To ask what exactly is wrong with a '1950 s ' style education .

[mountford100]

I have just come across a thread on the Secondary Education board that suggests a couple of grammar schools are like travelling back to the 1950 s !

Does that mean they expect pupils to behave (not answer back) , work to their best of the ability do their homework, wear correct uniform at all times.

A school that has little or no time for a child seeking excuses as to why they can not abide with basic rules.

Why does there has to be a mitigating reason as why a child misbehaves other than just bad behaviour.

I am extremely grateful i was educated in a grammar school operating with many 1950 s principles (this is despite being near the bottom of the year) .

The Education system is like a sausage machine....fine if you find yourself to be the "right sausage" for the machine you are in, be that 1950s etc. Unfortunately it's tricky for the others and is rather disappointing that we take these other wonderful little sausages and squeeze all the enthusiasm from them.

Many deprived schools are secondary modern schools, this despite being located in fully comprehensive areas.

The placement of an academically focused secondary school in East Manchester is not going to damage the outcomes of those whose catchment area is Harrop Fold.

If we can't have such schools. Please at least allow children the chance to gain access to independent schools by the form of direct grant or assisted place type schemes.

How about Mountford instead of promoting elitist educational opportunities, we plough the money into the education system, more teachers, fewer students per class. Let's start with a bit of money and a sensible curriculum and let's have it available to all.

Forgive me if I am wrong or have my facts wrong but in the past, if you passed your 11+ you were able to do O levels. If you passed O levels then you could do A levels. If you had A levels then you could apply to University.

However if you didn't pass your 11+ you went to the secondary modern where instead of O levels you took CSEs
Because you only had CSEs you couldnt do A levels so then you couldnt get into university.

So you cannot compare university admissions admissions based on previous decades.

Also years ago a lot of the careers/jobs that nowadays you need a degree to do. In yester year you went straight from school at 16. There wasn't that need to get a university education

However i do not think at the time of my education in the 1980 s any help would have been offered or available . My needs would not have been met at the non grammar school.

You should have moved to Sussex. Plenty of dyslexia support at my unremarkable CoE state primary in the early 1980s, which presumably carried on into the unselective village comprehensive (we moved overseas so I wouldn’t know). Maybe your grammar school was just a bit shit?

My parents both went to school in the 1950s. Mum went to the grammar, Dad went to the secondary modern as his family couldn’t afford the uniform for the grammar. Both left with no qualifications, which was the norm, and got civil service jobs (which were seen as pretty rubbish jobs in those days - my uncles were miners, steelworkers and electricians, and they earned far more than my Dad did). Nobody in either family went to sixth form or university - it just wasn’t the done thing in those days. I was the first person in my extended family to do A-levels.

The teaching was rubbish at both schools; my Mum knew Prussia was in WW1, but had no idea that Prussia was the old name for Germany until she was in her 30s and watched The Great War on tv. She could recite Pythagoras’ algorithm, but had no idea what a hypotenuse actually was, so had clearly never used it in practice - she taught herself about it later when she was tutoring me, and used to marvel at how straightforward and useful it was.

She was seen as one of the clever ones and was often top of the class, so it isn’t that she was too thick to follow the lessons. They were just badly taught. No decent education leaves those sorts of gaping holes in knowledge.

I think you have a rose-tinted view of 1950s education. History Boys-style inspirational teaching of talented poors was very much the minority experience. Never mind though, you’re convinced that you alone out of all the other pupils would have done well out of it despite all evidence to the contrary.

mountford100

You are obsessing about the clever kids. There are schools that do not serve them well but the vast majority of schools educate clever students well. We educate bright students well in England and Wales.

So you cannot compare university admissions admissions based on previous decades.

I certainly think you can look at 50s/60s grammar schools and compare A level passes, and ask why significant numbers of grammar schools, despite supposedly having the best students got mediocre results. As Sashkin says, the History Boys stuff was for a minority.

Why anyone wants to go back to a system which had failed 50 years ago beats me. They should instead be asking how we can provide the best education for all now and see what new ideas can be developed.

Why is there such love for the Comprehensive schooling system !
Is this down to its egalitarian principles , rather than the results.

I can understand why politicians like it , firstly it detoxifies any association of winners and losers with regard to schooling options.

Secondly it must be more economically more efficient to put everybody in the same building together

I've read this thread.

I think lots of people have already answered your question: "Why such love for the comprehensive system?"

The fact that you supply your own answer ("I think it's because ....") actually demonstrates that you're not going to change your mind on that despite pages of people telling you why they think the comprehensive system is better.

For myself, this thread has really reminded me that the tripartite system of schooling was administered really badly in this county in previous generations.

www.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/ive-seen-the-future-of-english-education-and-it-makes-me-sad/

www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/the-world-loves-our-grammar-school-system-so-why-don't-we/

Here are two articles about selective education. The first one reads like it has been posted by a poster on here !

The second one illustrates that Singapore has all types of schools available and hence has on of the most Comprehensive education system around.

on offer the most comprehensive of all schooling systems.

www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/the-world-loves-our-grammar-school-system-so-why-dont-we/

Grammar schools are the best way to improve social mobility for clever but poor children. More working class kids went to oxbridge in the 60s than now which is shocking.

"Grammar schools are the best way to improve social mobility for clever but poor children"

No they aren't. Clever but poor children don't get into them. And never did, despite the stories of the exceptions that people like to quote.

References to the education system in Singapore are a red herring we are far too culturally different to impose a similar system.

Look to Canada. A system based on equity.

And as I understand it, very many children in Singapore don't go to school at all.

Creambun. No. Not true.

Cf. 'Oxbridge elitism', HMSO June 2014.

Despite the fact that Toby Young says things like that, it's not an actual fact.

Grammar schools are the best way to improve social mobility for clever but poor children. More working class kids went to oxbridge in the 60s than now which is shocking

It depends which area you come from.

If you are in a primary school where there are people living in a very middle class estate and a council estate. The Ht can decide against someone going to the grammar school.

If you didn't go to the grammar you couldnt take O levels and therefore couldn't take A levels so couldn't get into university.

My friend at primary was always top of the class. But lived in the council estate

My other friend only learned to read after the 11+. But came from the middle class estate.

Guess who got into the Grammar school and who went to the Secondary Modern

Having worked with students Asian education systems their technical skills are often excellent - these are easy to measure. Critical thinking, innovation, team work, opinions, etc are all sadly lacking.

Is that type of unthinking fact collecting what we want for our children. Really?

"The Ht can decide against someone going to the grammar school."
No they can't.

bert rubbish. On the wirral for example there are many academic kids from less well off backgrounds at the grammar schools.

Grammar schools are the best way to improve social mobility for clever but poor children. More working class kids went to oxbridge in the 60s than now which is shocking.

Did they? Can you provide a source, please? No-one from the well thought of and socially mixed grammar school that I attended in the 1960s went to Oxbidge during the whole time I was there. Though a girl 2 years younger than me (no idea if she was working class, though I doubt she was poor) did make it to Oxford. She was an obviously outstanding pupil even in first year!

"bert rubbish. On the wirral for example there are many academic kids from less well off backgrounds at the grammar schools."

Stats please.

I'm bored with this anti-facts shit.

Again: Cf. 'Oxbridge elitism', HMSO June 2014.

Statistics aplenty in this ^actually researched document* .

I am so fucking over post-truth.