To believe that we need to create two hundred more Grammar Schools for the Shires of England.

[redange]

To believe England needs two hundred new Grammar schools across the country and in doing this take the number of English Grammar Schools to 363.

I appreciate this is a post that is going to lead to me being called names and for posters to be looking at spelling and grammar mistakes as a means of belittlement .

Nonetheless, there must be support among some posters for the lifting of the 1998 Labour Ban on the creation of Grammar Schools where there is a desire or clear need. The only Grammar School that has been built since 1965 being the Weal Of Kent Grammar Annexe in Sevenoaks . Surely if the country is going to be able to grow economically, we need to revisit the idea of selective education across Sport, Art and academic rigour. It is also not impossible that a fairer and more equitable system of selection could be introduced alongside the 11+ exam. Thus, in doing so access to selective education should not be a 'one and only' chance. I think this is where a lot of people have problems, because they see selective education through the prism of pass or fail. Pass or Fail does not mean the same today as it meant in 1965 because firstly the advent of a single exam system of GCSE's and A levels that all pupils take or can advance to.

I just taught my kids a lot of what they needed for the 11+. They are definitely needed to separate out the rockstars from the not so academic

Taxation is what you pay as part of belonging to a civilised society. You pay more if you are wealthier or have a high income, and everyone receives services according to their need (and what the state can afford).

You seem to be confusing paying tax with buying a private service.

Next you will be suggesting that higher rate taxpayers should get special roads with no potholes, or designated police officers who will prioritise them ahead of poor people.
Absolute nonsense.

None of your first four statements are true at least at secondary level. There are no selective sports colleges with state funding. There are only 6 selective music schools in the entire country and the vast majority of children who are ‘good at music’ do not attend them. There’s only a tiny handful of performing arts schools (of which only one is state).

The existence of Chethams or the BRIT school is hardly an argument for the return of grammar schools.

Again, you are confusing two separate issues.
Academic selection should not be used as a solution to behavioural issues.

Exclusion is the solution to behaviour issues - but then the government would have to pay for somewhere for the excluded pupils to go.

Yep, this. All our local primary schools are merging years, intakes of four to five kids in some upcoming reception years, no new schools will be required for a little while I reckon. In fact, could be the opposite.

I can’t tell if this is satire. Bloody hope it is.

And if isn’t: absolutely the wrong way around. It’s not the grammar kids who are costing the state a fuckton at age 35, is it? If you invest heavily to get decent returns for our economy, you invest it in those currently being utterly failed in our current system. They are failing the 11+ in the areas they take it.

Not at all, there was always only a very limited number of grammar school places. At the height of grammar schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s there were only ever enough places for 25% of pupils.

Placing things in the context of 2026, grammar schools would be looking to pick those pupils likely to get at least BBB at A Level (in 2026 - grade inflation!) from doing a single exam at the end of Year 6.

But even that wasn't always fairly balanced. In the city where I grew up (I was in the first cohort not to take the 11+ plus in my county) there were two boys grammar schools and only one girls grammar school.

There were roughly twice as many places at grammar school for boys as there was for girls. So, typically around one boy in three might get in to a grammar school but only one girl in six would get in to a grammar school in the city where I grew up.

Today that would be a classic example of sex discrimination but this was all pre the Sex Discrimination Act.

Unfortunately academic selection is one of the only ways to out behavioural problems out of schools , the other way is through paying or Private Education. The only way to get the very people involved in the A66 outrage for instance out of your Daughters/Son schools for instance is either though academic selection or to pay for it. Thus, the bar for selection could be altered and different levels of Grammar schools could exist via Selective Sport/Art schools. Also different levels of Grammar schools via tier 1 top 10% tier 2 top 25% and tier 3 ones taking top 40% which would enable bright children with SEN needs to gain access or relatively academically ordinary children who worked efficiently and behaved well !

Bedfordshire and a number of other counties have no grammar schools at all.

Falling birth rate means we’re not going to be able to fill the schools that are already open .

Maybe good behaviour is the key then? And that could be done within the current state system by offering something more innovative than the current one size fits all sausage factory.

