If bright children do well wherever they go, why is everyone so desperate to get their children into the highest performing grammars/private schools?

[chuckb4ss]

I don't believe that if you put a child in a poorly performing comprehensive school that requires improvement, that they would come out with the exact same A level grades that they would if they had attended one of the top private/grammar schools. (Not saying that A levels are the be all and end all, that's a separate discussion).

I hear all the time that if your child is naturally bright, they will do well wherever they go. If that is the case, then why the competition to get children into the best performing schools?

I ended up failing my 12+ as I lost all faith in my ability.
This is what would be called school failure and neglect. if your parents weren't middle class

In comprehensives they have streaming and the pupils end up with other academic children like them in the top sets

This is incredibly sad.

I know one student who was a hard worker, really put in the effort but was not naturally clever. This student was dumped into a class with others who didnt do anything except disrupt the class. The same boy begged his parents to take him out of the school as he could not learn in the class he was put in. The parents couldn’t afford to remove him.

He also wanted to study a particular language. It wasn’t offered as a subject to the class he was put in. It was offered only to the ‘bright’ students.

How they were streamed was not a secret.

The last I heard, his parents were trying to get him into a few paying school for his final year. I don’t know if they ever succeeded.

I guess if you look at the long game - ie beyond uni and early career, it makes less difference. The longer time period gives bright, talented people more chance to shine.

Let’s say you mess up an exam, miss out on 1st choice uni... but maybe get a first, then masters, then go into technical field, do MBA and then management etc.

If you are talented with reasonable health and no runs of bad luck - in this country, you could probably make a decent life for yourself. Ok - maybe certain jobs would be very difficult to access, but there are often alternatives to achieve an ok standard of living.

@Mockers2020Vision exactly!

If a child is very bright
and very motivated
and enjoys academic learning
and has a strong enough personality to ignore teasing and bullying
and has parents who can support them with further reading suggestions and other extension activities, some of which may involve financial outlay
they will do well anywhere.

If any of those conditions are absent, they will be failed by second rate schools. 'A bright child will do well anywhere' is usually used here as a putdown for parents upset that their child has been allocated a failing school; a sly way of suggesting their child can't be that bright or they wouldn't be worried.

It is exactly the same in the state sector.

A teacher’s job is at risk for their class not achieving high grades?

I wish the teachers in the school I went to knew that. Half of them openly despised their jobs!

In comprehensives they have streaming and the pupils end up with other academic children like them in the top sets so they all have the same work ethos together.

That depends on the school. Some don't stream or set in early years at all. If there aren't enough pupils for more than one set, i.e. something unpopular like GCSE German, then there'll be one class of very mixed ability spanning A* through to U grade pupils.

Even worse was Maths and English. We had 6 forms per year, so you'd have thought there were six classes, i.e. top, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and bottom. No. There were 2 groups of 3 different levels. I was in form F and we only ever had classes with forms D and E. We never had classes with forms A, B or C. So, there were two distinct sets of top, middle and bottom. That meant each class had a very wide range of ability pupils. As it was a crap comp in a disadvantaged area, it meant the "top" groups had pupils at a range working between * and D - that's a very wide range for a teacher to cope with, especially in Maths & English!

We sent ours to a comprehensive so they understood the challenges others face. It’s been a really useful lesson for their adult lives.

It would be very difficult/impossible for our eldest to get higher grades and probably wouldn’t have been allowed to do as many exams at an independent.
Our others had a mixture and benefitted from some boarding as preparation for university but the teaching was no better - just easier because it was a selective cohort whose parents were paying a small fortune to have them there. The exam results for the brightest were no better but it did improve the grades of the just above average rich children.
There are advantages to both comprehensive and top public schools.
Grammars are immoral. They fail the majority of eleven year olds and lower results.

I am very bright but wouldn’t have done well anywhere. I struggled with boredom even at a private school that went well beyond the curriculum. Thankfully I was at a school that was prepared to give me a good kicking when I needed it.

@Purpleartichoke

learning disdain for her less bright peers
I would rather have an average, kind child if that’s what is being produced by ‘award winning schools’.

Because they think it will be a better crowd with less chance of 'riff raff', naughty kids and teenage pregnancy. Well that's what one of my friends said recently....

DD is a bright child, but there is no doubt that she would have done a lot better at a better school, than the awful local comp. She's still at a top RG Uni now, but her A levels would have been better, her experiences and opportunities to follow hobbies and interests would have been better. I know this for sure, as most of my cousins attended an expensive private school, and I know what their experience was like.

My very bright DS at a good state school and was top of his class, he moves to a prep school and was middle when he first went. He went on to gain a scholarship, and got his Latin GCSE a year early.
He would have done well at state due to his work ethic and intelligence, but he did better at private, oh and of course got to do Latin which he likes.

@SilverDragonfly1

Not if they're being bullied so badly, like me, they have to hide at breaks and lunchtimes to avoid being beaten up and having property stolen/damaged. However motivated and however much backing you have, you won't do well if you're stuck in a crap school, with crap teachers who don't care and lie to you and your parents when the bullying is reported. The reality in crap schools is the teaching staff don't want to get involved and prefer "victim blaming" rather than tackling the offenders. After a long period of that, you really just give up and stop caring - the target every day is to survive without your bag being stolen or getting (yet another) fag end burn on your arm.

s it was a crap comp in a disadvantaged area, it meant the "top" groups had pupils at a range working between and D - that's a very wide range for a teacher to cope with, especially in Maths & English!*

That's what it's like at primary schools for teachers all the time - you can have pupils working at year 1 level and pupils working at year 7/8 level in the same class. Obviously they are the extremes.

I'm surprised that the top sets in a high school would have such a wide range of grades. The local school here has about 200 children in a year group divided into 8 or 9 ability sets so they have a narrow range and can teach to suit all without holding others back or leaving others behind.

