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?

I didn't think schools had specialisms any more?

Which of the schools have the highest/lowest number of PP children?

More grammars won't solve this problem, because these kids won't get into them.

I agree with you @vitaminC

My family were in the forces and we lived in Hong Kong and Brunei when I was a child (I'm 33 now). As the classes were so small, my sister and I received a lot of support and we did quite well with you our education.
When I was 13 we moved back to England and went to a secondary school in quite a rough area. We were bullied mercilessly for being bright and having different accents etc. The classes were so large and the teaching didn't challenge the brighter pupils.

My sister is still badly scarred from her secondary school experience and as an adult, she has very little confidence.

It would have been nice to have been given the chance to go to grammar school and be given more opportunity to flourish.

It is extremely unusual, surely, to have a choice of 10 secondary schools?

1 is a language specialist, 1 a sports college, 1 a maths/IT specialist.

No they're not. Specialist school status (and the money that went with it) was scrapped years ago.

"It would have been nice to have been given the chance to go to grammar school and be given more opportunity to flourish."

Why do people think bullying doesn't happen in grammar schools?

We have the situation where the figures show that 9 out of 10 schools are good or outstanding, yet so many MNetters live in areas that only have terrible schools. What are the chances?

I have just been onto the DfE websuite and ranked schools by their progress for previous high attainers.

Interestingly, the highest attainers in this category are not ghrammar schools 9which is what you would expect if grammars were 'required' for able children to achieve at their best).

Of the top 10, 2 are grammars (at 7th and 9th).
4, including the top school on this measure, are small religious.
1 (in tenth place) is a small specialist technology school.
1 is Catholic
2 are London comprehensives (at 5 and 8)

Why is it that we are seeking to copy the grammar model, which creates secondary moderns, instead of learning from those 2 comprehensives and the others a little further down (City academy Hackney and the Compton School, if anyone is interested) about how to enable the most able to make most progress?

But you can still have some groups not pushed to their full potential and disruption in 'Good' schools. Frankly going by the dissatisfaction in my area the label 'good' as regards secondary schools doesnt mean a lot. Out of interest re Progress 8 will schools lose their 'good' status with immediate effect if any group isn't achieving good or above progress?

Trying to think what GreenGinger would count as leafy comps - Cotswold school? Cherwell? Balcarras? Impington Village College?

But you can still have some groups not pushed to their full potential and disruption in 'Good' schools.

About 1 in 5 grammar schools are 'only' good or less.

Green, a school can only lose its Ofsted status after an inspection - which is one reason why some Outstanding schools have retained that status, because they are almost never inspected.

Whether a single below average Progress 8 would trigger an Ofsted visit is not clear - below 0 for a whole school in the case of a local grammar hasn't done so, so simply average for a single group isn't likely to on is own.

In lots of areas, though, even if there is theoretically a choice of schools, there isn't in practice, so it would be interesting to know if anyone in any part of the country really does have a choice of 10 schools.

In my area of London, the population is so dense that basically it's your nearest school unless you are religious. If you live near me and are a Catholic girl, you theoretically have a chance of 4 schools (the nearest comprehensive, the girls only comprehensive, the Catholic comprehensive and the girls' superselective grammar in the neighbouring borough). If you are a boy of no religious belief, you have a chance of two (the nearest school and the superselective boys' grammar). The EVER6 figure at the superselective boys' grammar is just under 7%; at the local school it's 41%. So if you're a boy in receipt of free school meals the choices are pretty stark.

we have the situation where the figures show that 9 out of 10 schools are good or outstanding, yet so many MNetters live in areas that only have terrible schools. What are the chances?

It depends how low the bar is set to achieve an 'outstanding' grading.

If in reality you only have to offer an adequate standard of education to attain an outstanding grading, you are only outstanding when compared against a low set of criteria !

Many posters on here would like every single Comprehensive school achieve the same pass rate '61%' !

Every school being the same offering identikit teaching subjects and the same cohort of pupils . Every school having the same nos of low middle and high ability students thus achieving a utopia of socialst education.

Socialist education

"We have the situation where the figures show that 9 out of 10 schools are good or outstanding, yet so many MNetters live in areas that only have terrible schools. What are the chances?"

I find this interesting too. Particularly as failing schools tend to be in areas of social deprivation, where, going by the demographics, mumsnetters tend to live.

I suspect they make us their own definition of "terrible". After all, I was once told by a well known mumsnetter that private school As at GCSE were better than state school As. So anything's possible.

"Socialist education"????

Surely most countries in the world have one-size-fits-all secondary education.

I think ofsted looks at different things to parents. I think parents look more at their personal experiences.

The 'dire, to avoid by the pushy MC' school locally, even before its results started rising, had results equivalent to the 'to die for' school elsewhere in the country ...

True head. I'm a teacher and when I come to looking at schools I couldn't give a damn if it's outstanding or good.

I'd probably avoid requires improvement (whereas I would have been fine with satisfactory) because I think it leads to more stressed out teachers and things being done to prove a point to ofsted.

Head, UI know - that's why parents are always up in arms when their local 'lovely friendly little primary', which has adopted no new practices in education for the last 10 years, gets slated by Ofsted.

I can remember pre-Ofsted days - when schools pretty much did their own thing [DB's comprehensive taught the wrong O-level history syllabus for years 'because it was easier to keep it the same as the CSE one']. I'm glad we have an accountability system now, though i do think until very recently Ofsted has been too obsessed by raw results rather than by progress.

That said, Good / Outstanding (especially if the 'Oustating' is more than a couple of years old) are both fine grades, and I wouldn't pick a school 'because it was Outstanding' in the way that Green might, because I don't think that the differences are that important, as long as progress is good.

SM / RI are 'worth looking into further' grades - are they single dips, or is there a long history? What is the intake like? [historically, t is easier to get a low Ofsted grade with a highly deprived intake] What is being done to turn it round.

IME, the absolutely best place to teach and earn is in a school 'aiming to go places', whether it is from SM / RI to Good, or Good to Outstanding. Any school 'happy with its current status' is likely to be coasting.

Apologies for typos. 'Teach and learn', obviously, as well as lots of others!

So we should ignore progress 8 when it's below average and parents with children there complaining of kids being bored,disruption in lessons, being not overtly impressed on visits if it's 'Good' I'm guessing those of us not teaching in the secondary sector just don't have the capabilities to make our own decisions.

Ofsted ratings do not mean what most parents think they do. The 'Outstanding' comp in leafy Berkshire where I did a maternity cover a few years ago was a shambles. It was very good at talking itself up and parents were falling over themselves to get their kids in. The parents didn't seem to be aware of the miserable atmosphere and high staff turnover. There were 3 unqualified English teachers (I was one of them - I'm MFL but they begged me to do some English) and no Head of English (they couldn't recruit one). It was the most soulless, box-ticking data factory you can imagine. It had been rated Outstanding by Ofsted 3 months before I arrived. I quit before the maternity cover was over!
The shitness of the school had nothing whatsoever to do with it being a comprehensive school - it had pretty good intake and largely supportive parents. It just wasn't a very good school because all it cared about was Ofsted and data.