Grammars are just another form of elitism open to those who can afford the postcode or tutors. Certainly is in our county.

Does Bedfordshire still have the 3 tier system?
When many parts of England switched from grammar schools to comps they changed to the 3 tier.
I have often wondered if not going to secondary until 12 or 13 made a difference in academic success.

I do think there needs to be a bigger conversation about education. I don’t think 11 is the right age for selection as such, perhaps 13 and the state system moving to closer to the private system of pre-school and KS1 being together, then a middle school system for KS2&3, then KS4&5 being academically selected, with not just grammar for the top 25%, but other options for the bottom 25% as well, the kids who are being set up to fail with the comprehensive system.

KS 5 is already selective across the board. There are no state schools or colleges in our county that offer A levels without a minimum requirement for GCSEs, they are all selective.

We live in a country with a few Grammars and these are extremely highly selective with hundreds of kids taking the exam for a very small number of places.
We aren’t a Grammar county though
My DD is a high flyer (3A* and an A at A level) but she failed the 11+ for the girls school and was a few marks off the cutoff. This is because she was at a disadvantage before she even took the test. I didn’t believe in tutoring so she only did a few practise papers before hand. Unfortunately I think she was one of a few not tutored to pass this exam. She said the questions were easy but she couldn’t do them fast enough. She missed out a whole page.
But she still thrived in her schools.
I say have Grammars, but find a way to allow the naturally clever ones in, not the over tutored.
Our area attracts a lot of families whose culture is all about education and so tutoring for these exams start in year 3/4. All extra curricular stop and the kids concentrate on the eleven plus. My DD had no chance.
And no - I’m not bitter - she’s at a top university studying a very hard subject. Maybe Grammar wasn’t for her

Unfortunately academic selection is one of the only ways to out behavioural problems out of schools
Absolute nonsense.
Why on earth are you conflating academic ability with behaviour?
You get well-behaved and badly-behaved pupils at all levels of academic ability.

If you want to ensure that your child goes to a school with excellent behaviour, you have to go private. Because they have no problem chucking out the bad kids.
The solution is to give the state schools the power to chuck out the bad kids - but the state would then have to fund proper alternative provision.

I reckon a lot of the calls for bringing back grammar schools are from those who can't afford to go private. But as others have said, you risk your nice-but-dim kid ending up in the sink state school if they fail to get in.

(edited for typo)

Do you have an equally well thought out plan for those children who won’t pass? No right thinking person would want to return to the life sentence of the secondary modern.

grammars benefit mostly the wealthy who can tutor and support and drag their kids to the top of the queue. They do not create a meritocracy because they are hijacked by the already advantaged.

Christ alive - Chuck out the bad kids?

children are not bad. Behaviour can be, but the children are not. And there is always always always a reason: disadvantage, poverty, violence at home, absent parents, addiction (child or parent), abuse. They are already dealt a bad blow by life and then you want to chuck them out because they are ‘bad’?

thank god some of you aren’t making the laws in this country.

Wow.

Rare, but I have no words.

"Wasn't that the main thinking behind them originally?"

It was all down to the 1944 Education Act. There was even a booklet printed in 1945 by HMSO entitled 'The Nation's Schools: Their Plan and Purpose' which explained some of the background thinking.

There were grammar schools and very academic schools prior to 1944 though

Following the 1902 Education Act which created county secondary schools it was found that they were following a very academic curriculum, similar to the grammar schools. Around half of pupils attending these schools gained entry through a competitive exam and the other half paid tuition fees.

Prior to the war around 40% of school leavers from these county secondary and grammar schools did not take any exams at all (the School Certificate exam, forerunner of O Levels) and 25% even left before the age of 16.

Even back then, they were saying that there were concerns that not enough talented people were going into industry compared to the professions

"There is a further point, too, that relates directly to the health and welfare of our national life. The education thus provided leads mainly to the clerical and black-coated occupations. It finds little natural outlet on the industrial side. Under the present system, the children who are judged to be the abler and brighter have been transferred to the secondary schools at the age of 11+. Their ability has thus been drawn very largely into professional, clerical and office occupations. Industry on the production and manufacturing side has to that extent been deprived of its reasonable share of the national talent - a loss which a country so highly industrialised as this cannot afford to carry."

