Will free schools drive up standards? Read Toby Young's guest post and join the conversation

[ElenMumsnetBloggers]

Are free schools ready to fall or fly? Do they really drive up standards or are they a snobbish gimmick? And should more parents be setting up their own schools? Journalist and producer Toby Young explains why he set up the West London Free School and what makes the free school proposition an exciting one. Join the conversation that Toby's begun and have your say on free schools.

And this

'In 2005, a report from the LSE claimed that British society had become less equal since the late 1950s. The researchers looked at two cohorts of boys, born in 1958 and 1970 respectively, and claimed that social mobility was more limited for those born in 1970 than for those born in 1958, in marked contrast to Germany, Canada and Scandinavia, where mobility across all income groups had increased.

Many commentators blamed this on the abolition of grammars. Nick Cohen wrote ?long live grammar schools? in The Observer, while Tim Luckhurst in The Times argued that ?only a blend of ideological zeal and intellectual dishonesty? could now defend the comprehensive system.

The report suggested that a key issue in social mobility was the decision whether to stay on at school or not at 16. So the crucial dates were not the years the past pupils were born but when they received their secondary education and when they decided to stay on after the fifth form. For the 1958 cohort, the year they turned 16 was 1974.

By then, more than 70 per cent of pupils were in comprehensive schools. The neat assumption that those born in 1958 would be educated within a selective system and those born in 1970 a comprehensive one is simply wrong. Both groups were highly likely to have attended comprehensives.

Those who use the report to attack comprehensive education also ignore the fact that the countries said to have the greatest social mobility, the Scandinavian nations and Canada, are all fully comprehensive.'

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6028593

Yes but that is 1950s data and I think you should also count middle class as well as worling class, because they aren't really privileged either.

I will have to study that one tomorrow.

But interesting to see that Nick Cohen wrote 'Long Live Grammar Schools'
I will have to browse for that.

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/jul/31/schools.grammarschools

claig, do you think that more parents in nice middle class leafy suburbs hire tutors for their offspring, or parents in deprived inner-city areas?

You can't necessarily tell the quality of the teachers by the results of the school.

A lot of primary schools in 11-plus areas get fantastic looking KS2 results. Is it because they have great teachers or is it because the kids are tutored-up to pass the 11-plus?

Yes teh kids are tutored. It is not a fair system. Those with money have a huge advantage.

It might be made fairer if we created more similar schools with more places.

Why do you think that a grammar school can offer a bright student a better education than a decent comp?

Anyway, we can't right all of the country's problems. Good night and see you tomorrow.

I think I've gone as far as I can with this one. Claig, you continue to wilfully argue that there would be benefits (for disadvantaged kids) in increasing the amount of selection in our education system in spite of the evidence that when selection goes up the amount of disadvantaged kids go down. You see grammar schools of the past as a golden age in spite of the woeful stats above. You do not seem to understand the link between poverty and educational underachievement not recognizing that any form of academic selection would effectveiyl exclude poor kids. Most astoundingly you cannot seem to understand that if you select those kids who perform most highyl in exams at age 11 (or age 3 or 7) and educate them (in small classes in private schools) they are (shock) almost certainyl going to perform extreemly well in exams at aged 16 and 18 as well (with or without good teachers). You fail to address the needs or aspirations of any children who would not get through whatever barriers you would impose into your ideal schools effectively writing them off even though these are the children who are almost certainly the most needy and vulnerabel with the fewest opportunities in our society.

Yes, you make some good points there. I will have to ponder this further and may have to revise some of my views.

But now, definitely good night.

Has a truly comprehensive system ever worked though anywhere in the world? Generally very good state comprehensive schools in the UK become selective by catchment, in my limited experience of the region I live in. (Not London).

It is very difficult to motivate some children to learn and there is an inevitable component of disruption where children are disengaged. But how do we get to engage these children? Is streaming enough? And isn't streaming a bit like selective education? What's the difference?

A grammar system catered for those children whose parents valued their education but were not priviledged enough to afford private schools, this has now changed and due to so few grammars being around only parents with money can afford the intensive tuition that goes with accessing grammars.

I don't believe this would be the case if there were as many grammar schools as there were comprehensive schools, as it used to be the case. My DH and his brother both went to grammar schools with zero tuition, with parents that had no interest in education whatsoever.

I understand that quite a lot nad perhaps most comprehensive schools set. So it might well be the case that many many schools in the UK either have selection at the point of entry - state grammars, selective privates etc or else when the children rae in they accept clever children work best with other clever children and those who aren't work best with others of their same kind of level. Am I right then that virtually alls tate schools have selective classes?

If that is so surely the reason the selective private and state schools seem to add more value is because they have taken that a stage further and ensured the bright are educated with the bright.

If grammar schools ensured more social mobility and a route to change class and do better that the comps don't manage as well but the comps are fairer do we therefore damage the prospects of the bright poor at comps by ensuring there is no grammar school escape route because that is fairer or not?

