'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?

The implication that 23% of the cohort are suited to "academic" study and. 77% suited to "vocational" training is what sticks in my throat! And then putting them in a system with no crossoverI just can't see why anybody would think that was a good idea!

Do you care what happens to the 77% or not? Most mumsnetters don't.

Most mumsnetters assume that their DC will be in the 23% and if not they will pay for a tutor!
It always was a dire scheme. At the cut off point there are 2 DCs who are equal, doing the test on a different day may cause them to change places.
People don't seem to realise that you can have identical twins on either side of the divide (I know some).
The whole system has now become even worse in that it has been corrupted by the middle classes who 'buy' a place and save school fees.
I can't imagine how anyone thinks it a good system. (except those who get a place for their DC).

Seeker, I don't agree with that 23/77 divide either. It is not an elephant in any room for me as I have been saying that throughout this thread. Of course we care about all children getting an appropriate and meaningful education. I totally agree with duchesse's post. The up to 96% ish should have access to comps. The bottom lot of that should have access to good vocational courses if they want it. This happens in our LA and it works. Your views are understandable given you live in Kent but please accept some of us have experience of a different gs system that works for most people not the minority.

The elephant here is just because your system isn't working for all children, how do you and the anti gs contingent explain the success of Sutton to cater for all children with a 5 A-C rate of 77% across the LA with 5 superselectives. Why is it outperforming totally comp areas? Google Stanley park high, it has a mechanic workshop and everything. Looks like an exciting model.

Perhaps children would be better served with academic selection for the top 10% at 11+ and then a professional vocational option at 13+ when there has been time for everyone to get a basic general academic education?

Thinking this more generally, I'd never allow mine to go to a catchment grammar such as those in Kent, where outcomes are worse than the best comps. Truly academic children aren't really stretched even at the top 10% super-selectives, because of the coaching that continues after the 11+ by anxious parents, so inflicting a catchment grammar on such kids must be hell only second to the remaining state catchment options in such areas. However I accept that when facing theoretical options with a primary school child, parents will be tempted with the 'grammar' branding of effectively what are inferior products. Some move into areas like Kent for exactly that reason, when Herts would be more sensible.

I agree that children who are vocationally minded are left to endure, for too long, teaching that neither inspires nor prepares them adequately for interesting and worthwhile working lives. Academic product branding is too strong for politicians to be honest about, since many parents also feel more comfortable avoiding what may work best for their DCs.

Which leaves most people to make the best of fitting their kids to inadequate academic and vocational learning options.

Back to Kent, the expansion of places perpetuates their chosen educational model. Evidently Kent parents are generally in favour, but given the choice, would you be a Kent parent with school age children?

thirdhill what do you mean by this sentence: 'Truly academic children aren't really stretched even at the top 10% super-selectives, because of the coaching that continues after the 11+ by anxious parents'.

Presumably you're talking about schools such as Henrietta Barnett and CRGS?

Maybe I'm not anxious enough, but I've never bought in tutoring or helped the children myself and I'd say (as they themselves would) that they're certainly stretched.

seeker - I don't think it's the elephant in the room. Rather the reverse - this whole thread has been about grammar schools, as if they were the problem - but they're getting good results and the parents are generally happy with how their kids' education is going - hence the huge demand for places.

The elephant in the room is why some schools that get poor results that aren't grammars are presumed to be the perfect model for ALL children, and why some opeople want the only bit of our education system that is working well to be disbanded, so that all kids can get an equally rubbish education.

Surely what we need to be doing is questioning why the comprehensive system fails so many kids and improve that, not attack the only type of school bit that does work?

Equality for all does not = equally bad.

@yellowtip I think she might be talking soecifically about schools in Kent.

Ttally agree with duchesse that bright kids are not stretched adequately at comps, and nn-academic kids not given sufficient opportunities fr high quality vocatinal training.

Echo that an improved version of the German system would be my preferred option too. I'd like excellnt and respected vocational training to be a real option here too - rather than have ex-polys as second rate unis I'd rather see them as first-rate vocational trainin centres. Plus bring back apprenticeships.

