Our schools are struggling, their budgets are in deficit, and they can't cut back any more.

The bright ones will always find a way.

Bertrand, there are good schools in wealthy areas in Yorkshire. Please enlighten me if there are amazing schools in affordable areas where there are also jobs available for their parents.

I suppose you know better than the head of Ofsted then? Well I'm glad your nieces are either wealthy enough to live in a good school area or have been lucky enough to win the random housing lottery. And as long as your nieces are fine who gives a shit if other kids get all their potential written off?

"And as long as your nieces are fine who gives a shit if other kids get all their potential written off?"

I do. Which is why I am opposed to grammar schools.

It does make me sad though to read on MN about the parents who tutor / go private for primary in order to get to grammar, but if they don't get grammar they then go private for secondary too. It's like having your cake and eating it. After all, those are the parents who could probably make quite a big difference to the (results in) the non-grammars by being supportive parents in and out of school

I see this line of thought quite a lot, and I'm not sure I agree that having a few motivated parents in a school will make a huge difference to the outcome (apart from to their own children, as they may tutor themselves or employ one etc). Perhaps it may be be the case that if such parents were making up a substantial proportion it would have an impact. However, such improvements would surely take time? And that would be the key- the school may improve over time, but would it improve fast enough to allow my child to get the benefit? If not, and assuming these parents have other options, it's not surprising that they not going to take the chance and so will chose to go elsewhere.

As a parent, I want the best education I can secure for my DC. If that was a very good state school, great. Unfortunately, our local primary school is average at best and local secondaries are way below what I would deem acceptable. We are lucky to have the choice to choose an alternative- for us this is private prep school and then onto private secondary.

Just to be clear Bill, the joke about about your dog was because I had you pegged as a fake northerner, it wasn't a dig at real northerners - I am one... and I can read.

You comment about the shortage of good secondaries and suggest that these are only found in affluent areas of Yorkshire. It depends how we're defining good but if it's related to above national average GCSE results and Progress 8 scores and you look at the most recent figures for non religious and non selective schools you will find:
Wakefield had 10 such schools; Doncaster had 9; Leeds had 17.... and there are lots of these schools across Yorkshire.

Admittedly many of them won't be as good as your children's religiously selective ones but given the dire financial situation that many of them are in they still do an amazing job.

It's sad to suggest most of our schools are shite and simply churning out kids who can't read. Given the massive levels of economic and social deprivation in some of our communities, some of our schools have a long way to go to try and address inequalities in learning and development that began before children even started school.

It does make me sad though to read on MN about the parents who tutor / go private for primary in order to get to grammar, but if they don't get grammar they then go private for secondary too. It's like having your cake and eating it. After all, those are the parents who could probably make quite a big difference to the (results in) the non-grammars by being supportive parents in and out of school

Or alternatively we could blame the government for cutting funding to the bone

"Or alternatively we could blame the government for cutting funding to the bone"

This ^^ with bells on.

DD's school is so underfunded that they have been on channel 4 news, local radio, local ITV news and local BBC news.

I hope the noise they are making will benefit all schools.

Unbelievable how frequently the word "shit" or "shitty" was used (particularly by BillSykes but other posters too) when referring to schools.
I read the whole thread but didn't contribute before as I was trying to deal with all these references to faeces:
I hate to think what you may think of all the children attending those "shitty" schools Bill.
The ones who don't get to attend grammars, I mean.

I have one of these shitty schools (and it is shit) as my local comp. So I live and work with pupils and ex pupils. I think the kids in the main are great, but the school is shit. I never said a word about the pupils.

I've looked and other posters using the word 'shitty' to describe schools were quoting Bill or referring to their posts when doing so.