To wonder if there are supporters of grammar schools who didn't go to grammar schools themselves

[WildebeestH]

Just that really. The only friends I have who support grammar schools went to grammar schools themselves. I'm intrigued to know if there are many people who support them having not been to a grammar (or other selective) school and if so why?

They won't have the same need. The cohort would be more similar.

You said that you can't teach music to a group that has grade 1s and Grade 4s in it. I simply pointed out that they do in grammar schools.

So 7 years ago Ofsted mentioned mixed ability teaching. 7 years ago. That's a whole cohort going through from 7-13.

7 years ago we were on the old curricula, old GCSE, old a level, primary was different. I mean where do you start?

7 years ago my current school and last school were both mixed ability. Neither are now.
Secondary education has changes LOADS in 7 years.

And my point still stands that mixed ability is not the absolute gifted with kids on P scales.

Mixed ability classes I've taught were usually level 5-7 at KS3 and A-C at GCSE. personally I like setting but the range in the mixed ability groups was generally far from the horror stories you hear of on here.

And again, it's always the parents with the inflated sense of their kid's abilities who seem to have an issue with the number on the timetable. One of my colleagues has had a parent this year telling me her child should be in the A* group. The child is in set 2 where the group profile is very similar to set 1 (grades 7/8). The parent and child seem to think that the lazy and not proactive student will get a better grade moving up. They won't be because the issue is the child's lack.of work ethic, only reinforced by home.

Driving it underground and into the hands of tutors.
And people wonder why FSM dont get a shot at the 11+

I'll not ok the teachers anti-grammar speech (because that wasn't on), but the point of a state primary isn't to drill kids for 2-3 years so they can try the 11+.

When you say is it any wonder why FSM kids aren't getting in, it's very clear why. It's because those with the money are PAYING to send their children to private primary for years and in those primaries the entire point is to drill them for a test from the age of 6 onwards. Those who don't do that PAY for tutors.

It has nothing to do with state primary education and everything to do with there being a market of affluent parents who sling as much money as they can at getting their child though the 11+.

Lack of work ethic is reinforced by school though.
"Just write three bullet points" to everyone. Me: why don't you write a proper sentence. Child: miss says we don't need to.
Etc.
Child thinks they are doing fabulous...

KS4 music isn't usually not set through ideology but because there's only one class, and that class has opted to take music GCSE meaning your ability is going to be skewed towards the top end.

And as pointed out, grammar schools won't solve the issue of not setting in music (if you think that's a problem) because they don't set either.

You haven't argued for setting in Drama and Food Tech then. So we're happy with lack of setting in some subjects?

Lack of work ethic is reinforced by school though.

Not by me, thanks. And I teach in a comp.

I think in some subjects it's easier to do mixed ability.
Unfortunately, ours spilled over into the more traditional academic subjects, languages, humanities even at KS4. Which I think makes it difficult.

Without meaning to sound patronizing, and in the spirit of "defining our terms" we all do know what "comprehensive" means when applied to a school, don't we? It simply means a school which takes children of all abilities.

IT may not be reinforced by you maisy but it's surprising what children take on board, often erroneously.

Lack of work ethic is reinforced by school though.
Certainly not in my school.

I may ask them mind map notes in note form (shock horror!) but then I also expect 13 year olds to write 3 A4 sides for their literature essays. And they manage. And they get taught content from higher years. And the top end get stretched.

And like noble, I teach in a comp! How do we get excellent results?!

What I find more common is when I say a child is back in detention because they've been talking I get a phone call from home saying 'I don't give permission for him to redo the work because he says he tried'. Thankfully you don't have many of those, but when you get that call you just know that's a parent who excuses their little darling but come y11 will expect all.sorts of intervention for their lazy child because "he's a bright boy and should have an A*

I am so torn on this issue.
I have equal ability twins. One will be off to grammar in Sept. One to comp.
A test decides one is 'grammar school material' awful phrase - and one is not. Their KS2 SATs results will be nearly identical.
The impact has been quite detrimental. I now see just how unfair the system is. The boys both wanted to sit the test, but now one is confused and feeling inadequate because his DT gets to go and he doesn't.

