Grammar schools -a "think" piece.

[seeker]

New readers start here. I live in a small town in Kent. We have a fully selective secondary education system,- children take 11+ tests in Sepetember of year 6, and are allocated either to the grammar school ( the "top" 23%) and the high school- the remaining 77%, which consists of those that don't reach the required mark in the test and those that didn't take it at all. The grammar school is an OFSTED outstanding school, with 99% a-c. The high school is a good school, with, if I recall 40% a-c. It has excellent vocational facilities and very good sport. There are no comprehensive schools in any sort of travelling distance. One or two children go to other selective schools in the area, and a few go private, but the vast majority go to either school A or school B. ( It's important to say here that I am only talking about a fully selective system here. The areas where there is a grammar school for the very top of the top 5% and all but comprehensives for everyone else are a different discussion)

The reason I think this is interesting in a broader context is that this is the model which many people would like to see replicated by the introduction of more grammar schools. To a grammar school enthusiast, it looks perfect. I think they sometimes forget that more grammar schools means more "secondary moderns" .

Living in in the middle of such system, is possible to see it's damaging, divisive consequences.

We have a town where children, at the age of 10, are told that they are not good enough for the grammar school, with all the societal and psychological problems this produces. The supporters of the system say that it isn't a "pass or fail" system- it is just an "allocation of appropriate school" system Which would be fine- if wasn't described as "passing" and "failing". If the town was not full of congratulations and comiserations when the results come out in March. If the children themselves were not fully aware-because they are not stupid- that tests produce passes and failures. And if the grammar school did not have less than 2% children with SEN and 2% FSM -against the high school's 27% and 22%.

Basically what we have is a comprehensive school cohort, but rigidly separated. The top set are educated completely separately half a mile away. There is no opportunity for kids at the high school to move into that top set if they suddenly discover an academic streak at the age of 12 or 13, and no opportunity for a Grammar school child to move if they discover that they are not as academic as they appeared on one day in their 10th September. Which a properly streamed comprehensive would provide. Such a school would also provide a proper top set, as well as opportunities for the less able. But there would be the possibility of movement. AND, crucially, you wouldn't have a massive group of kids who have been told, in however sugar coated a way, that they have failed at the age of 10. What's, as they say, not to like?

Every independent school with charitable status ought to take some of these children -or lose their status

Why exotic fruits?

Because they are the most vulnerable in society and private schools get privileges for charitable status for doing precious little.

I am quite appalled that people think that DCs with all advantages should come before those that are cared for by the state-in a state school.

I think it would be a strange state of affairs if the schools that didn't hand pick their pupils didn't come top in the league tables. It is actually important that we educate the majority.

I found if you are picking from the top 50 schools the league tables are a pretty good indicator. Manchester Grammar (private) will always do well, Eton, Noth London Collegiate etc not because of any manipulation just because the brightest children in the country go there and the teaching is good

I agree most independents do not need to manipulate. Some state grammar schools do though. I agree too about those top independent schools and thanks for the backhand compliment about our teaching abilities :)

Thanks for linking the table Xenia- anyone know what Watford grammar does to be the top comp? ( am assuming some backdoor selection like Tomas Telford!).

But if you make independent schools take the less privledged, you remove any opportunity for choice. There are many opportunities for those less privledged in many schools and they get more funding and more affirmative action in the state sector. If you pay for something ( and I see know reason why one should not be allowed to pay if one wishes ) then they should be able to take a choice in what they pay for.

Independent schools often do take pupils from less advantaged backgrounds in the form of scholarships etc. I dont see why they have to take the
"problem children" to justify their postion.

When I pay for something I am paying for a certain exclusivity. Be it on an ariline or a school

Thanks for linking the table Xenia- anyone know what Watford grammar does to be the top comp? ( am assuming some backdoor selection like Tomas Telford!)

OK, I will have to buy it. What is the backdoor selection procedure Thomas Telford are using? I looked at the web site and couldnt find anything.

Basically-you don't care what happens to the majority as long as your DC is isolated from them!

