'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?

@yellowtip it was the term his specialist used, I have no idea whether it's an accepted generally used term or not. I assumed it was, but maybe it isn't.

Thirdhill-I am politically and philosophically opposed to grammar schools. But I would be amazed if they did not invariably out perform comprehensives on paper.

And it is a stretch to day that our children are all happy where they are or we would change things- most people have no choice.

@thridhill SOrry, I'm probably being thick (I had a fall this morning and I'm a bit whacked out on pain killers (which aren't working:( ) now but....I don't really understand what you are saying. Initially, you criticised super selective GSs and said they didn't stretch the truly academic. Yellowtip asked if you were including HB and CRGS in the supers electives you were criticising and you said yes you very were, which she then queried (rightly in my view). You then say that they are hardly catchment area GSs....well, no they aren't, that was the point.

The GS my DD goes to, which isn't officially super selective but probably effectively is as a result of geography, does stretch the very academic. Many people call it an exam factory, but it isn't.

I'm not opposed to anything that works.

It would seem from this first page that Judd is worth keeping. There are a couple of comps on page 1 though. Three Kent grammars make the second page but more than six comps do so too. Some of these are equal banded four quartile comps so catchment intellect is not significant.

So why pay for any other grammars that cannot even match four quartile comps?

meta, I'm sorry to hear about your morning, hope you're better soon.

A good school is a good school. Especially if it suits one's child.

I'm curious from a resource allocation viewpoint why better input does not produce better output in some cases.

Kent is a lovely place to live. I'm not convinced their school system is as lovely, but am always open to new information.

We've found that stretching a child is dependent on good teaching, rather than school type. A good school responds to each child, have seen this in good public schools comps and state selectives. Similarly kids who have not been stretched by super selectives that are less than flexible about what constitutes success. I don't have a downer on HB/CRGS, if it's the best option someone has, but no school is perfect. This is entirely different from the question of limited state funds and how to get the best from these for all children. Extending access in an existing system in Kent was hardly a surprise decision, but the real question is could they do better for all their children, including the top quartile.

@thirdhill have no first hand experience of either HB or CRGS any more recent than the early 80s. I know both were great schools then, I actually have no reason to believe they aren't great schools now. IMcurrentE which is based on just the one GS, it gets less resources than the other schools in the LEA and gets significantly better results. I agree that the Kent system is clearly a very different animal and many of those schools do not seem to get better results than comps in other LEAs.

Comparing A levels is a very different discussion, isn't it?. And are there many comprehensive schools that get over 90% a-c?

True comprehensives can't get over 90% unless they only let sure certs take A'levels.

I have two very bright children who didn't pass the 11+ and one very bright one who didn't pass the 13+.

Masses of very bright DCs don't pass-it is a complete waste of talent.

My brother failed at 11+ passed at 12+ and at 13+ was identified as a grammar school high flyer who went in an express stream. He was the same DS, he didn't have tutoring-he shows the nonsense of it when within 3 years a DC can go from 11+ failure to the top 5% of the grammar school.

seeker are you so sure that good comps do not serve their entire population, including their top quartile, better? They have the same staff teaching A levels as the lower school, the same ethos and skills. They do better despite having less of the "dragging up performance" effect of top quartile intake, despite not having an "elite" preceding five years' of grammar education. Comp sixth form entry requirements are almost always lower than for grammars too. Perhaps they're used to trying harder?

All I'm postulating is keep your status if you can match delivery of the best comps. You choose who to take, you nurture them for five years, and still can't match the best comps. Shame on you.

"Just checked - my dd's grammar is second in our county in terms of value added . So I'm happy with that."

B&B, there is a statistical anomaly in the calculation of value add for grammar schools.

The starting point for 'value added' is KS2 SATs results. Until this year, these have been 'capped' at level 5 (no level 6 papers were available, and although a teacher can assess a child at Level 6 as far as I am aware this could not be recorded for official statistical purposes).

Some at least of the children who get into grammars would be level 6s IF that could be recorded (DS, in his very normal state school, not superselective material, will get Level 6 in at least one subject) - so their 'starting points' for value added are artificially low. From that point it is extremely easy to get fantastic value added results. E.g. If a child is already 6b on entry but is only reported as a level 5 [must be recorded as a 5b as they are not 'split' into sublevels] then the grammar school gets a whole NC level of progress on Day 1 without doing anything at all.....

