Social Mobility

[Medea1]

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/02/grammar-school-improve-social-mobility

From today's Guardian

This research appears to contradict opinion that seems to be regarded as fact by a majority of posters. Perhaps it is a far more complex issue than simply bringing back grammar schools?

link doesn't work!

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/02/grammar-school-improve-social-mobility

Have I got it right now?

The study can be found here

The Guardian article is a bit light and misses the point that Grammar schools do give an advantage to those low income pupils that attend them but this is cancelled out by the disadvantages suffered by those low income children who attended secondary moderns i.e. the selective system when taken as a whole does not encourage social mobility. I think the point they are making in the study you have to look at the selective system as whole when comparing with comprehensive not just at the grammar school element.

Thank you for the link to the original.

The article refers to children born in 1958. So they would have been early pupils at schools, some ex-grammar, that still had a culture of trying to breed excellence. A far cry from some (many?) current bog standard comps. The squeals of anguish from many posters on the March 1st results thread can be heard across the channel.

yes, but for every ex grammar that be came a comp, there was also an ex secondary modern that became a comp so wouldn't that cancel out the effect? Actually I attended a comp which had been a secondary modern until 2 years before I began. There was a mix of teachers - some from the old grammar and some of the old secondary mod teachers were moved to the ex grammar. We were streamed however, rather than set.

There was excellence in some secondary moderns you know, aimed in possibly a different direction, but still excellence. But over the years, that ethos died in many places. For all sorts of reasons.

I agree that secondary moderns could be centres of excellence. Two of our most exceptional teachers,(Welsh, Latin and Drama) were sec mod teachers. I still remember the retirement speech of the deputy head and the moment he raised his cane (which had been pretty well used during a long career) and snapped it over his head. Many of the youngsters most familiar with it gave the loudest applause and had the most tearful faces! Not sure if that was just romantic sentiment, but it happened. Surely the change then is due to changes in society rather than the fault of the system?

Actually the school still functions rather successfully as a comprehensive and is not bog standard (not much in the way of decent competition from the private sector in Wales), though our 70 acre, fully operational school farm was auctioned off quite a few years ago.