If you could afford to send your kids to a private school, would you?

[juicychops]

or would you choose for them to go to a 'normal' state school?

just curious what your responses will be

'Why is it so heinous to select for academic ability?'

Oh, come on! Surely you know that those pupils selected for 'academic ability' also tend to be amongst the most privileged in society. Just look at the proportion of free school meals in grammar schools and other selective schools.

Selecting into grammar schools if widening the gulf between the already privileged and the rest. And by selecting the top 20% you are deselecting 80%. How would you feel if your own child missed out by a mark?

There's no need for it. Schools can set/stream if they deem it necessary, they can and do allow different choices of subjects including vocational courses.

I do perceive selection for athletic or musical ability appalling as well. Time after time research tells us that any form of selection gives further advantage to those who are already privileged and successful.

I would have so much more respect for people who are in favour of grammar schools if they just said look, I've got a clever kid and want the best education for him or her rather than this patronising and fatuous bollocks about grammar schools being equally beneficial for those kids who DON'T get into them.

No-you take all DC and you teach them differently in the same school-one size doesn't fit all. You just don't choose them at the ridiculous early age of 11 yrs old.
My secondary moderns didn't treat everyone the same-there were those at the bottom who could barely read and they stayed in the same class with the same teacher for most subjects. There were those of us at the top who got the academic side.
Within a good comprehensive DCs are set for subjects-they do not have mixed ability. The sad thing is that they all have to do the same exam and we should value the the technical and practical.
I'm sorry but I don't agree with the right to leave at 16yrs-if they won the space at 11 they stole it from someone who could have made better use of it.They could easily have taken the exams they needed at 16yrs in a secondary modern (we did actually do O'levels and get good results-good enough to get into the 6th form and university) .

Why is it so heinous to select for academic ability? Many schools select for athletic ability, musical ability, artistic ability etc. This isn't perceived as being such a crime

Because they were 11 yrs old-many are late developers and it is a terrible system. Great for a crude separation between the top and the bottom but right in the middle a line is drawn between DCs of equal ability. A good example is a friend of mine who is a twin-she got the grammar school place and her twin sister didn't-there is nothing between them academically.

Being thrown on the scrap heap at 11 yrs old isn't a nice feeling-(and I can assure you that I felt that I was thrown on the scrap heap). Luckily my parents and the school didn't take that view -but the general perception was that I wasn't as intelligent as those that passed, which was rubbish! When I finally got to the grammar school I did very well and it wasn't a struggle.
It was a system that failed many-and I am resentful of those who 'chose what to do with their grammar school place' i.e. leave before they got the full benefit-they could have let someone have it who would have made full use of it.

If everyone is in the same school they can be taught differently and they can change direction at any point. The don't get put in a top set at 11yrs and stay there whatever. People may have changed at different stages to go to the grammar from secondary modern but I never heard of anyone doing it the other way around.
I think that the comprehensive system is wonderful-the only fault is that it tries to make all DCs academic when they are not.

Sorry-I was replying to LeQueen-things moved on!

I wonder what those grammar school fans would say if NHS ospitals were suddenly allowed to select only the most healthy 20% of patients and then crow about how their mortality rates were so much better than the hospital down the road.

Appalling thought isn't it? Goes against all ethics and all our instincts about what is right and wrong.

And yet this is allowed in education.

People are also only for grammar schools if they think that their DC will get a place!
They then roll out the old chestnut of it being great for the DC from a disadvantaged background-hypocritical in the extreme-knowing they would get a tutor to drill their DC to get that place! Not one would say 'that bright DC from the poor background is obviously more intelligent but has no parental backup-they must have my DCs place because they only got it with intense tutoring from yr 3'!
I also fail to see why the bright DC needs a step up and why the rest have to 'know their place'-(and stay there)!

Quite!

Every DC deserves the best-be it academic or not and I see no reason why they need to be separated to get it. If it is the same building with the same uniform nothing is set in stone. My father suddenly pulled up his socks aged 15yrs-he didn't do much before, but 15yrs onwards he was very, very successful. Boys especially tend to be a bit like that.

I am just appalled that at 11yr old you can decide that one DC is academic and gets the best- and has to be separated out from all those who it has been decided are not academic, especially if 80 out of 100 means you are academic and 79 out of 100 means that you are not!( and in the next town 75 out of 100 would get you the place, but 74 out of 100 wouldn't). Madness.

"Time after time research tells us that any form of selection gives further advantage to those who are already privileged and successful."

I entirely agree with this - it is well documented that selection helps those that are already ahead get further ahead.

But surely that is a good thing, providing we are all clued up about it? What every human being needs to do is to work out his/her strengths and play to them.

Of course it is a good thing, but they can do it within the same school and then they have the chance to get ahead at any age-their fate hasn't been decided at 11yrs old. Lots of people work out their strengths after the age of 11yrs.