I do include Henrietta Barnett and CRGS. I don't have any experience of Kent's gammars, only that their recent splash in the news made me think I'd never really noticed any of them being especially stellar, and a quick look at something like the FT league comfirms that impression.

The comments are not personal to anyone else, merely my own observations of both state and public academic selectives. Not everyone coaches and tutors, so if you don't and are perfectly happy ot not at all anxious with your choices, why fret? If you don't understand the post then it clearly has no relevance to you. Hell for an academic child is spending most days of their life containing their natural inclination to extend, just as a talented artisan may find the NC hoops pointless. If your kids are happy again you're obviously very fortunate they fit in so well to what is being offered.

I have two very bright children who didn't pass the 11+ and one very bright one who didn't pass the 13+. They got NVR scores of 130-139+ for the schools they ended up at so can't be all that thick. The older two have ended up with very decent GCSE results, the third is on course for a string very decent results (by which I mean As and As, not A-C). As I mentioned earlier my father didn't pass the 11+ either but did pass the 13+ despite spending 2 years in a sec mod (of course you didn't have any choice back in the 50s about whether or not to live in a GS area).

Having seen what my DS was expected to be able to do for the 13+ (trigonometry for example) I can say with utter honesty that he had no chance, whatever school he had gone to for those intervening years. So I'd say that the possibility of moving between GS and Not Grammar School may on that limited sample of 1 have actually diminished in the last 60 years. And that cannot be a good thing.

duchesse those are good examples of how people develop differently from average expectations. Which is why academic selection of only the very extreme at 11 who are likely to really benefit from early extension will leave later developers a good chance of getting to their place in their own time. Also a good basic education is more likely to be appreciated by vocationally minded children if they know there is a worthwhile pathway they can buy into at 13 or 15.

As expected Kent catchment grammars suit some well but I'm not sure what Kent could possibly offer many like you and and your family.

Yes third, but we ended spending every penny we had (emphasis on the had) on sending them to a school where they could do triple science and a language at GCSE. Our neighbouring comprehensive was not even offering triple science and strangely we were not willing to compromise with BTECs in leisure and tourism in exchange for some decent academic courses.

DS and DD1 are both scientists (DS now doing engineering at university and DD1 applying for medicine) so a school more focused on league table position (which is the only explanation I can think of for not offering the "harder" subjects like separate sciences) than on academics was not going to be the right one for them. Head of neighbouring comp acts like he's running a high-performing sec mod rather than a comprehensive with pretty much the full range of ability: due to the enormous catchment area of the only grammar school, I'd be surprised if he lost more than 10 per year group to the grammar, yet he speaks as though he's doing the best he can with the dregs.

The thing is, @thirdhill, duchesse is talking about a situation where there is only 1 grammar school in a 50 mile radius, which accelerates KS3 in the first two years, starting the GCSE syllabus in Y9. So of course it would be difficult for a DC who hadn't gone to that school to get in at 13 + - even if in the intervening two years that DC had been at private school (as was the case with duchesse's DS) when the private school doesn't accelerate. The GS accelerates because it decided that the students there were perfectly capable of doing KS3 in two years and GCSEs a year early. The continued superb results bear this out.

In sime ways, I comletely agree, since my DD never seems to work even slightly 'hard' and is doing very very well. In other ways - I did feel that 13 was a bit young to be doing GCSE English modules, when she did them earlier this year. But the results have been great so, I guess my worries were silly.....

Basically, for a parent like me who is an Olympic standard worrier, it's a minefield. I do know that DS - who is very very bright indeed but whose dyslexia and functional deafness early in life have impacted on him (confidence wise) more than Dd1's dyspraxia has impacted on her- wouldn't be at all comfortable with accelerating. He is in top sets at his comp, but he is going at a pace that suits him and that's for the best. I do worry though, about all my kids.