It's a bit like primary schools reporting lower KS1 SATs results so that they can get great value added up to KS2 - except that in the grammar schools' case it's not their fault, it has not been possible to record the true level on entry of their very bright cohort, so their value added is artificially high.

Brief hijack: Metabilis that's bad luck. I asked because of what you said about confidence. I failed to pick up DD3's deafness (completely deaf on one side) until she was 12, shocking I know, but it may have done her a favour by not separating her from the crowd.

I think it's just beginning to get her down though, but I'm not sure what can be done - she refuses an aid point blank. It's on my mind, hence the question.

@yellow we didn't pick it up for probably a year. :( DS taught himself to lip read as his hearing diminished to nothing. And, looking back on it, by the time he was completely without hearing, we had all become a 'shouty' family - and we still are! What year is your DD3 in? Is the hearing issue causing problems at school? Presumably it's definitely congenital deafness rather than a glue ear/adenoid/persistent ear infection thing? With DS the damage to his confidence came when he realised that actually, everone else could hear and he couldn't and everyone else wasn't lip reading like he was. He had 4 operations in a year and missed lots of school and I think there were some unkind kids in his year who were mean to him when he came back to school.

Talkinpeace2, you posted:

of that 33% (in brackets total percentages)
75% go to new universities (25%)
24.9% go to RG universities (8.9%)
0.1% go to Oxbridge (0.05%)

There is a mistake here. Many universities are neither new nor RG. Durham and Bradford, for example, are 'old' universities that are not part of the RG. Durham is older than most of the RG universities. Do you mean that 75% of HE students go to universities that are not part of the RG? Where did these figures come from?

This is getting pointless.

I and other people open-minded about grammars keep being asked about the elephant in the room and being told the results in Sutton and Kingston are due to children from Croydon or A.N.Other London Borough or falsely elevated VA scores. What a poke in the eye for local kids and parents, particularly those at the schools which do very well considering their location. Noone has acknowledged the fact that all children educated in this borough are doing well above the national average. Where on earth do you think we send all of our "low achievers" and "disadvantaged children"? Do you think we hide them or send them to Croydon? Plenty of Children at the Banstead, Cheam or Epsom end will go to a school out of borough to balance the results but I hate to tell you they tend to be the MC homes as they are more expensive houses on these borders so actually we lose just as many potential high flyers as we gain.

The results are there, why can noone comment on them rationally and compare them objectively to a comprehensive area of their choice?

Apologies jalapeno, I wasn't replying about any specific area - just pointing out that there is a systemic error which makes VA scores for ALL grammars, wherever they are, potentially misleading.

Not being from the London area, I can't comment on Sutton and Kingston - to make a fair comparison, you would need to compare it with an area with similar sociodemographics but a comprehensive school system, and I don't have the data to do that with. Coming from a county with residual grammar schools surrounded by counties with similar sociodemographics without them, I know that the comparison here is simpler (though corrections do have to be made for the children travelling across county boundaries) and the overall results show no significant difference between grammar / comprehensive systems taken as a whole.

Trying not to be picky here, but "Noone has acknowledged the fact that all children educated in this borough are doing well above the national average." Do you mean above the national average attainment for children given their starting point? Or that every single child - even those with severe SEN etc - achieve above the national mean at the end of their schooling? Or that their progress is above the national mean?

I and other people open-minded about grammars keep being asked about the elephant in the room and being told the results in Sutton and Kingston are due to children from Croydon or A.N.Other London Borough. What a poke in the eye for local kids and parents, particularly those at the schools which do very well considering their location. Noone has acknowledged the fact that all children educated in this borough are doing well above the national average. Where on earth do you think we send all of our "low achievers" and "disadvantaged children"? Do you think we hide them or send them to Croydon? Plenty of Children at the Banstead, Cheam or Epsom end will go to a school out of borough to balance the results but I hate to tell you they tend to be the MC homes as they are more expensive houses on these borders so actually we lose just as many potential high flyers as we gain.

The results are there, why can noone comment on them rationally and compare them objectively to a comprehensive area of their choice?^

I thought I was commenting rationally. I was trying to point out the logistics of selective education in Sutton. I certainly wasn't intending to insult the good people of Sutton and Kingston (seeing that I was one once). Are there any statistics available to show a breakdown of the LEAs where pupils at Sutton and Kingston grammar schools actually live? I take your point about children living on the edge of the borough going to schools in Surrey, but if they are high-flyers, would they have failed the entrance exams for the Sutton grammars, or are all their parents ideologically opposed to selective education? And, the grammar schools in Kingston and Sutton do seem to attract children from very far afield; on mumsnet, there is a regular poster whose DD travels from Kensington to Tiffins and, only this week, a poster from Clapham was asking advice about her DS travelling to Sutton Grammar School where he has been offered a place.