Some DCs are just odd-they don't fit in boxes. My DS was in the lower maths group all through junior school. He was 2nd in the class in a maths exam and the school still wanted him in the lower group-and I agreed. He wasn't good at new concepts because he didn't like making mistakes. On the strength of that he was put into the 3rd maths group at secondary school. He was put up to 2nd after a few months and then we got to the fact that he was top of 2nd group (by quite a long way) but they wanted to keep him there-for the same reason as the junior school. Eventually they were forced to put him into the top group because not only was he top of the second group-he was out performing many of the top group. He got top grades in public exams. He did it when he was ready-he wasn't ready at 11yrs and yet with the 11+ he would either have been stuck with not having anywhere to progress up to or he would have passed and had to cope before he was ready.

A good comprehensive is just like a two tier system, they just happen to be in the same building with the same uniform and they can move up and down as they need or when they are ready.

I know DCs who have been drilled tutored for grammar school and then once there they have had to have remedial maths and english to get them up to standard. If they need this they shouldn't have been there-they stole the place from someone who wasn't over prepared for the place.
I wouldn't mind if it as a level playing field and they had an test which no one could prepare for-but they can't and pushy parents play the system (and win).

Luckily there are lots and lots of places where there are no grammar schools at all and they will not come back. No one ever says 'I want a return of secondary moderns-I want my DC to go to a school where all the talent has been creamed off'-and yet that is what it means. They mean 'I want the return of a grammar school and I want my DC to have an elite education'.

We all want the best for our DCs. That isn't necessarily an academic education but those with a technical or practical bias want the best too and there is no reason why they can't get it in the same building.

My DS2 isn't academic-didn't go to university-and yet is doing very well indeed, I am very proud of him and I think that ultimately he will do better in life than his brothers, who did/do go. He has plenty of drive and ambition. He also has, as friends ,the more academic type who are at university. His girl friend is at a Russell group university doing a science subject-why should they have been at different schools?

"I wouldn't mind if it as a level playing field and they had an test which no one could prepare for-but they can't and pushy parents play the system (and win)."

It is conceptually impossible to design a test which no-one can prepare for and pushy parents and pushy people make the world move forward. I actually think the better message is the one that gets more parents to push, rather than to punish those parents that do push in the name of lowest common denominators level playing fields.

If the secondary moderns were just as good, and it wasn't a matter of pass/fail, and all children were catered for within that system, lequeen, then surely it would work just as well to have an 11+ exam which tests practical/vocational abilities, and the 10% who passed that would go to the elite schools with the better facilities, while the other 90% would go to the other schools - where they wouldn't be made to do all the technical stuff of which they aren't capable, just academic subjects - which we all know society doesn't value any more than practical ones?

But no - you take the 11+ and you pass it or you fail it, which is why we all know that it is a system that's great for the minority who go to grammar, and crap for the rest.

I do think the 'kids' snobbery on here is very funny!

Who was the 11.14 post to, lequeen? I'm not sure I've seen anyone suggest that?

In terms of what I did suggest though, what do you think about setting an exam at 11 which creams off those who have technical or practical talent, while the rest are deemed to have failed the exam?

In large comps they offer lots of courses not just GCSE/ A levels. The ones that don't want/can't do maths, french english choose a practical subject. There is nowt wrong with being a hairdresser or machanic etc.. I do have a problem with lots of boys wanting to 'do sport' because most are taking the easy option and I think it often leads nowhere. The lads I know who did sport at college without the maths and science to back it up are the ones who can't find work.

Even people who really struggled to get a C in english can and do pass A levels in physics etc. My DS2 could hardly read at 11 but he got more than 5 a-cs and 2 A levels and 1 AS. He would have left a sec mod with nothing.

DC should mix with all comers at school just like they have to out of school

I think it was setting, and movement between sets where needed, which was being suggested - not streaming.

They're quite different!

?
Streaming is Putting DC in A B C D E etc because some are clever than others. So you can be crap at maths and still in A form.

Setting is done on a subject by subject basis. So someone who doesn't read well can still do maths GCSE early.

That's what is done in a comprehensive school.

Very few schools stream - most set, although your 'humanities set' might be the same for a few subjects.

That's what is done in a comprehensive school.

Not all, unfortunately - I was talking to someone this weekend who'd taken their son out of state school because they streamed rather than setting - he was good at maths, poor at english so was bunged in a stream which was too low for the former and too high for the latter. It was a faith school but presumably should have had more or less comp intake and therefore methods

Bonsoir - for 'pushy' I take it you mean well-off enough to afford either private primary education, additional tutoring (or both(, and also find it ethically acceptable to pay for this to the detriment of equally able but less wealthy children?

Maybe she should have checked that out before sending him to the faith school Grimma. Mine went to a CofE primary but there are no local church secondaries. There is an RC comprehensive in a nearby town and DC bus in from miles around it does have a good reputation.