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 ?

The point is his primary had it's own science block funded by the parents. Hardly a normal state primary. His kids are getting a free private education because of where he lives. His kids' free education paid for by the state is only available because he lives in an area where super wealthy parents band together to fleece the system rather than pay for private schools so they can pretend they aren't as affluent as they are. There's no other way to see it. That type of school is literally the Eton of the state sector and very very few members of the public or their DC will ever get to experience it.

As I have posted before, the primary school that serves Starmer’s long term home has SEN just above and FSM just below the national average, and EAL well above. I understand from posters on a previous thread that it is an outlier in its area, but in many, many areas a school with this data would be ‘average’, not ‘the Eton of state schools’

For comparison, here is a good but not ‘Eton’ school in an affluent town, chosen at random. Its figures show a MUCH higher level of privilege and much lower level of need than Starmer’s.

There are many hundreds of schools like this nationwide.

And as was posted before the schools around it have 44% FSM...in the area it is in it is a massive outlier

As I said, it is an area where ‘being average nationally’ makes it an outlier. But stating ‘it is the Eton of state schools, only available to a tiny few’ is a false narrative where there are hundreds of schools with much, much more privileged a d less needy intakes in many parts of the country.

Im not in favour of academic selection. It’s very hard on kids who are deemed ‘not good enough’ at age 10.

However as I live in a grammar school area I know that parents will and do pay for extensive one to one and group classes in preparation for the 11plus.
Some friends even from a very early age ( one I know of started their kid at age 5) Most start a couple of years before the exam.
This is mainly down to the fact other non grammars really aren’t doing very well at all here and haven’t for many many years unfortunately.

Whilst we do have a private primary grammar Cramer we also have a private 4-18 all through school that do not do any 11plus preparation and if kids want to move they have to pay for the VR and NVR tuition privately ( not at the school )

So, no I do not think it is right to prevent access to grammar for anyone. It would be better if there were no grammars at all, it might help those non grammars to improve by having a wider range of academic ability.

I would also ask - wrt Starmer’s primary - whether the figures reflect its catchment or whether they are in any way manipulating who they admit.

I have much less issue with a primary the makeup of whose pupils represent its local catchment than I do with eg a selective (by ability or faith) school taking <2% FSM pupils and 2% SEN when its effective catchment has 25% FSM and 18% SEN.

You mean grammars, clearly. There are not "hundreds" of comprehensive state schools with "much much more privileged" cohorts.

Their parents earnings matter on the selection process because it is SELECTIVE and rich parents have an advantage. Pretending it isn't effectively the same as a private when it out performs many of them and the parents could probably match incomes is ridiculous.

I think I’m lucky as my dd goes to an amazing comprehensive school - it’s unusually large and very successful and has an amazing Progress 8 score, despite loads of kids who don’t speak first-language English. It is very popular and regularly churns out kids with almost straight 9s, right alongside kids who could only dream of a 9.

I could have had her tutored to attempt the super selective in the next town. But I decided that maxing out her grade potential didn’t count as much as having a balanced childhood and being amongst people of all kids of backgrounds and races. (The super selective is very intense and 80%+ middle class Asian families, basically kids who are chaperoned to and from school and drilled endlessly to pass exams - with insanely good academic outcomes of course.)

Personally I’m happy with my choice and dd’s secondary school is fabulous, I wish every family could access a top notch comprehensive school like this - I think grammars would disappear if they were more common.

No, I was referring to state primaries, like the one I selected at random.

(Sorry, replied to maths, not to the next poster)

So not grammars, as the OP was asking about.
Our state primary certainly couldn't magic up a science block...in fact the ceiling came in one year. Yeah, theirs is so average.

My thought is that we should have streaming and sets within a school, not grammar schools.

What do you mean by ‘randomise admissions to leafy state schools’ do you mean no catchment areas

Do you know there are no issues? There may not be for some, but for a lot there will be. Teachers will be sending work down to student services for the students to complete because the student can’t face the classroom. The children may be taking fewer GCSEs to accommodate the slower pace of learning in other subjects. Students developing anxiety over the equivalent of a grade B because everyone else is getting As.

Hard for you to say my experience is out of date when you don’t know what or when my experience was.

Apologies if I was not clear that I was replying about Starmer’s primary.

On selective schools of all kinds, I do wonder (in a thought experiment) what would happen if all schools were required to admit to exactly their ‘area average’ of FSM children (so the effective catchment for FSM for some schools would be smaller, and for others be larger, than that for other pupils). Perhaps the same for SEN children too. Having more equal intakes would make the quality of schooling much more important and much more visible…

Which just perpetuates unfairness. Why on earth wouldn’t they want state primary children to have a similar advantage?
I dare say it’s at least partly down to an ideological opposition to grammar schools.

Ok, that makes sense.

I think it is a bit rich of him to use the state sector in a very niche way for his own ends and not see it is hypocritical to the majority of people he wants to vote for him. I'm probably going to vote for him myself but I personally see the grammar system as an extension of the private for rich parents who simply don't want to pay and feel ideologically better about themselves, when in reality they are taking a place away from a kid who would benefit. It's the polar opposite to social mobility.

How do they control that.
By putting cameras in your house

Apologies you said primaries. My mistake

I would support a ‘special school’ model of ‘exceptional ability’ schools, for children with full EHCPs whose special need is a level of academic ability incompatible with efficient schooling in mainstream schools.

I think these would only need to be extremely few in number - similar perhaps to the music / dance type schools for children whose abilities in those areas cannot be met efficiently in a local context - and could be co-located with a comprehensive so the child could be educated alongside their age peers in subjects where they show ‘normal ability’.

But the entrance requirement would be a full EHCP naming the school as the only place where education could be efficiently delivered to meet the child’s needs.

You can get rid of grammars the day that you ban private schools.

We don't have the funds for private and I love that my nerdy DDs can go to a school where they'd don't get bullied.

I think parents should declare their income and if they have enough disposable they should have to pay the grammar as much as the local private school. The grammar should then open up for pupils from FSM and SEN catchments to match intake from other state schools.

Private secondary’s are 30k-70k a year, prep schools are vastly cheaper at more like 10k-20k. If say 35% of private prep kids were to change tack to a Grammar, rather than the current 10%, that could have implications for other students who will all sit the same test. A large proportion of private school kids currently attending pre-prep and prep school’s, who may have a previously been destined for private secondary, will be going for grammar places because of affordability.