'new' grammar schools in kent...

[oliverreed]

well, not technically. The local authority have been given the go-ahead for two (I think) annexe grammar schools in Sevenoaks. Gove is surely rubbing his hands with glee. I agree with the decision as pressure on places in this area is causing a lot of heartache for many families whose children are travelling a long way, but is it paving the way for the creation of new grammar schools.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts?

breadandbutterflyfsm is always used as the key indicator, even by the great Gove with his pupil premium, I believe

FWIW I went to a GS in 1973. In my class of 30, there was one girl who came from a private school. The same school's intake is now 40% private prepped..... the city concerned is festooned with private primaries whose number one selling point is getting Jocasta and Horatio through the 11+ so mummy and daddy can continue to holiday in the Maldives, not fork out on private school fees.

Try telling the "right" of Kent, or Buckinghamshire, or Wirral, that you're taking their grammar schools away. You'll do well to escape with your life, I expect.
The exception to the rule is of course NI; I note in my own profession how many outstanding examples come from very modest backgrounds in Norn Iron. You don;t see anything like the same representation of the English working-classes.

Reactionary try telling the ones that fail the 11+ that you're not taking their sink sec mods away; you'll get a different reaction then! (see above re Birmingham)

I think one of the big differences is that in northern ireland grammars were never abolished and people there have now seen what had happened in the rest of the uk and realised they don't want to go down that root. Sein fein tried to get them abolished but were met with huge opposition- even the catholic church spoke out against them. Of course sein fein had some valid points however when the women calling for them to be abolished was spending 40 k sending her own children to a private school it was a bit of a non starter.

I once went out with a lad who'd gone to a Catholic grammar school in Belfast. His father was a milkman. The boy went on to go to Cambridge and then to become a doctor. Sadly his mother died before he qualified, which he always regretted.

breadandbutterfly
what makes you think that FSM equals not working????
FSM applies to all families receiving working family tax credit - ie those earning up to the grand sum total of around £20,000 per household -
ie around 40% of the population
hence the fact that nearly 30% of families in Hampshire (with an unemployment rate of well under 10%) are eligible

scarlett
what are the outcomes for the top kids in the non grammar schools who have missed out?

bjf1
the would not be changing school, they would just be changing streams within a multi campus federated school
and in many cases the distances between schools are not much more than those across the campus of big rural secondaries

I only have a couple of friends who went to secondaries I am still in touch with, but of those one is in IFA and very well off, another has just completed an MBA and works for a charity doing performance management- he got a first at uni, another is a contracts manager for a big construction company, and my brothers girlfriend is an HR officer who also went to uni. I have another friend who is a district nurse and another a surveyer. All of these people come from working class families. I am sure if you asked anyone from NI if they know people who did well at a secondary they could list several.

I should add that there are still lots of kids who don't do well but there are still areas of belfast for example with really high levels of social deprivation and with a strong paramilitary presence.

scarlett
I guess the real point is that if grammars were EVERYWHERE and the top 33% got in regardless of tutoring (as it was in our parents generation in the UK) then it might be better
BUT
Northern Ireland has a very very low level of churn relative to mainland UK
which makes the whole selective thing a bit of a nightmare
there are primary schools in London where not a single year R child is still there in year 6
and even in selective schools, churn runs at around 10% a year
NOT what the tri partite system was designed for
but disrupted kids are likkly to do much better in comps where they can rise or fall to the level of their innate ability - especially those learning English as they go

I don't think anyone is saying that not having a grammar school education will ultimately lead to children not becoming successful adults in later life.
But I really don't get the almost sneering contempt aimed at parents who just want the best opportunities for their DCs. If that involves sending them to a grammar school, so what? It does not automatically make them middle class snobs.

I would be far more comfortable with the concept of the separate, selective school if

a) the entrance exam was completely untutorable for
b) the head teachers of the primaries were able to make recommendations so DC who did badly on 'the day' didn't have their futures effectively written off (see below, re this!)
c) there was movement between schools at different educational points (late developers, DC unable to stand the pace of a GS)
d) and this is the biggie:
i) there were properly funded alternatives to the GS like technical and vocational colleges
ii) the British public could grow up and, like the Germans, recognise the value of engineering and tech. rather than just 'Latin'n'Classics'. This will never happen as we are wedded to the idea of high academic achievement being the be-all and end-all. This is why the third 'option', the Technical School never took off as we sneer at those who work with their hands.

