How are Grammar schools so much better than comprehensives if they get the same funding?

[Karma1387]

Me and my partner are in a situation where we are looking to relocate in order to move to a Grammar school area. This is going to involve us both having to find new jobs and coordinate a house move at the same time.

Some of my family disagree with our decision to move for the sake of grammar school and don't see how they can be better than a normal comprehensive school.

I am hoping some people on here will have some knowledge on how grammar schools achieve so much better than comprehensives?

Also anyone with experience with grammar schools they could share? From what I have read the class sizes aren't much different to comprehensives and they get the same funding. Is it literally just a case of because they do the 11+ they tend to only take on the more academically inclined kids. Does this translate to less bad behaviour etc compared to comprehensive schools?

The move is going to be stressful with us both trying to find new jobs plus moving further away from both our families I want it to be worth it! Our local comprehensive is awful for results and we want to give the kids the best opportunities.

Personally I would rather homeschool and fully keep them out of the school system but my partner is very against this and is determined we need to move to a grammar school area so any advise to aid our discussion would be amazing!

Are we being unreasonable to relocate for the possibility of grammar school?

Cambridgeshire has none and it sucks. So so many private schools but no grammars. Its very frustrating!

KEGS is very competitive. My DD was at CCHS ( girls equivalent) and not only was it passing the 11plus but had to be in the top 125 of those who did pass it. Something like 1200 girls took the exam

You have to be in catchment here which changes year on year. The closer you are it is inevitable that house prices will be higher. Every grammar school here is selective and you have to pass the 11+ first.

If you move and then your children don’t get into the grammar, they will have to go to a local sink school

Yep thats why I won't go there. I liked living in Chelmsford but the costs are so high I wont sacrifice time with my kids or the distance from my dad for a 1 in a million chance of getting into a school no matter how good it is because the odds are so so low!

Yes this is the worey for me as well.

I live in a “grammar school area”, in that 7 grammar schools are physically located in the county, but they have no catchment area so some children travel up to 50 miles on buses each way, every day and realistically the local comps are mostly very good. Only one has a slightly dodgy rep.

I am a specialist visiting teacher working in one of the (girls) grammar schools in one town and one comp in another. Whilst the comp has the occasional kid who runs off or thinks it’s funny to be a little nuisance, the community spirit there is huge, the results are excellent and there are enormous numbers of clubs and events, which work because everyone lives nearby and feels loyal to the school.

In the grammar school, I see less ‘physical’ bad behaviour but a lot more neurodivergence, anxiety, stress & self harm and no before or after school clubs because people have to rush for the bus back home. I also of course see plenty of delightful girls who are happy & thriving, but all of them had at least one year of tutoring, mostly more, to pass the test, and a lot continue to have weekend tutoring to keep up.

My own son took the grammar school test, got a place in one of them, but turned it down for the local (leafy) comp and has changed from a shy primary school boy to the life & soul of his walk-to-school group. He hangs out with the other clever kids, works hard, plays hard and is currently predicted excellent grades.

I agree that the current education system is deeply flawed, but then so is the society it leads to, so there’s no harm in learning that sometimes you just need to ‘play the game’ and get on with it.

But with a 2 year old and a baby - I really wouldn’t be stressing about secondary school yet. Talk to other local parents (do your little ones go to nursery/ other regular activities where you can find families with older siblings?) and see what the situation is really like.

Or if you hate your current town, then sure - move but don’t fixate on the grammar thing.

I'm in a grammar area
Yes there is one pretty shit school nearby but there's also a very good one, and I know some who have chosen it even if they've got into a grammar

It doesn't necessarily mean every other school is crap!

I have just been through the 11+ for the second and, thankfully, final time.

DC1 is at grammar and DC2 will be joining them in September.

TBH I think you need to work out where you want to live. Nicer places tend to have better schools - for both primary and secondary, but that also means that houses are more expensive. You don't tend to get rubbish areas with outstanding schools.

I would say that you have a lot of baggage about moving school. DC1 moved primary schools 3 times. He was fine. Teachers are good at integrating them into the class. It's much better now than when we were at school.

Re grammars, I would say there is better behaviour. There are some prats but I would say less than a secondary.
Your DC really do need to be GD (greater depth) at primary to keep up.
You should look at counties like Bucks that aren't super selective. You also need to think of a back up plan if 1 or both of your DC don't get in.

I think you are a few years too early to be making these decisions TBH. We moved to a grammar school area, due to my DH's job, when my oldest was in Y2. We had already been told they were brilliant at maths

Rubbish My other 2 kids didn't go to sink schools They went to a perfectly nice comp 10 mins walk away

Wow, some of them even go to uni after the terrible experience they have at an FE college! Mumsnet, lol. About a third of schools in England don't have 6th forms (so it's not wildly unusual) and those are mostly in rural areas where they can't support years 12 and 13 and offer a decent range of subjects with the size of the school.

Well I said it wasn't unusual but you seem to be arguing about it?

I was more surprised with the 'often uni after that'. Why wouldn't you go to uni after doing A Levels at an FE college, as opposed to a school?