There were concerns (probably quite rightly) that an office job was more secure than a factory job and so more pupils were trying to get that sort of job.

But they believed that would change with the introduction of National Insurance and, if anything, there would be less need for grammar schools.

"With the extension of national insurance and a greater feeling of social security, such considerations as these will come to have less weight, and "grammar" school education be less eagerly sought in future in preference to other types which for many children, indeed, a substantial majority of children, are probably far better adapted to their real aptitudes, and more closely related to the world in which they will be living. Having regard to the fact that already the existing schools provide a grammar school education for a considerable number of pupils who clearly cannot derive full benefit from it, it is reasonable to suggest that at present, taking the country as a whole, there is no occasion to extend this type of secondary education."

So it was very much an acknowledgement pupils shouldn't get to go to a grammar type of school unless they could "derive full benefit" from it academically.

.

Beyond that, before 1944 most pupils left school at age 14. There were what were known as 'Central Schools'. These were designed for those who didn't get a place in a grammar or county school. These focussed on technical and commercial skills such as shorthand and bookkeeping.

If a pupil didn't get in to a Central School then they attended a 'Senior School' until they were 14.

.

So, all of that was then transformed into the system afterwards of grammar, secondary modern and technical school.

.

"To give a chance to children who were clever but came from poorer backgrounds so would not, in any other way, be able to access appropriate learning opportunities."

That may have been the aim, but the reality was very different.

There was no real difference in the makeup of what sort of families sent their children to grammar schools before and after the Education Act.

In the 1950s it was observed that many poorer families did not want their children staying at school for an extra year instead of earning money.

It was also believed in the 1950s and 1960s that the then 11+ tended to benefit families with relatively highly educated parents. Not to the extent of tutoring that goes on today but they perhaps were more invested in their children developing those skills needed to pass the 11+, such as the use of language, correct grammar and sentence logic.

I presume this is intended as a joke,?

It’s interesting that a number of posters against the grammar system have put their DC up for the 11+ and the child failed, and only now are they against the grammar system. Interesting. I must have read 4 comments all with the same story.

I completely disagree with you OP, and am able to do so without calling you names. I’m not sure why you think otherwise.

I went to a selective school and my education was no better, and I achieved no better, than my Dc at their well run comprehensive.

Research across the fully selective county of Kent demonstrates that overall their results are no better than a comparable comprehensive county.

We need better funded education. Teachers allowed to teach and use their own talent and experience rather than robotic curriculum delivery.

Yes, education that can be tailored to each ability level and direction of talent, but children don’t need to be segregated into separate buildings or put into one establishment for 5 years with no flexibility.

We live in SE London so some grammar schools were on the table for us to consider. In my own personal experience of this, the 11+ is selective for kids tutored specifically for that exam. My DD did a few months of tutoring before it and did not pass it. I wasn't too bothered as I didn't love most of them we visited.
However she achieved top marks (120 in everything as far as I remember) in her yr 6 SATS and all 8s/9s in her GCSE at our local non selective girls school. Aiming (realistically I think) for medicine after A levels. So the 11+ did not select the academically very brightest and best in my opinion, just the very intensively tutored....ie those with parents who had the £££ to pay for it.

When my dc were at school in Beds it was lower/middle/upper but they are now moving towards primary and secondary. I'm not in favour of that move.

To be honest, the age split with a 3-tier system makes far more sense to me, being ages 4-8, then aged 9-12, finally teenagers 13+. It is a logical split when it comes to child development, isn't it? It is also pretty close to the private system of pre-prep, prep, senior, and private schools must do it like that for a reason.

Some of the upper/secondary schools are truly gigantic, with over 1,500 students, so it is seriously daunting to be expected to walk into that environment when you are only (and in some cases literally only just) 11.

How do you know you achieved no better at a selective school than not?

Personally I came from an extremely deprived area, went to a very selective grammar and I believe it’s the only reason I got 10 GCSEs all A & A* and 4 A levels AAAB and went on to a prestigious uni. I hadn’t even heard of uni until I was about 16 and that was only through school!