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'm guessing those of us not teaching in the secondary sector just don't have the capabilities to make our own decisions. hmm

Would you have the same attitude if a banker told you some home truths about banks or a nurse about hospitals? I sometimes think that everyone thinks they know all about education because they went to school or because they have children who do. I'm a secondary teacher and would not say that I know much about primary. All schools are different but most teachers would be very wary about choosing a school based on its Ofsted rating.

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

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

Apologies for the quote within a quote.

The thing is that people don't remember that it wasn't just grammar schools and secondaries, there were several other layers of education that no longer exist, Technical schools, "special schools", borstals. etc.

Eolian
Agreed.

The difference most people who had a piggy bank as a kid don't think they are qualified to give their expert view on banking and investments.

Unlike teaching and health where anyone who's known someone who's been ill and anyone who has been to school knows all about these systems. In fact they know better than experts. And as Gove said people have had enough of experts.

I don't know a single teacher who would choose a school for their kids largely on the back of ofsted.

I've seen some amazing schools I would happily send my children to be downgraded for a data technicality on one subgroup of pupil. Does that word shift make them a worse school? Not a chance.

GreenGinger2

Progress 8 data is 5 years old by the time it is used as a comparison. I honestly can't think of another sector were data that old is used.

Exactly, Maisy. I was pretty pessimistic about our wonderful village primary getting a decent Ofsted grade, because the Head is a brilliant, compassionate, bit of a maverick HT who seems to do whatever he thinks best for the pupils rather than play the Ofsted game. Fortunately they got 'Good'. Of course a bad result wouldn't have affected my opinion of the school, but a small village primary needs bums on seats to survive, and a bad result (however undeserved) would put future parents off.

Unless it was in special measures I'd probably send my child to the local village school anyway.

I'm moving to a larger town soon so would have a few more options so would probably go good if possible but that's mainly because I feel for staff who have loads of extra work on their plates because category 3 pressures.

Boney,

Progress 8 is based on

• Data from 5 years previously when the children took KS2 SATs as a baseline.
• 2016 GCSE results

So yes, the baseline data is 5 years old - but that's the nature of a baseline, and is identical for all schools in the table so is 'equally unreliable' for all. The end point data is last summer's exams. Any progress data, by definition, has to use a starting point that is in the past!

On the other hand, many Outstanding Ofsted ratings are up to 10 years old, and relate to criteria that would no longer get those schools a 'Good' today, as the criteria have changed.

So of the two, Progress8 for a single year is probably more comparable than Ofsted reports from more than 1 year apart.

GreenGinger
"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'"

No, but we should also not assume that below average Progress8, bored children and disruption in lessons is typical of comprehensive schools. It is a characteristic of poor schools of any type - and in fact the school that i know best which matchesyour description is a grammar school.

No comprehensive supporters here are saying that all comprehensive schools are brilliant.

What we are saying is that we should be learning from the best comprehensive schools, such as those with fantastic progress for the higher ability children that I cited earlier, rather than saying that the solution is a grammar school - because grammar schools can also be poor, even when parents are falling over themselves to coach their children to get there and their raw results look OK.

we should be learning from the best comprehensive schools, such as those with fantastic progress for the higher ability children that I cited earlier, rather than saying that the solution is a grammar school
Yes.

There's no guarantee the grammar schools are going to get the best teachers, some like me, actually like working with all abilities. There's no guarantee that a grammar school will have better extra curricular or pastoral.
They are not the golden ticket so to speak.

We should also acknowledge that there are factors - higher numbers of deprived children / refugee children / children from communities which do not value education such as travellers, higher numbers of SEN children, the presence of children from parents wholly disengaged from education - that make it harder to be a successful comprehensive school than a successful grammar school, and build that in to our evaluation of schools.

Is a school with 40% PP children, 40% previous low attainers, with a Good rating from a year ago and progress of 0.4, better or worse, as a school, than a grammar with 1% PP, 0 low attainers or middle attainers, Outstanding Ofsted from 5 years ago and a progress of 0.5?

As an educator, i would say that the former is, by far and away, 'doing better with what it receives' than the latter, and is thus a better school - but that might not be matched by reputation on the street...

I would say, to a first approximation, that parents' perception of schools within a particular community is often driven more by intake ('that's the rough school' / 'all the children from the estate go there' / 'the parents swear') than by what the school does with the intake.

I'd agree cant.
Local knowledge and preconceptions will play a role. So might feeder secondaries. Whilst they would never be my feeder secondaries because they're in different towns, there are 2 schools that have been awful for decades in high crime, low outcomes areas. No way would I send my kids there.

Others if the area is reasonable enough (we aren't rich enough to buy our way into catchments of oversubscribed schools) and we can afford to live there I would probably assume most people are like us and just want a nice friendly school for their kids.

I find it quite strange that in some areas of our country parents are busy tutoring, choosing schools etc yet in my neck if the woods children just go to the local school. End of. Even on offer day, it's not even a conversation to be had. IT would be highly unusual to go elsewhere.
I do think we are much less invested in the school than if we were busy choosing it though. We just get allocated it. I don't even think there is a pta.

People also choose schools where they think their children will make friends too. And that's possibly amongst people who you think are like you.

78% of secondary schools are rated good or outstanding, not 9 out of 10. Relevant since we are not talking about primary schools. And the people doing the rating are Ofsted, about whom Noble has said:

I think the biggest driver of teaching fads in schools over the past decade has been Ofsted.

Does that sound like an agency that can be trusted to effectively evaluate schools?