The elephant here is just because your system isn't working for all children, how do you and the anti gs contingent explain the success of Sutton to cater for all children with a 5 A-C rate of 77% across the LA with 5 superselectives. Why is it outperforming totally comp areas? Google Stanley park high, it has a mechanic workshop and everything. Looks like an exciting model.

I would say that the Sutton non-selectives are actually proper comprehensive schools with comprehensive intake and comprehensive provison. There are also 5 super-selectives in Sutton which means that Sutton is able to add these school's results to give that impressively high total percentage of achievement. However, children at these schools come, not only from Sutton, but from all over south-west London, Croydon and north Surrey.

meta the variety of choices shows how inventive we parents can get!

One of our local comps completes KS3 in year 8 and does triple science etc. Of course anyone can do that as a private candidate anyway, without resorting to a fee-paying school. The real question is whether you trust the school with your child, I suppose, not the exams offered in themselves. Another local comp only does double science but their Oxbridge and medicine outomes are at the top end of the state system, so lack of triple science didn't hold them back... they don't accelerate KS3 mainly because year 7 is a settling-in year with social/behavioural development forefront. Which seems to deliver the goods at GCSE/AS/A2 better than the one that completes KS3 in year 8. But they are both better than a lot of grammars.

I can't see what a catchment grammar would offer with such schools about. The real issue is with any school, selective or not, that does not do its best by its kids. Can someone actually explain why grammars exist if they cannot deliver better results than such comps, not just in grades but also leaver destinations? They wouldn't survive as fee-paying schools so why allow them space when the state is paying? All those happy happy people in these grammars, perhaps?

The grammars on our area out perform the independents. They haven't got the facilities though- is that why you say they wouldn't survive as independents?

The only comps with results anywhere near our grammars are highly selective by postcode. And remember, results can be manipulated by what the children take and what they are allowed to take - one girls grammar near here has fab results but they encourage a lot of less academic subjects taken in one year each- eg photography, dance, media studies- and didn't look as good on the ebacc ( no doubt they will make a humanity and a lang compulsory now). You have to look at results carefully and with your own child in mind.

@thirdhill well, the GS I know delivers better results than almost every school, whether grammar, comp or private. The thing is, at the top end of the scale the margins are wafer thin. There probably isn't much difference between the top 50 schools. I suspect things would be very different if the exam marking went back to Norm referenced marking like in my day. Not necessarily better. But different.

thirdhill if you are including schools such as HB and CRGS then it's slightly absurd to claim that they don't stretch the truly academic. Of course they do.

Mine aren't happy because they're only mildly academic so fit a second class offering as you suggest. They've been happy at school because the teaching is fit for purpose and that purpose is to stretch the highly able children who attend.

Metabilis what is functional deafness?

Yellowtip HB and CRGS are not your bog standard catchment grammar, are they? However feel free to call me absurd if that is the standard catchment grammar behaviour where your kids are happy in, which frankly would not be tolerated in the comps around here. Since you've taken a shine to them, you surely know that HB has a reputation as an exam factory, not just from possible sour grapes parents, but experienced teachers with unmatched results and destinations track records. CRGS we know well from family friends and their children. They rely significantly on their overseas boarders for results, and I can categorically say the pupils are not stellar, that perhaps expected from a grammar system county? However thankfully relatively normal.

seeker if a grammar cannot outperform a comp, and many do not, why should the state fund them for a limited constituency? As for independents, people buy for all sorts of reasons, they can spend their own money how they wish to, and they see something there worth buying.

I'm sure all our children are happy where they are, or we would change their circumstances. If yours fit, that's fine for yours. I'm curious from a policy viewpoint why choose a suboptimal option when another system delivers better outcomes.

The politics apart of making any change, why fund any top quartile selective that does not deliver what a equal banded four quartile comp does? And then, there is the question of adequate provision for the other quartiles who are also interested in preparing for worthwhile and rewarding lives ahead. Even if they are other people's children.

@yellowtip not being able to hear when you aren't actually deaf but just can't hear (at all) for another reason (in his case severe ENT issues).