In reality, I don't want to see the return of The GS as such. I consider them to be socially divisive and breed contempt and snobbery, not least in the parents. Bear in mind I am ex-GS but from a time before the GS became the natural haunt of the sharp elbowed MC. Yet we were more or less taught that we were 'superior' to the 11+ 'failures'. Yes, we may all want 'the best opportunities' for our own DC but I don't see that that desire should allow us to ride rough-shod over everyone else. Secondary Modern, anyone?

That is just wrong.

talkinpeace - are your facts up to date? i got the fsm from other threads n this website, with people who are on law wages saying they didn't get them - they ought to know.

Agree with your a-d, liiten tree.

Not with your second para - no-one at my GS ever thought we were superior to anyone at other schools. N idea where you get that from - don't project your snobbery onto the system please as you are not typical!

Kitten tree, in Kent about 4% of chdn go through on head teachers appeal, effectively your point b.

Have to say at the Quaker grammar I went to we certainly weren't taught to think we were better than the kids that went to the local secondaries, although there was lots of competition with the neighbouring grammar school. The secondaries just weren't really thought about until pupils from them joined in sixth year. There was an element of snobbishness however with regards to sport- football wasn't allowed for the boys as part of games, however on the other side of the coin the secondaries didn't field a rugby team.

@litten The right HATE grammar schools because they do not entrench privilege. Far more grammar schools were converted to comprehensives by Tories than by labour. And why? Because the Tories and their voters didn't like seeing bright working class kids taking the places they felt belonged to their kids by right. So they abolished selection by ability in favour of selection by the depth of the parents' pockets. That is what catchment area 'comps' are all about now.

B+B EAL encompasses a vast range of different ethnicities, many with very different attitudes to education.

FSM eligibility is generally considered an objective measure of deprivation- it is used by all schools, education authorities and by central government in it's calculations and policy formulation. You qualify for FSM if you have a household income of about 17,000pa. in th school population at large about 17% oc children qualify- in grammar schools the number is nearer 2%. This is obviously an issue- particularly if the grammar schools ar supposed to be a driver of social mobility. This is ab objective measure. Th are loads of anecdotes on this thread about people rising from humble beginnings via the grammar schools. But they tend to be from a while ago, when the 11+ was q very diffeent animal. And I would be interested in digging downnintonquite how humble those beginnings were! I have tried to avoid anecdote, because I don't think it's very helpful. But I can tell you that I have been closely involved with a large primary school on the edge of an area of significant social deprivation for 9 years now, and in all that time I can't remember a child who wasn't from at least a white collar, if not a professional home passing the 11+. And I refuse to believe that those children are brighter than the other children in the top sets in year 6. We get plenty of level 5s- our top sets are pretty socially diverse. But the 11+ cohort is relentlessly educated middle class.

why do you think it is seeker? I've read that if you take the fsm percentage of the top 25% of the cohort it's considerably lower than 17%. Still not as low as 2%, but much closer. To me that says low income families are either less intelligent innately (on average), which, like you I prefer not to believe (at least I don't think it's anywhere near such a big effect if it is there at all) or else (and more likely to be the main reason imo) they are already failed by their background & education (at home &/or school) by age 10 that they have fallen behind too far to make the grammar cut off.

I think we need to be looking way earlier than year 6 to address this issue which is there whatever school system post 11 is in place.

Why do I think it is?

Because in Kent the 11+ is not a test of innate intelligence, whatever that is, but is a test which requires teachable/learnable stuff. The verbal reasoning test requires an incredibly wide vocabulary- I remember one question which you cound only answer if you knew that the word "sage" has three possible meanings. And the Maths includes things which are not taught until year 6. The test is taken in the second week of the new school year- which is tough on all of them, but tougher on those that have not spent the summer surrounded by books and conversation, or whose parents don't understand about taking tests. I think that'll do for starters!

I agree with all that seeker, and I'm no fan of 11+ test in any of its guises as I don't think it is ever all that accurate and I don't like the pass/fail aspect, but to test on things that haven't been taught yet is crazy. However in areas without a test it's the middle class kids that fill the best comps, the top sets at more average comps and the faith schools and the social divisions are still there.

Yes- but they are not set in stone. There is the possibility of moving sets. There is the possibility of being a late developer. And crucially you have not been told categorically at the age of 10 that the top sets are not for you.

B+B EAL encompasses a vast range of different ethnicities, many with very different attitudes to education.

It also encompasses a very wide range of English competence, from the newly arrived speaking no English, through children who are completely bilingual, to children who have one parent whose first language is not English and who speak very little of that parent's language.

Yes metabilis that is true re origin of comps
When I did the Kent test just after the battle of Agincourt and went to a (now super-selective) grammar, it was done over 3 years according to my friend who went to all the same schools. I only remember the age 11 one