It will be interesting to see their results at KS4 but children aren't social experiments. GS system has been divisive in our case. I didn't go to one, neither did DS. I don't know how I feel as we have a foot in both camps. Somebody (Noble G?) pointed out that padding the test is not an indicator of ability. How right they are.

sorry meant DH went to comp too!

passing the test, even....

I am constantly amazed at all these teachers incomprehensive schools "teaching to the middle" and so on. Are they not bothered about OFSTED or their salaries? Even if they don't, as many appear to think, care about their pupils?

How do people square the Tory idea of grammar schools 'because some children are academic and need an academic education' with the other Tory policy that 90% of children take the Ebacc (compulsory language and humanities at KS4) because all children should have an academic education?

If you don't want your kid to be in exam classes alongside children who don't want to be there, then the conservatives are not the party for you.

Bertrand And people who wang on about how the brightest kids aren't stretched because 'all schools care about is getting C grades' are presumably unaware of the progress 8 measure that will penalise schools for this, and of performance management measures against FFT targets that have been penalising teachers for this for years.

"No one is proposing going back to the archaic grammar versus sec mod system"

Aren't they? What are they proposing, then?

Well,exactly. Some posters seem to have the idea that if you introduce grammar schools ,all the other schools will be comprehensives. No,they won't. They will be called ( or are here) mixed ability schools or non- selective schools but essentially they are secondary moderns.
Here in sunny Kent when I was at school ( in the 70s) children who passed the 11+ were divvied up by academic ability and went to Direct Grant, Grammar,or Technical schools.Children who failed went to secondary moderns.
We still have the same schools - the direct grant schools have gone private,the techs are now called grammar schools too.The secondary moderns are still there taking the children who don't pass the 11+.....

No mixed ability teaching on our comp. and the teachers are currently working tirelessly to encourage work ethic amongst all abilities.

They run workshops to promote resilience, and teach kids how to organise and manage themselves.

Throughout Yr 11 they have run after school revision clubs, had kids in over the Easter hols, are running past paper sessions this half term, inviting kids in for no-uniform
revision sessions, meeting parents etc etc. They do all this unpaid, of course. And there is a very high take-up, across all abilities.

A lot of kids come from homes where there is not a quiet revision space (our borough has very high stats for overcrowding in housing). The school encourages use of the school library, and makes an arrangement with the local high street library, working in partnership to ensure quiet revision space at the right time of the year.

This comp gets very good results, raw and VA, across all abilities.

I know 3, 4 if you count faith comps, comps in our area that operate like this.

Let's put our energies into supporting (and funding ) all comps to be good schools.

Grammar schools don't set for music. Or anything in my experience except Maths

Yes some do - our son's does. But that's because it's not a super-selective so still has quite a range of abilities.

The alternative is not a comp (even if it decides to call itself one). Comprehensives are schools which take the full ability range. You can't have those in a grammar school system.

Of course you can. We do in our county. That's because the 11+ isn't compulsory. So the grammars sit alongside the comps. I know that some counties still have compulsory 11+, but that's not the proposal and isn't the only option and I'm against compulsory 11+ and the old fashioned grammar v sec mod divide which has no place today. The comps in my county are still comps because relatively few kids even take the 11+ let alone gain entry to the grammars. In numbers terms, the two grammars are insignificant as their intakes are less than 5% of the total places in the comps of the catchment area.

The Tories have proposed that schools within academy chains could convert to grammar schools centres of excellence in their Green Paper, meaning that parents could apply to School X which has a great reputation, be accepted and then actually their kid will be bussed daily to School Y within the same chain which has a poor reputation. People who are confident that grammars will mean that their kid will get in, and if they don't they can always send them to the great comp down the road should be very worried about their impending lack of choice in the matter.

But other counties are very different to the Kent style Infinite surely you must know that. I do wonder if some posters realise there is life beyond the Home Counties.There is more of a bun fight for the favoured comp in our area. Very few parents in our area give a shit re the grammars. In fact there is a huge amount of snobbery against them. Hoards of comps very near and a couple of grammars further afield.What are rejected comps classed as?

Badbadbunny-so where do the grammar school kids come from then?

There is more of a bun fight for the favoured comp in our area.

They'll be pissed off when it becomes a grammar and they actually have to give a shit about the 11+ then, won't they?