The other thread will no longer accept messages but I wanted to make some more points

[fivecandles]

Lequeen, I do find it utterly bizarre that, as a parent, you or anybody else, would accept that if your child missed getting into a grammar school by a couple of marks you would be perfectly happy to accept that meant your child was not academic and therefore should pursue a more vocational route whatever that means.

One of my dc would almost certainly fail to get into a GS. This does not mean I think she should take up a hairdressing course and stop learning GCSEs. I see no good reason why she shouldn't get a good academic education with as much support as possible and go on to university. She has suggested she might enjoy primary teaching and I think she'd make an excellent teacher. The idea that she shouldn't be able to go to university or learn languages and should settle with her lot just because she's not ever going to be a nuclear physicist is absolutely staggering.

I also find your idea that it would be better to segregate underperforming students into an entirely different school for their self-esteem staggering.

Why can't you just be honest about it lequeen. There are no advantages whatsoever for the majority of pupils who do not get into the GS. All the advantages go to the kids who DO get in and these are the pupils who are already doing well (and the research indicates most likely to be well off).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that privileged and clever kids don't deserve the very best education and I absolutely agree that they should be challenged and supported but this can and should and is being done in the same school as students who are struggling academically and are likely to be from very different social backgrounds are also supported to achieve.

Who are you to judge whether a degree is meaningless?

Students make an informed choice about whether to go to university and which couses to study. If THEY think it is worth the money then it IS worth it.

And we're back to this idea that only a privileged elite deserve a decent education while the rest can be hairdressers or car mechanics at aged 16 (assuming there are jobs for them) and like it.

lequeen, if you think the students who don't get into GS should be allowed to do the same courses it does reinforce the question why argue for separate schools then?

And once again I wish you'd just nail your colours to the mast. It's simply that you want your own children to be separated from the riff raff don't you?

LeQueen, I do think that the current state of university education is possibly beyond the scope of the current discussion!

Now you have 'reframed' your proposal as a GS sysem with a secondary modern that also offers academic subjects - why not just put them on the same site and call them a comprehensive? Saves an awful lot of duplication - those fantastic history teachers and languages teachers for whom there might not be a full-time job in a secondary modern can teach 'bottom set grammar'; and 'top set secondary modern' children under the same roof, it allows for mobility between sets as children develop and they offer vocational courses too.....

teacher, we cross posted. You've just expressed my views exactly.

teacher is right, that's a subject for a different thread.

LeQueen, I do think that you are trying to divert the discussion.

The point is, as I am sure you have realised is not whether SOME children from a secondary modern (the 'other' school in a grammar system) take A levels and go to university. It is whether exactly as many children do so, and get as good grades, as would have done so had all those children been in a true comprehensive mixed with the children who went to grammar school.

I think there are many such schools lequeen. However, I think there would be considerably more if there were a genuinely comprehensive system i.e no grammar schools or faith schools.

I think the idea of one school, multiple sets is great. What I think is needed more is better funding and fewer pupils per class.

And my question is whether (as you believe) that those children disrupt the education of the top / middle sets or whether, in fact, they mainly disrupt their own education...

And whether the best solution to some bad behaviour by some children in some schools is to offer a sub-optimal education in the form of a 2-tier system to a vast number of children in all schools...

It was me that said that, lequeen, and I was talking about those pupils who did not get into grammar school and consequently did not get the same chances to get the qualifications and opportunities that the GS got.

That was fivecandles, LQ

Again, you're not being quite honest about your motives lequeen. You basically want to segregate students such that bright, well supported middle class kids do not have to mix with the riffraff.

Please admit that there could be no benefits of such a system to those children who do not get into the grammar schools.

It is interesting, LeQ:

You have taught only in secondary moderns, and you say that they are poor.

So you want to force this system on more of the country by having grammar / secondary modern systems everywhere.

And if your own child gets into a secondary modern, you will send her private.

Hmm. Go and visit some proper comprehensives, is all that i can say.

And the children that don't get in will always be the majority and the minority who get into the GS will always be those kids who are by definition already doing well (most of whom will be socially privileged too).

Really? Do the children in top / bottom sets REALLY mix like that in real life? Sufficient to disrupt the work of the more able even when inside their classrooms? Are you sure?? CONSTANTLY mixing?

Is it really so harmful for the able to walk along the corridors with the less able, on the way to classrooms where they are taught with appropriate differentiation? Does the poisonous atmosphere of the educationally disengaged permeate through every classroom even when full of a set of able children who want to learn??

Your perception doesn't match with the reality lq. Exam results have never been better. As you have pointed out 40% of pupils are getting to university. This is not a system where huge swathes of children are failing to do well at school (which is not to trivialise the ones who are).

I also think there is not much likelihood of disuption in the top sets of genuinely comprehsnive schools and in fact htere hasn't been any in the top sets of the not very genuinely comprehsnive schools in which I've taught.

I find it quite troubling that rather than offer any suggestions or even apparent desire to sort out the disruption or the problems students are having such that they cause disruption and are underachieving, you'd rather just bin them all off to a separate school where they won't bother your own dc!!