My local school (the only one available) is rated good. It achieved that result through shameless and extensive cheating on GCSE controlled assessments (my daughter sat her GCSEs there 2 years ago, so I am aware of what goes on there). A Guardian article about this problem not that long ago attracted a large number of comments below the line admitting that their schools also cheated. We have no idea how widespread this problem is, and how much it is skewing the data that Ofsted use to make their judgments.

I am SICK of sarcastic smears about how odd it is that so many mumsnetters only have access to bad schools! The smear tactics being used to attempt to drive away people who don't agree with them by certain people here are pathetic.

I think saying parents aren't qualified to make their own decisions as regards schools is a pretty foolish and arrogant one.

I didn't say secondary schools, I said schools. 89% of schools are rated good or outstanding.

I don't put total faith in Ofsted ratings, or in rating schools by attainment, but Green does, hence my use of those figures.

Apologies for the appalling grammar in my last post(doing 2 things at once) but you get my drift. I think having that view drives standards down.

I went to school in Germany, to what would be translated by dictionary to grammar school.

It wasn't perfect, but I think it is the only way that works if nothing else changes.

Putting children with different abilities all in one school requires a very different approach, and more effort from teachers.

But with every system, you have to take into consideration that the worst that can happen, will happen. Bright children being bullied for being bright? If it can happen, it will happen, and that the teachers could prevent it is no argument because there will be teachers who won't do anything about it.

School systems should be built taking into consideration that humans are flawed. If for a school to be good, you need teachers or parents or anyone else to do the right thing voluntarily, then chances are, it won't work in many cases.

For everything important, you need rules that are enforced.

The "you take a test, and depending on how your results are, you can go to a specific school" approach is not perfect, but it excludes (to some degree) the human factor, which makes it easier to work with.

Separate schools for girls and boys should not be needed, but with research having found that teachers pay more attention to boys than girls, the problem would be easiest fixed by separate schools.

I am pretty much disillusioned when it comes to teachers' motivation to do things right, and therefore lean more towards the easy solutions.

The school where everyone learns together and lots of teachers give everyone just as much attention as needed seems like an utopia that isn't very realistic in the imperfect world we live in.

I think parents are not always given the information that they need to make the best decisions about schools, but that if they were given good information based on progress, and on recent stadards (not raw results and Ofsteds from a decade ago), then absolutely parents are capable of making good decisions about schools.

However, here is a difference between making decisions about schools' and 'having the ability to buy their children places at specific schools, even outside the private sector'. Green, I think that what you want preserved is your ability to use money - for exam technique training and bus fares - to buy a place at a grammar school, since you do not have quite enough money to buy a house the same size / desirability as your current one in your target catchment [in a previous thread I pointed out cheap family houses well within catchment for one of your desired schools, at well below the minimum price you declared was necessary].

Absolutely the ability to buy places at high quality comprehensives should also be limited, by ensuring all comprehensives take the local average of PP children (averaged over e.g. town or large rural area) and thus enlarging the catchment for the most needy children, while spreading the additional burden of dealing with much more deprived families more evenly between all schools. I would also like the time frame for moves into catchment, ify from reasonably close by and not associated with a job move, to be made very much longer - perhaps the whole of KS2?

kesstrel
Not a smear from my perspective. But I will say the experiences I read on here are so far removed from what I've seen in life.

E.g. In my county the 2 struggling schools are in areas of high deprivation so the chances of anyone having the "pay private or send them to rubbish school" is bizarre because anyone with the money to go private wouldn't be living in catchment for those 2 schools. The other schools are decent and some are exceptionally good.

Equally, I've only ever really come across students getting tutors in y11 to help with maths/English. The entire "im not happy thay our state primary schools isn't doing 11+ prep like the local private" is very much alien to me.

What it means (somewhat lazily I'll admit so this is said in good humour) is I have a caricature of a stereotypical MN education fretter and it's: middle class, lives in the south East, has had tutors from a young age, spends a lot of time getting extra activities into a heavoly packed timeta le ready for oxbridge applications, spends their time discussing appeals procedures with other well informed, middle class professional parents. Is pro grammar and tutors for the 11+ because the local school is ghastly but if their gifted child doesn't make the cut then they'll just pay private anyway.

Whereas my experience (as a child, from friends who have kids at secondary and as a teacher) is kids go to local primary schools. They're a mixed bag, pretty good to amazing and they apply to the local secondary that their primary feeds into. They go to the secondary school. Some might have tutors at gcse if they're struggling but otherwise that's it.

I'd imagine my experience is much more common than some of these experiences you see on here so when people are like "what the hell?" It's probably because it's like a little social bubble that most of us down access.

cantkeepawayforever

Only the time scale is identical, the pupils that it is based on are not.

"But with every system, you have to take into consideration that the worst that can happen, will happen. Bright children being bullied for being bright? If it can happen, it will happen"

In my experience, you are far more likely to be bullied for not being bright!

"I am SICK of sarcastic smears about how odd it is that so many mumsnetters only have access to bad schools! The smear tactics being used to attempt to drive away people who don't agree with them by certain people here are pathetic."

It's not a smear, or an attempt to drive away anyone. It is genuinely strange that so many mumsnetters live in the catchments of only awful schools.

Nope can't say I do remember Can't. None of the top comps are anywhere near us so no idea what you are on about. As regards buying a grammar place via tutoring it is increasingly needed less due to the new Sats curriculum matching the 11+ and also the search to find an exam less able to tutor for which will continue I'm sure.Re bus fare I personally would be coughing up anyway. The preferred comp bus costs the same, I guess that is ok though. The cost of both would be a fraction of an increase in house price many have to find in many areas. It has been widely reported that most parents are priced out of the best schools. Are you saying the housing is there for them all but they just aren't looking hard enough? Your idea re pp kids unfortunately leaves out those just above and then those above them up to the wealthiest. They all count too.

Why is it strange?