Anyway OP, good luck. You sound thoughtful and nice. Go and see a few schools, primary and secondary, and see what you like and don't like. It sounds like your childhoods are doing a lot of heavy lifting as part of your decision. I would prefer it if grammars were phased out and the admissions code tightened up and properly enforced so schools can't socially select at all by stealth and I think it's worth considering that schools policy won't necessarily remain stable. Changes to SEN policy, for example, will impact all schools. I'd caution against a decision based on the status quo.

Because it's not just A levels people do at FE college. Besides you can go to uni without a levels

My DS did exactly that through choice. He wasn't interested in the A level subjects

And not everyone who does A levels anywhere goes to uni either

OP, your 5 year old nephew isn’t spending his days sitting at a table with a maths book learning about fractions. He really isn’t.

Grammar schools are going to get better results because they only have the top 5% or something in academic ability. Every child in a class in a grammar school will be in that 5% so obviously they will have a basic knowledge, understanding and aptitude for learning that some children in a comprehensive school just won't have.

Behaviourally, most of the children are likely to have had to work hard to pass the test. A child with behaviour problems, that mean they struggle to or sometimes just refuse to focus or learning difficulties which make them work more slowly or not take in as much is less likely to manage to pass the test.

However this does not mean that Grammar Schools will automatically be better places for more academic children to learn. A comprehensive school, can have just as good teachers, they may have top sets which allow the most able children to excel and are much like grammar schools in terms of teaching styles. They may be less pressured which might be helpful for some children, who don't do well under pressure, even if that child has a high academic ability.

Honestly there is no way of knowing whether your child will do better at a grammar school until you know your child and the actual schools. My son is at the local comp and doing just as well as I think he would have done at grammar, but then the school is good and has lots of opportunities for the most able children. Had our local comps not been as good, we might have consider grammar options.

I also think you need to remember that, if a significant percentage of children in an area do go to grammar school, the comprehensive schools will be largely missing that top tier, so a comprehensive school where a large proportion of more able children go to grammar school is very likely to get worse results than a comprehensive without grammar schools nearby!

Why not look for areas with non selective schools which have Ofsed Outstanding rating? Those should cater for academic children as well as others.

Not necessarily less pupil premium as a few people are saying. Grammar by me have 30 spaces just allocated for pp to aid social mobility. So for example, top 120 places open to top 120 scores and the next 30 places must go to pp. Also having worked in both grammar and now comps, behaviour is just very different. Overall grammar are more inherently compliant though.

most kids who go to grammar schools near me are tutored. There is a lot of parent involvement, I think that automatically excludes the students who come from perhaps more chaotic homes. My dc go to the local comp. 1 student from their class was excluded in y8 for dealing weed, he was highly disruptive in ALL the classes. It doesn’t take many of these students to disrupt the learning for everyone. The grammar schools process weeds these kids out.

There's a pack of insults in those six words. You have insulted all the parents on Mumsnet who didn't attend grammar schools, whose children don't attend grammar schools, and who teach in schools other than grammar schools. Your ignorant, snobbish attitude is what Richard Crossland wanted to stamp out when comprehensivisation was first introduced. It's all our loss that he wasn't successful.

OP: do you and your partner realise that teachers in grammar schools have exactly the same training as teachers in comprehensives , and they teach exactly the same curriculum?

Yoir partner seems to think that grammars are some sort of rarified elite existence.

The kids in the top sets at comprehensives in non grammar areas are working at the same level as grammar schools and doing as well.

Kent as a County, with a full grammar system, does not perform better overall than comparable counties with comprehensive schools.

I'm amazed that you are thinking of this now but I guess that shows the thought process of grammar school parents and how it differs from parent to parent. I did not even think of it when my child was that age, I was merely trying to make it through each day at the toddler stage and get out alive 😅

The reason why children are tutored (in my experience in Kent it is usually only when they are in Yr 5 ie 9-10 years old) is because the format of the 11+ exams are unfamiliar to children, but of course they need to know the types of questions they will face. State schools are not allowed to spend their time doing this familiarisation, so parents pay tutors to do it. There are some private primary schools that focus on 11+ preparation and some parents move their children into them in Yrs 4-5 expressly for this purpose, though most don’t.

It's worrying that you think it is remarkable that a pupil would achieve A and A* (old system) grades. It is as though you have written off comprehensives as a dumping ground for badly behaved children and unmotivated teachers. More than 90% of children in the UK go to a comprehensive. About 48% of young people go to university. We have good schools, with some excellent ones and a few that are dreadful

You are boxing yourself in and your children will pay the price if you don't give yourself some breathing space. Please try and be more open-minded, for the sake of your born and unborn child. You have not even visited your local primaries, dismissing them on the basis of comments from other parents. School choice is as much about what you experience when you visit as it is about what the league tables and Ofsted reports say. Why not visit them when you've had your baby and see what you find there?

If they went to a grammar and then a comprehensive, they wouldn't be transitioning to a state school. Grammar schools are state schools. You say your partner is aware of this but you seem confused yourself.

Is your partner's worry about 'the social aspect' based on the (mistaken) view that grammar schools are entirely populated by well behaved, studious children and 'state' ie comprehensives crammed full of common, unwashed oiks from rough families who don't know how to eat with a knife and fork?