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.

Because London's comprehensives have suddenly massively improved just about the time that the middle classes got priced out of the 'naice' areas and had to make do with grotty ones. London demographics are different from the rest of the country. You get very wealthy people living cheek by jowl with the poorest ones. It's not like that in the rest of the country where the middle class still earn enough to be geographically mobile. And schools outside of London are still mainly split into shit ones in poor areas and good ones in wealthy areas.

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

There is merit in this. If you look at a lot of the evidence regarding child development, early years is so very important. Not the only important thing, but very significant nonetheless. Being disadvantaged at this early stage makes catching that bit harder. I read some research (a few years ago now) which compared the communication skills (verbal and non-verbal) of children of well educated parents (not necessarily most wealthy) to children of parents with lower levels of education. They found that by age three the children of well educated parents were more advanced, by 6-9 months. At age 3. They then looked a communication skills, including reading/vocabulary/concentration skills and so on, of the same groups at 5 years of age. By this time the gap between the two groups was between between 12-18 months. I remember reading this as I was struck at the time by how rather than banging on about universities incessantly, more needed to be done with early years education (I'm not an educational expert, so this is based on the assumption that this research was correct). If it is correct, then that is a lot for teachers to try and overcome. I take my hats off to them that this is achieved at all.

the middle classes got priced out of the 'naice' areas and had to make do with grotty ones

Eh? You think that London schools which have a high number of pupils on FSM which are doing well are secret enclaves of the middle classes?

I can also see this scenario playing out in my own family.

DN's come from a household where neither parent has achieved well academically. Education is seen as relevant, in the sense that it is important to go to school every day, but little active encouragement or help is given. They don't read to the children, they seem to think about building upon what the school are doing in project work and so on. My DB has said that "education is for the school to sort, not me". I don't think they are bad parents, per se, just not very engaged in their children's education. I don't know how much of it is that it doesn't occur to them and how much of it is that they don't know how to help.

I can see a huge difference between our DCs when they were the same age in terms of their vocabulary, their knowledge and interest in the wider world around them. There is also a big difference in their concentration levels and academic achievements. How much of this is innate talent and how much down to home and educational environments? Probably a bit of both, depending on which children you compare.

London gets 60% more funding than most other places who have just as many fsm alongside high amounts of low aspirations. London is an area of high aspirations and migrants who are known to support and push their DC more. Many were the MC in their countries of origin.

London gets 60% more funding than most other places

Ooh, and its schools are the best in the country. Maybe there's a link?

We'll never find out because instead of raising school funding levels across the country, they are being cut horrifically.

The Tower Hamlets who for years previously got 60% more than our grammar which is in a low aspirations and high fsm area is going to get even more than our grammars with the new measures.

I am so thankful that we don't have grammar schools round here. Our main problem is the unfair funding. Her school gets less funding per pupil than most schools in England, but that is another conversation.

I'm not against grammar schools per se. However I'd like to see selection criteria that weighted towards kids from poorer backgrounds. Without this, tjebeiocual mobility potential won't be realised.

Sorry that was supposed to be social mobility.

Alternative idea. Rather than creaming off the top 25% how about we cream off the bottom 25%. Forget about them doing 8 GCSEs, better to concentrate on maths, english and proper manual skills that will get them suitable, sustainable jobs.

Booellesmum on P1, talking about Birmingham superselectives : I don't really come across people who object to this system.

Ha Ha Ha. Perhaps you need to widen your social circle then.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in Birmingham who object to the fact that the tiny % of places at the grammar schools are almost completely filled with people who have paid for tutors from Yr3, or those who have paid for Private Education throughout the Primary years. If - and that is a BIG 'if' 2% of dc are to be creamed of for the privilege of attending one of the wonderful grammar schools, then I wouldn't object if someone could find a way of actually finding the "brightest" 2% of dc, and not just those who have had many years of being taught how to 'pass the test'.

Back to the more general question of the thread, I'd suggest that most people who are in favour of grammar schools are only looking at it from the pov of someone who either attended a grammar or who expects their dc to attend. I don't object in theory to some kind of streaming of provision, but it needs to be a FAR better selection system, and a recognition that those who struggle academically need a lot more finance per head, than those who are very capable, so, and Gvmnt funding should reflect that, with funding on grammar schools being a lot less than funding going in to schools working with dc who struggle to learn for any one (or often several) of an absolute myriad of reasons.