*A teacher’s job is at risk for their class not achieving high grades?

I wish the teachers in the school I went to knew that. Half of them openly despised their jobs!*
Well I'm assuming that you left school more than five or so years ago. Things do change. It's not realistic or informed to base your argument on how things were when you were at school.

I went to what I would call an ‘average’ school, it wasn’t terrible but certainly wasn’t outstanding and whilst I did well and passed all my GCSEs, I have no doubt I could have achieved higher grades in a better school.

I do think it depends on the child to some degree, you can have a naturally ‘bright’ child who is lazy, if they don’t have teachers pushing/guiding/inspiring them (even if parents try) they simply won’t achieve their full potential ... but a bright child who is really self-motivated and hungry to learn will spend time revising on their own, read, use all the online resources they can find, join groups, debate and then even if they were in a poor to average school they would still do just as well because they have filled in all of the knowledge gaps themselves - it would certainly be more of a struggle, and obviously in extreme cases (the worst school in the country, teachers have lost control, bullying etc.) then it would affect their emotional state so would in turn knock the motivation that I’m talking about.

Basically, I understand where the saying has come from but don’t believe it to be true in all cases!

@lilmishap Teaching is stricter in my sons school....no comprehensive would get away with it.
Class matters
Firstly what do you mean by "strict" teaching?? Sounds grim.

OK, and how do you know this about all comprehensives? A kid transferred from a selective private school to the inner London Comprehensive where I taught and she couldn't believe the difference in the teaching. Ours was challenging, creative, inspiring, engaging. And believe it or not the vast majority of our pupils behaved well, participated, tried hard and many achieved great results.

"Bright children" - it drives me slightly nuts how many MC parents are convinced their child is so bright, naturally bright, even "frighteningly bright", when their kids have parental support, parental interest and capacity to help them, a quiet place to do homework, and all of the material advantages, not witnessing the stress and grind and trauma that accompany poverty, (Yes I know that stress and grind and trauma occur in all socio-economic groups but frequency and severity are considerably higher in lower income homes and those with lower prior education in parents)
Selective and, private education are consistently shown to add the same or less value than many state schools. Your "bright" children are mostly benefiting from social advantage, and your priority mostly is in keeping them away from the children you deem undesirable or bad influences. I am not saying that isn't understandable but it is a privilege ...

A teacher’s job is at risk for their class not achieving high grades?

My friend teaches at a "rough academy" and says that if every single one of her students don't meet the targets that she's set for them, then she's hauled in to explain why. Even though they have horrendous issues going on at home that will contribute to their grades way more than her teaching ever could.

My older DC are both very bright but far too non-conforming to have done well in an exam factory type school. One has, after getting A/A* grades at GCSE without revising, totally rejected the idea of university as "why should I pay £9k a year for someone to teach me stuff?"
He is highly motivated and got the first job he applied for.
You can't teach motivation and drive, you can lead by example but it's up to them to find their own way and hot house education isn't for everyone.

I was a very bright, very motivated child. I have excellent GCSEs and A levels. However school (low performing comprehensive) was the worst five years of my life.

Even after highly successful career happy marriage well into my 40s I am still scarred by my it and my whole self belief and outlook are framed by those years.

So if I can spare my equally quirky children the same experiences then I will.

Very well said @iamagree

My daughter passed the 11+ for a local grammar school, but is number 9 on a waiting list. 500 (or so) children sat the exam. There were 160 places allocated.

I let her sit it, as it seems she’s working above average in the class she’s currently in. I felt that she’d certainly have a chance of passing that grammar test without needing private tuition. No way would I have let her even sit it, if she wasn’t working in the higher ability group.

Of those 500 children, I assume most of the parents would anticipate their child had a good change of passing. I infer from that, that the 500 were sitting comfortably in their current schools and doing well, therefore not a representation on a random selection of 500 children with different abilities.

There are children in her class that have been “hot housed” with private tutors for 3 hours a week for years upon years. I know that this particular grammar has issues with the above where the children a tutored, then pass the test and then can’t cope with the sheer amount of work. A friend of a friend is a teacher there and says it’s a huge problem and it becomes obvious pretty quickly which children have been tutored. The talk of the staff room!

Now if my DD was offered a place (and the school has suggested she will) I have no doubt she’d manage and do well, however I’m not sure I’d actually take the place. It’s extremely academically focussed (obviously) and she’s already saying how she’s fed up on doing tests (practice for Sats) . She does well and and always gets between 80-95 in all tests/assessments, but she’s fed up of it already. Imagine the H/W from a grammar school. I’m worried it might sicken her and work be opposite.

I feel the local comp might be more appealing as I’m sure she’ll be working at the higher end. Also there are children in her class currently that are disruptive but it never seems to affect her.

I worked with a teacher once who had underachieved due to going to a crap school, no support at home and resulting low self-esteem. She actually turned down an Oxford place as she thought she wouldn't fit in . She remains one of the strictest colleagues I've ever worked with. She just would not tolerate any student disrupting others, because she knew where it led.

In a poorly performing school a good student will likely have to work so much harder to achieve good grades.

Our local school is in and out of Special Measures like it's caught on the door handle. A lot of the A level teaching is to the C grade - fine if that is your level but absolutely no good if you are capable of or aspiring to higher grades. The aspirational student will have to work out where they need to extend their study for themselves. They will need to work this out early on before they are too far down the track.

A low achieving school may have little experience in getting students into higher tier universities, little experience in guiding students through the application process, little experience in supporting students in writing good personal statements.

A student from a low achieving school getting into a RG university may well have had to work harder just to get there than a grammar school student. On the plus side, having put the work in to get there perhaps the student from the low achieving school will put in the work needed to do well.