There is absolutely no way you could realistically compare a selective area with a comprehenive area where LEAs are adjacent to each other, as the boundaries are completely fluid. It is more rational to compare an area like Kent, which has far fewer people coming to it from outside with another similarly isolated area with similar socio-economic characteristics.

Kensington to Kingston isn't that far though Cecily.

I lived on the edge of the borough, got a direct grant place to Sutton but my parents turned it down for a different direct grant place I was offered elsewhere, because the other school was better. Those you call high flyers just tend to have choice.

Perhaps it isn't. I suppose the re-opening of the passenger rail service from Olympia to Clapham Junction makes it do-able. It is just when I lived in Kingston, I thought that to get to Tiffins from Richmond, Wandsworth and Surrey was viable; I just never thought of people coming from further afield.

Sorry for the irrational inference, working godawful shifts this week and so a bit tired or maybe wired on caffeine . I meant that the discussion seems to make positive excuses for comps and negative excuses for grammars. Or vice versa. The results in the greater London/ Surrey superselective areas are top of the national league tables for 5 gcse A-C. Why aren't we looking at copying that model rather than dismissing it because it just isn't fair?

I would be fine with a comp system but I fear here the house price divide would increase and private schools would pop up and clean up. I feel it is slightly irrational to ignore the stats to insist on a so-called fair system and dismiss academic selection. It feels a bit like Animal Farm...

I completely disagree that a super selective system is 'just unfair'. What is just unfair is access to good education predicated in depth of pockets.

No need for apologies. Although I am against selection at 11, I am trying to be as objective as possible and look at the situation as it exists. To make comparisons between systems, we would have to look beyond the headline figures and take other statistics into account, such as movement between LEAs, and factor in people who only use the state system because selective schools are available.

If all other LEAs copied the Sutton/Kingston model, they would actually destroy that model ,because, at the moment, these 2 LEAs have the only selecive schools for miles from Barnet to the North, Bromley to the East, Slough to the West and nothing (France?) to the South. If the surrounding areas opened selective schools, Sutton/Kingston grammars would, once again, just take local children, and the other local schools would be less comprehensive, more secondary modern.

I am not sure if comprehensives in affluent areas with tiny catchments are the highest achieving; the highest achieving comps seem to be the ones that make parents jump through hoops to get their children a place. The latest GCSE league tables have a lot of useful information make for some interesting reading (if you are as geeky as I seem to be) in that they show the KS2 levels at which the GCSE candidates entered their secondary schools. For comparison, while Sutton Boys GS had an intake of 98% higher ability boys, Dover Boys GS had an intake of 63% higher ability boys (which is actually lower than some comprehensives).

I agree with you Metabilis, it just feels like the ideology about this, whilst understandable in a way as comprehensives should be fair on paper, aren't addressing that issue or the obvious good results in Superselective areas.

Cecily I believe there are some in Bromley and selective streams around Clapham/Wandsworth way (Graveny) so Perhaps London would be easy to achive this in that there could be strategically placed superselectives or grammar streams every 10 or 15 miles apart or something and then watch the competition hot up lol as long as only the top 1 or 2 percent would benefit from that. It isn't as simple as people flocking here from miles around, it's a bit of an urban myth in my humble opinion as there will always be good state options for many of the applicants nearer to home, most of them will have a choice as someone said upthread, there will always be people from far away though. I went to a Sutton GS in the late 80s early 90s when they weren't SS and we had a girl from Bookham which seemed miles away! I was quite far away in a Surrey village 3 miles away but that is nothing by todays standards given transport is much better.

Comps with tiny catchments in affluent areas aren't as successful and I'm willing to bet that's because of the private schools you'll find in the absence of a decent grammar school. The biggest factor in our results here are due to the lack of privates in the borough.

Where did you get those stats please Cecily? would be interested in seeing the other schools locally.

Still don't understand the Dover Boys thing at all, it seems to be a comp with a grammar stream to me...

Apologies for appalling grammar despite that being the subject in hand, in my defense I've had about 2 hours sleep and just having a waiting for lunch to be ready

And to put the cat among the pigeons, the top performing "comprehensive " in the country is actually a back door grammar school.........