No. I said that in London areas are not neatly divided into ones with wealthy parents and poor parents because of the high cost of housing. Even parents with degrees and decent jobs can't expect that they're going to be living in desirable middle class areas like Kew and Wimbledon and they're just as likely to be living in Tottenham or Brixton these days and going to school with big cohorts of children from estates with low waged parents.

Outside London that's not the case and most of those with professional jobs, even at the lowlier end like nurses and social workers, can still afford to live away from poorer areas and large estates with bad schools.

And as I said earlier, PP and FSM are very poor indicators of whether or not a child is poor. There are plenty of school children whose parents are earning above the threshold for those who are very much poor and couldn't dream of moving to better areas with good schools.

So Bill you're saying that good schools in poor areas are good schools because while they may have large numbers of kids on FSM, they also have a few middle class kids and it's the middle class kids that make the school good/outstanding?

I'm struggling to see your point regarding grammars. Surely if middle class kids have such an amazing effect on schools that they can make them outstanding even where there is a high proportion of poor kids, then the way to make schools in poor areas better would be to make a reasonable proportion of middle class kids go to them instead of taking a handful of poor kids and sending them the other way.

BillI believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to succeed in life. It is a fact that a supportive home environment is key to this. That's not to say that those without a supportive family cannot or should not succeed, of course they should. However I don't believe that just providing more Grammar school places is going to be the vision oF social mobility TM has sold us. How is it sensible to throw money at this while there are so many schools struggling with lack of funding, cutting resources, teachers and TAs.

I preferred the old way. You went to the school closest to you. That was it. Too much competition now. People are obsessed with kids nowadays. Pamper them, Must leave them money etc etc.

It's not 'a few' middle class children though is it? In London comprehensives are socially mixed because the high cost of housing means that even people with good educations live in areas which have high levels of social housing and FSM pupils. Rather than just 'a few' it's more like sizeable minorities.

And yes, I do agree that a better way to do it would be to make all schools more socially mixed and representative of different wealth brackets. But I don't believe for a moment most of the people who are protesting grammar schools would genuinely be supportive of that measure either. I don't think they would be supportive of any policies which meant they couldn't buy themselves places at the best schools.

I don't think they would be supportive of any policies which meant they couldn't buy themselves places at the best schools.

Well that's weird because I heard that to buy a place in the best schools you needed to be able to afford a house costing half a million which is way above the wage bracket of most people working in education I would have thought. Yet they are opposed to grammar schools...

Fair banding and lottery. Sorted.

If all people working in education are anti grammar schools then it seems odd that they are the most sought after jobs which get the best candidates.

But then again I clearly wasn't just referring to just people who work in education was I?

A lot of achievement is genetics, given than IQ is 80% heritable it is no surprise that children of parents who earn high salaries are more likely to pass the 11+ or do well in their GCSEs.

Higher paid jobs on average have higher salaries, and this being mumsnet i'm sure that lots of people have anecdotal examples of where this is not true but on average it is true and that is a statistical fact. Yes there are obviously other factors at play other than IQ but this is a major one. This is why I am not surprised at all that rich kids are more likely to pass the 11+.

IMO the reason that FSM kids do so well in London schools is that London has an extremely high percentage of immigrants, it might even be worth doing a study on the performance of schools who have higher "english as a second language". Their parents are less likely to be in high paying jobs because of a language barrier and a lack of British (and therefore recognised) qualifications, but they are passing on smart genes to their children. The parents are also less likely to have the funds to put down big deposits on housing in expensive areas. Those children grow up speaking English and learning in UK schools and taking UK exams and go on to achieve.

Sorry that should read, people with higher paid jobs have higher IQs. Obviously higher paid jobs have higher salaries :p

You have some bottle Rhayder to come on here on say that !

Which bit flyingwithwings?

I challenge anybody to find me a peer reviewed study that shows that IQ is not hereditary. There is some coaching yo can do for the 11+ I accept that, but a large part of it will be this.