If state grammar schools were for only state educated children…

[Rosaluxemberg]

Do you think it would help social mobility ? And that children on FSM or from very disadvantaged backgrounds who showed academic promise could gain entry with contextual 11 plus marks (like Unis).
To me the fact that privately educated children can benefit from 7 years of great education, with small classes, lots of attention, and to cap it all, preparation towards the 11 plus just seems so unfair and defeats the whole objective of it. Maybe there’d be more mixing of kids as middle class parents had to decide which path to take.
Who knows ? Any thoughts ?

Except these kids won’t end up in these schools will they.
They’ll move house or buy a second property and live and go to school with Starmers kids and the like.

You don’t seriously think people with money will take this tax crap lying down do you.
The only ones to lose out will be those who lose their places in the good schools that the %%% move to.
Crack on Labour, a party creating ever more divisions and more elitism.

Apologies to all the courteous Labour voters on here.
You have a couple of bad apples pulling you down!

Your fourth paragraph is exactly why we moved our eldest out of state. My son spent a whole year teaching the kid they put next to him and my sons ability actually dropped.

He was in a one form entry primary. Big mistake!

@IAmNotASheep Not surprising at all! I hate that private and grammar schooling is painted as elitism when it may be the best environment based on the available options.
A one size fits all approach is terrible for all children. The outcome is a top set at a comprehensive could have A*-C / 9-4 students.
It is a terrible predicament for students and teachers alike.

@elliejjtiny " I was considered "academic" because I was quiet and did my homework so I had to do double science and a humanities subject for gcse. I failed both. The students who were considered non academic were allowed to do more "fun" subjects like child development business studies (which was boring but you got to go on trips to Cadbury world and Disney land paris)."

So you failed your GCSE's but still went to universitities and your peers did boring fun business studies which involved free trips to Disneyland Paris? Sounds a little strange...

The standard of teaching should be raised across the board regardless of the type of school with the support of engaging parents

Having taught in both state and independent, I did not magically become a better teacher the day I walked through the independent's front door. The difference is in the culture of success that exists in independents - it's cool to do well. That simple. Teaching doesn't need improving, attitude to learning is the issue.

Nope. As I pointed out I got top grades. But I could have done better. I wasted years at school learning almost nothing and I was at a great comprehensive school.

Nobody would look at my grades and results and say "oh that school failed." On the contrary. There is not a metric that records this wasted potential but it is very clear to me it is there. It was there for several other students in the class.

The basic problem is that the more broad the range of abilities, the less focussed the lessons can be. They are necessarily broad to catch all. If you have a very small range of abilities you can cater your classes to that range.

Maybe if you have the top 5% in your class you can teach them A levels early? Teach them university courses to give them a headstart. Accelerate them. Let then spend a year doing something more enriching whilst still getting top grades at 18. Who knows. But you won't get the best out of people by spreading the abilities you are teaching to thin and wide.

Top level pupils are left to do essentially nothing. Throw paper. Chat to their friends. Go over the same work over and over and over that they already know and can easily pass the exams for at top levels whilst getting nothing out of it. Schools that don't have to cater to such wide levels can do more like send kids to Olympiads, have them spend time do other things.

Getting top grades when you could have got the same grades in the same exams years earlier without school grinding you down for years doing nothing is not the pinnacle of success.

Then a place lottery can be instated, which I believe is the system in Brighton. There are ways to soften those sharp elbows :)

But Labour aren't suggesting that are they? The only policy so far is to add VAT onto private schools. When questioned Yvette Cooper could not answer how they will accommodate kids leaving private school.

I don’t think anything about my original message suggested it was a Labour policy, did it? It’s an ideal world scenario to truly level our education system. Calm your tits, love. No one’s actually going to force your kids to consort with the help.

Are you this lovely irl?

I’m an absolute delight :)

So it is just on an anonymous forum that you are condescending and bigoted?.

Grammar schools finished in the early 1970s where I grew up. It’s quite ridiculous they exist at all.

Contextual offers for uni is a good idea in practice but it’s slightly weird how it actually works. Where we live, some students in DCs sixth form get contextual offers because of where they live. This is despite the fact that they are actually living in nice houses in the slightly less good part of town and they also attended schools across town that are outstanding. Also, no contextual offers for those with minor disabilities. Seems badly designed

@CakeTastesBetterAsBatter Ah, right. You're in the "devil take the hindmost" camp. Fair enough. Not how I want the future citizens - never mind the potential movers and shakers-of the country to think, but hey ho. See you around.

Did you type that with a classic mumsnet head tilt?

