Middle-class parents would be unable to guarantee their children places at the best state schools by buying houses nearby

[mrz]

Middle-class parents would be unable to guarantee their children places at the best state schools by buying houses nearby

What about children with Special Educational Needs? Let us hope that the new Government re-opens Specialist Schools or builds New Special Schools.

And I suppose children are going to be travelling all over the place to get to school, adding to road congestion, pollution and wearing everyone out unnecessarily and totally unproductively in the process?

Long overdue imo

So... they divide the children into ability bands, and admit equal numbers from each one?

Seems fair, but how do they select within the band? Lottery? If they're doing that, then they might as well just do a lottery in the first place without the banding, they'd get approximately the same result

And Nick Seaton ("..attacked fair banding as an unfair policy that denied places to the brightest") needs to take a crash course in statistics. He was probably busy learning Latin instead at school...

Testing for 10 year olds that will determine what school they go to - nice.

Still might as well fuck them over to punish evil middle class parents who have the temerity to care about their children's educations.

When can we start flogging these people?

If you're not rich enough to buy a private education you should just take what you're given, you greedy bastard.

And working class people don't give a fuck then ?....because they can't afford to move ..been fucked over for years

But skidoodly - it's really weird, cause it doesn't actually matter how well you do in the exam as far as I can see. There's no point in trying to do well, or indeed in trying to do badly.

Who said anything about working class people not giving a fuck?

Perhaps your lack of logical reasoning is a result of a poor English state education, but it is something I would seek to address if I were you.

Working class people have indeed been fucked over educationally for years, but not by their slightly better off neighbours.

Punishing children by making them take this kind of test at that age to combat the mythical "sharp-elbowed middle classes" so loathed of the Eton educated Prime Minister is cruel.

The English really need to stop using education as an ideological battlefield and start educating your children properly.

Yes, TheHeath you're right, it's weird as well as nasty.

I bow down to your superior knowledge and education skidoodly

Isn't this a bit like the 11 plus?

I am not sure I agree TBH - we live in Edinburgh and the local high school is OKish (new Headmaster who is supposed to be good) and I am not sure I would be keen on my DCs commuting over town. It just adds an extra couple of hours to the day.

I think the best idea (which the unions will hate) is for teachers who work in crappy schools to be paid substantially more.

Just because the local parents are middle class or better off doesn't mean their kids are brighter than those from the nearest council estate and/or would be in the highest academic band. Some people pay a premium to be near a school simply for that reason - they are near enough for kids to walk and not have to travel across town.

I have a radical idea for Mr Gove. Why not try to ensure that all schools are equally good, rather than move the middle class children around in the hope that those parents will do the schools' work for them?

It is getting a bit tiresome the assumption that middle class parents having nothing better to do than raise the standards of crap schools.

I agree with skidoodle, and we are working poor.

I think I can guess (Freakonomics-style) what the point of the exam is, instead of an out-and-out lottery. It's all about the perceived value of the school, isn't it...

If you have to Take The Exam to go to school X (even if the result is irrelevant), but school Y allocates by lottery, then school X must be better, right? So X gets better quality applicants (even after enforcing the banding) and its results go up. Everyone's a winner.

Except school Y.
And of course the kids who actually do the exam and get told, "you didn't get into school X, but don't worry, it's not your fault".
And the parents who have to transport the kids miles across town.
But apart from that...

This isn't going to really effect me as there isn't a huge queue of children trying to get into my catchment high school but I would like my DCs to go onto high school with friends they have made at primary school. I don't want them to be used as a guinea pig for yet more idiologically driven tinkering within the education system.

I hate this idea on environmental grounds as it's bound to mean an increase in children with long or complex journeys to school.

But I have heard of it before. Are there any areas which have used it? And what evidence is there to support (or refute) the intended outcome?

The thing is, even with this system if the school is oversubscribed there will be endless arguments about how to choose the children from each band (as theheathenofsuburbia said above).

There is absurd doublethink about middle classes and education from policymakers and newspapers. On one hand, middle class parents are vile and pushy and financially advantaged -their values are to be despised. On the other hand, middle class children ought to be in schools with poor children as the more middle class a school is, the better the results appear to be. All this is pretty objectionable and insulting to all concerned.

Given that we're in an imperfect system the only answer seems to me to be to draw lines on maps - all children within the boundary go to the school. Then ensure that each school has a great head, enough money, and competent motivated teachers. Don't keep tinkering with the curriculum for political reasons. Allow teachers to get on with their jobs with as much autonomy as possible (they are professionally trained graduates for a reason). Enable those kids are aren't super academic to take vocational skills based courses. Those things might go some way to fixing this mess.

Does it work, StewieGriffinsMom?

I thought Brighton had a straight lottery, not a banding system?

Has it been going long enough to show any differences in outcomes?

This is all meaningless unless they abolish private schools which is never, ever going to happen.