I think it's a bit of a myth that you damage the prospects of bright children sending them to all ability schools, just as it's a myth that the word 'comprehensive' means 'everyone of every ability taught together all the time'. What a comprehensive school usually does is have different types of education going on under the same roof at the same time, with pupils able to group and regroup throughout their school careers depending on where their talents and abilities lie, and how they are progressing. So on paper, this means it is easy for pupils to be in a high set for mathematics and also be skilled at design technology and spend lots of time in the resistant materials room, for example. In reality you get clusters of like minded children in comprehensive schools who largely tend to be in similar sets for things and socialise in these groups as well. However it isn't quite as fixed a model as the old tripartite (or more usually bipartite) system, and for that reason you see more social ability overall, with many more children sitting public examinations and going on to post-16 education than under previous systems.

That having been said, it is advantageous if bright sixth formers mix with other bright sixth formers at A Level, and they tend to have an edge if doing that. You would not want to be the only really bright person in a small school sixth form, for example. That does affect outcomes.

In a comp that has setting, kids who are good at each subject are set with the kids who are good at that subject
so good at languages, bad at maths, get to excel in set 1 at languages, pootle along in set 3 at maths
sets are checked and shuffled every term so that late developers get to rise up the sets if needs be

with streaming, the languages will be pulled down by the maths or vice versa

with selective school, the child will either never get the change to excel
or will permanently struggle in their weaker subject

a comp with setting is therefore the best opportunity for every child to excel in every subject, regardless of background, finance other factors not related to innate intelligence

at my kids school the children socialise by a mix of factors but academic compatibility is the major one by year 9

the 6th form colleges that it feeds into are varied but between them get a bus load (literally for the interviews) of students into Oxbridge each year.

At a comprehensive which is doing it right, you can change between sets and be in different sets for different things. And even if you're in the top set for everything and there's not much mobility between sets, at least you're not in a different building with different facilities, different status, different ideals and a different ethos.

That said, my daughter is in a mixed ability French GCSE class in which, in the last assessment, there were marks of everything from U to A. So if you can get an A in that environment, surely this suggests you don't have to live a life where you never even see a less intelligent/motivated child in order to do well?

I bet it's lovely to be a teacher who only encounters bright and motivated children - but it doesn't necessarily make you a better teacher, and neither is it necessarily the best thing all round for those children.

If it was that simple though don't you think that people would not be moving mountains to avoid the local sink school? The people that tried their children at their local sink schools removed them after one term.

They report a general lack of expectation across the board, and the top set not being that motivated or well taught. I guess in a comprehensive that achieves very low results (I think ours is 34% A-C) with a very low percentage at A, (I think it is 8%), then the top set is going to be quite a wide range of A-C type children isn't it?

(TP selective schools set too for many subjects My daughter was bottom of 5 sets in a very selective day school of maths (and got A in GCSE)).

The main difference will be everyone in the school will have an IQ of 120 or whatever so the whole ethos of the place is fast and good and excel in all types of subjects. It becomes a bit like an Oxbridge where you meet other very bright people. Most of us don't want dinner with people with a low IQ as the conversation is so dull so why would we want to be educated with them?

Believe me, Xenia, endless dinners with people of IQs of 140 plus can be even more tedious. I do this frequently. High Table can be particularly draining.

I often have lunch with the maintenance people and porters in college, as they are a good laugh and brighter than I imagine you would expect.

onceinawhile
my local school is exactly that sort of a sink - and my kids are not at it
the results are such that the school does not publicise them until the day after the league tables come out
BUT
it is a sink because of "parental choice"
there are 100 children PER academic year who live in the catchment and go to other schools
so their results are inflated and the local school's are deflated
house prices jump by 10% as you cross the catchment boundary (identical houses)
IF children automatically went to their local school, yes there would still be differences but those would be a LOT less extreme than they are at present.

xenia
LOTS of people are willing to go to dinner with thick people. Footballers and Royals spring to mind.

Portesr can be very very clever. I don't mindi f someone is a porter or a professor but if they are slow then it's no good. I spoke to two people this week, one very very slow, taking 5 times as long as I do to process information . It was intolerable and someone else very bright. It is a massive difference.

I would not want a dinner with a thick footballer or royal. I turn down dinners all the time (although I'm not suggesting I am often with royalty. I went to Buckingham Palace once but that's it). Some footballers could be clever.

I am not materialist and don't feel impressed by being with people with money. As my daughters would say it's all about the "chat" - do they have good chat. If they are very slow I am not interested.

Now if I had a very slow child I'd pick a good private school which adds lots of value and hope to bring them on. I might even want them in a class with very bright children as it might well help them though not vice versa

It's the same issue as boys and girls. Some boys can do better in classes with girls but girls don't.

xenia
isn't it lucky you are not involved in business management because if you find thick people intolerable you'd be CRAP at it.

xenia - slow processing doesn't equal low intelligence.
I'm surprised that you don't know seeing as you are so clever.

I am just saying who I like to have conversations with. It's an important point for young people in picking careers too. Do you want to be managing 1000 thickos or do you want to work with very clever bright interesting people.

Anyway we got slightly off the point. Selective schools are great and comps don't seem to be working at improving social mobility either up or down.