You can argue as much as you like about levelling and improving state primary. The main cause of the imbalance in the U.K. education system is that we force all children to start school based on age rather than readiness like they do in other countries.
My own DCs are a late summer and a winter baby. The summer one was barely ready for school and could have done with waiting another year. The older kids in his their class did better by a country mile. The winter child is breezing it. They have the same levels of intelligence.
Children who may be performing at a higher level are not necessarily “gifted”, they may just be more school ready and should be allowed to move up. Similarly, we should hold back children in earlier years who need more time.
The focus on English and Maths in the format they are taught, drops a bunch of kids on their heads.
There are limited options for children in primary who excel in STEM and Creative and you just have to look at the dismal curriculums for computing, art, performing arts and music to see that they are treated as “extras” when in fact they might be what is best suited to some as their main focus.
We are obsessed with GCSEs purely because we do not offer viable academic flexibility for children who do mediocre. All decisions on where to go next are determined by English maths and science. Our vocational options are dire compared to mainland Europe where they have vocational colleges at standard AND higher levels. Those higher levels offer the middle set more options to specialise and there is flexibility to go to university later.

I'm not sure I've ever met anyone in real life who would say "calm your tits"....but then obviously I'm an out of touch snob.

My reference to the standard of teaching needing to be raised, is related to the large class sizes of mixed abilities and restricted curriculum.
Grammar schools encourage success in their specialised field. Most of them happen to cater to the academically inclined. In the town across there are 2 grammars, one with a focus on sports another more academically focused.

Independents have the luxury of better supporting children because they have smaller classes, a broader curriculum and an interesting range of extracurricular activities. The independent route is just one approach that fits some students.

@NosyJosie has touched on it nicely, grammar schools cater to the students who typically excel in Maths and English.
More flexibility and range is required in the education system to allow better teaching and opportunities for all students; but it most definitely should not be at the expense of grammar and privately educated students.

I passed 3 of my gcse's (3 of the compulsory subjects), did a level 2 course which was equivalent to 5 gcse's and then level 3 which was equivalent to 2 a levels.

Business studies was marketed at our school as being more suited to non academic students. Most of the people who did it said the lessons were boring but the trips made it worth it. The students who were considered "academic" were told to pick double science, history or geography and one additional subject from what we called the fun subject list, although I think the teachers called them something else. The non academic students did single science and got to pick 3 subjects from the list.

It worked in theory, except that all the teachers encouraged the well behaved students to do their subject, whether they were good at it or not because it was better for them to have students who sat quietly and did as they were told even if they failed the GCSE than have disruptive students who would fail the GCSE and also disturb the students who were more likely to pass.

Also as we were in a secondary modern, not a comp, academic was relative. I was in top set for both maths and English. Most of our English class passed but only about half of our maths class did.

They do but it tends to depend on whether the school encourages streaming or not. In a mixed ability class for a core subject with 30 odd kids, teachers have to make a choice because one of the 3 main groups is going to miss out - this is why they often target the middle and why senior management encourages this (they are aiming for a certain percentage of 5+). It is also why I will only teach in schools that stream, at least from year 9.

Setting and streaming are different things. Streaming is putting children n ability streams for all subjects usually based on performance in maths and english. Generally inflexible and not considered a good thing nowadays. Setting is putting children in ability groups for particular subjects so you can be in different groups for different subjects. This allows flexibility, and also means that some subjects like art, drama, PHSE and so on can be in mixed ability groups allowing non academic children to shine, and to let academic children realise that people they may have dismissed as no good at maths and English might be very good at other things.

@CakeTastesBetterAsBatter - the problems with streaming - you need a lot of children in each year group to fill a class of the top set and bottom set, so in schools with say, 4 class entry in a comprehensive system, you might not have the range of students.

then there’s the issue you’ve noted, streaming would have helped someone like you at the top to be pushed to do better, however as I said up thread, the evidence for streaming shows it doesn’t make much of a difference to the exam results to the middle students and leads to the bottom ability students doing worse than in mixed ability.

if a school is judged by how many students it can get a GCSE 4 or 5 in maths and English, not streaming will get them a better result overall. It would be worth sacrificing a few top kids only getting an 8 when they could get a 9, if they can get the same numbers getting a 4 when they would have had a 3.

I completely understand why many schools don’t stream, particularly those with majority who are of lower ability, I can support it from a national level, just if my kids could get 8/9 I want them to get that, not 6/7. I recognise this is selfish of me.

I’m not saying there aren’t, I was merely expressing the ‘going rate’ for those I had researched for our kid, we are London-based.

Setting - creating teaching groups in each subject according to ability - is the norm in most comprehensives.

The much cruder tool of ‘streaming’ - placing students in a group for all subjects regardless of eg spiky profiles - is much rarer. Why would it be ‘better’ to place a student in a fixed ‘stream’ that included both English and Maths if they are top 10% for Maths but lowest 25% for English?