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.

So what makes the quality of grammars better? They don't get extra funding. The get less if anything,have huge classes.

GreenGinger: loads of kids in Dc's comps have moved from middle to top sets as they have matured, developed confidence, natural aptitude, in languages for example, starts to bite...

Kids who started in top sets have been moved down, especially in subjects like maths, as the subject becomes harder in Yr 9, etc.

Yr 6 is just too soon to segregate.

Ds is predicted better GCSE's than his friend who got a yr 7 place in the super-selective stream in a nearby school got last year.

They aren't always fluid,plenty of moaning on here and in RL.

I suspect the better comps are more fluid though.

And then we get back to the huge numbers of parents denied their first choice and priced out of the better local/ national school areas.

But it is supposed to be fair on kids. Not the small stuff, but the quality of education is too fundamental to dismiss inequality like this.

Can you explain why the current situation where the quality of education depends on your parents' bank balance is 'fair'. I don't see any suggestions for how the current situation where that is the case can be effectively remidied in other ways. And it's not simply 'more funding'. There was plenty of that under Labour and the situation intensified during that period.

So what makes the quality of grammars better

Firstly, the kids - they are the most motivated, brightest kids in the national cohort. That means the teachers can get on with teaching. The problem is that, without these more motivated kids, other schools become that much less effective for everyone else.

Secondly, grammar schools usually attract staff with the most relevant and prestigious qualifications.

Ds is predicted better GCSE's than his friend who got a yr 7 place in the super-selective stream in a nearby school got last year.

Which rather undermines the argument that selective are unfair because they stop those who don't enter achieving doesn't it?

BillSykesDog: It's not. I believe everyone should be educated in a comprehensive system. But I am not a fascist, so I can't advocate removing the choice to educate privately from parents. I can, however, advocate removing the choice to siphon off state funding and use it to educate a minority separately.

Because it isn't fair. I have 7 in my class who have 11 plus tutors and spend Saturday mornings preparing. Their parents are wealthy, focused and determined. These children, bar one, are not naturally more intelligent. Only one is in my top set. However, they are coached.

I have plenty of other children in my class who are as, if not more, intelligent. But they are on pupil premium, or have parents who work long shifts, or can't afford a tutor, or are living in stressed circumstances. They don't have the same advantages. It boils my piss that some people think that those kids who get into grammars have somehow earned it by being better. Their parents have the ability to pay, to push, and play the system, that's all.

Ha,ha more motivated I think not.

The stories I hear of detentions for homework not done and disruption( swiftly sorted) would indicate otherwise.

And as for more prestigious qualifications at ours several members of staff seem to have taught in both sectors and out of 80 members of staff the list of qualifications seem decidedly hum drum,very few red brick unis let alone top tier.

GreenGinger2:

In that case what is the point of them?

I'm not talking about private education. I'm talking about the fact that wealthy children get into good state schools because their parents have the money to buy themselves into catchment. Whereas poor children are stuck with the school that serves the area their parents can best afford which is normally crap outside London.

The state sector is absolutely streamed by wealth at the moment.

If a system was brought in to stratify schools so that a cross section of wealth levels were represented in poorer areas, bussing poorer children in to good schools in wealthy areas and bussing richer children out to poorer schools in poor areas, making them truly comprehensive - well I suspect that a lot of the support for comprehensives would melt away if wealthier parents lost their ability to buy their way into a good school at the expense of brighter, poorer children.

BillSykesDog: You're not wrong.

As regards ours I like the ethos,the staff and how rigorously,consistently they are pushed from day 1,how areas we are interested in are covered...... I'm done with pushing to get my DC pushed or following uniform,behaviour and homework policies schools don't consistently enforce. You only have to see on here how many parents don't want an ethos like the above. The bellyaching over uniform,homework,expectations etc. The grammars we looked at wouldn't suit all parents. Which is why we need a variety of schools.

2 comps and 2 grammars to pick from. Trawled them all,questioned loads. Simply picked the schools that suited our DC and what we wanted best. If a comp had been offering it we would have happily sent them there.

greenginger thinks grammars are great because
A... her kids got in
B.. she thinks they are all like her one

It is very very early days. Last year was the first year in some areas. It's creators will surely continue to research to iron out issues.

This is an absolutely stupid argument. A group of highly qualified researchers (Rob Coe is very well respected) attempted to create a 'tutor proof test' and after a huge amount of work and effort, the data from a few years of testing has shown that the tutor proof test is worse than the previous test, which was already bad. And you are shrugging this off as being early days and a few issues that simply need ironing out?

It's like you don't care that the 11+ exam selects for wealth over ability and think that grammar schools should open regardless of the complete failure of their stated aim which is to provide a particular education for bright kids, not simply well-off kids.

Or better still, build one bigger school and bus in all the students. That would work in my area where we have 3 towns with each with 1 school. None are very good.

Green thinks that she picked her kids' school, when actually her kids' school picked her and her kids. She has it totally the wrong way around.

Considering the teething problems with Sats and GCSEs every time they are changed l would have thought it was obvious there would be teething problems.

Talkin you like comps because like many you could afford to send your DC to a more favourable one.

Until there is a complete lottery system frankly the anti selection criers don't have a leg to stand on.

At least the grammar system is trying and succeeding in some areas to iron out unfairness.

What is the comp sector trying to do? Nothing.

Incidentally I went to school for the first two years of secondary with one of Labour's loudest critics of grammars. To a comp in a super selective area. She knows full well that despite it being a comp in a super selective area that school has churned out PhDs, directors of blue chip companies and massively successful businesswomen. But she chooses to ignore that because it doesn't suit her ideological position.

Considering the teething problems with Sats and GCSEs every time they are changed l would have thought it was obvious there would be teething problems

Creating a test that is worse for social selection and is actually racist is a teething problem

FFS this is real kids we are talking about. How many years are you prepared to fanny about with trying to find the holy grail of a test that actually accurately tests ability and not wealth, how many kids are you going to send to the wrong schools before you admit that actually, maybe the scheme should be given up as a bad idea?

Now that the government has said that actually it will be the top 25% that get skimmed off, not 10% I can wheel out my stat that the best predictive tests that we have at the moment (about 0.7 correlation between ability aged 11 and aged 16) would put 1 in 5 kids in the wrong school.

There are plenty of children who might be top set for maths bottom set for English or vice versa.

I'd be interested to know if there is any data on how many. I suspect it's the exception rather than the rule. Boys at DS's Grammar all seemed to do pretty well across the board. I don't know of any A* Maths and C English. English might not be their best subject but they were still pretty damned good at it.

Billsykesdog. About people not being so keen on comps if their DC are bussed into a poorer area, I think that's true.

There was a documentary on TV a few years ago (probably 10 or more - time flies!). Anyway that is exactly what did happen. A very successful comp in a MC area had lots of DC from a sink estate bussed in and vice versa. The idea was to mix DC up so that the MC ones would be positive role models etc in both schools.

Of course what actually happened was that lots of MC parents pulled their kids out and went private so both schools deteriorated.

(Not sure what happened to house prices as a result).

Oops. Bold fail there!

LMAO at the notion that a C in English is 'bottom set' Many of the kids I teach are functionally illiterate. What they needed - and I hesitate to say it on MN - they needed at birth: parents who believed in the value of education and were in a position to help their children to learn.