There is no need to take a lot, but a charitable status should mean that you take a few to justify the charity part. Scholarships to the deserving is quite possible.

There are really very few ( statistically) children in care, im sure it would make no difference to the results.
Someone earlier asked about sen at grammar school - I know there a few children on the autistic spectrum at our super selective ( mainly because one bit ds1!)
Jabed, I'm probably out of date but for a long while Thomas Telford was held up in education circles as a school to aspire to, yet it turned out they had an interestingly shaped catchment (selection by house price), selected for ability in music, had a sibling link, and so on.

Eta, it might make a huge difference to those individual children, I think it is a good idea.

Yes, ef. I don't go round to the poor to read them bed time stories. I do that with my own children or I did then they were that age. I was just accompanying one's grade 8 pieces on the piano. I was doing that for my child not others. I can smell food cooking for his dinnner. He is being fed not others.

That does not mean I want to live in a country without a welfare state and without state schools but I do think the primary moral duty of all parents is first to their children and then to others after that. I don't think that's wrong.

I certainly want my chidlren educated with keen clever well behaved other children as do most children in the country unless their own in the nightmare from hell with ADD I suppose.

The private schools educated loads of children and relieve the state of that burden. It is a huge saving for the state. Edcuation ittself even of the rich has always been a social good, a charitable thing in and of its own sake. The Charity commission has now accepted that as long as some attempts are made to offer some shared facilities nad perhaps bursaries if they can be afforded.

If charitable status were removed VAT might go on school fees - 20% rise but if we then did not subsidise children of the poor so much that 20% may be much less and there are other benefits of losing charitable status so it is by no means a problem if it did so. I suspect the poor would suffer if it went, fewer bursaries, fewer rights to use private school sports facilities etc.

I didn't ask about SEN at grammar schools. I was pointing out that the posters (and there are several in this thread) who are persistently equating SN with not being at GS but instead being at SM were in fact not accurate. As I have mentioned in several threads now, basically, whenever this subject comes up, my DD1 has SEN (as do my other DCs) and she is not the only young person with SEN at her high achieving GS. She has not, so far as I am aware, bitten anyone.

If schools are getting tax advantages from their charitable status they should be charities. They should be acting like Manchester Grammar:

'The first well-known test case was Manchester Grammar School. Like many illustrious schools, it started out as a charity. In its case it was founded by the Bishop of Exeter in 1515.

Today it educates almost 1,500 non-boarding pupils, who pay fees of almost £9,000 a year. The school provides bursaries to 14% of its pupils while 8% of all pupils pay no fees at all.

The school also shares sports facilities with other local schools and puts on lectures and poetry workshops, and provides pre-university coaching for pupils from other schools. The emphasis is on sharing with others some of the real benefits its own pupils receive.

As such Manchester Grammar is, in the words of the assessors, "a charity and is operating for the public benefit".

They do not have to fill them with children in care but they should be doing the above. State schools are rather different in that 'looked after children' are in the care of the state and so should get first choice in schools-which they do if you look at any state school entrance criteria.

biting v rare I believe- ds not bothered, but I know someone always asks, how do you know they have sen ( was invoved as school trying to get the dc some support, with parents knowledge). Yes, actually anecdotally I have heard that the more traditional structures of a typical gs can be v well suited to dc with certain sen.

But most independents will give such scholarships already exotic fruit.

Basically-you don't care what happens to the majority as long as your DC is isolated from them

Absolutely correct. I am willing to say what many probably think but are afraid of vioicing. I care about what happens to my DS. I cannot care about the world and his wife - the world needs to look after his own wife! I look after mine.

I know this doesnt go down well.

In a similar way I have shelled out for a nice house in a nice village, away from the estates with their social ills and problems. I do not want those problems being put in next door to me either.

I work hard to ensure I have a choice in not having to put up with such things. I know that will offend some. I accept that.

DD3 can only hear from one ear but I'm not sure if that's SN. And she didn't tell me until she was in Y8, so even if it is SN, it may not count (re. admissions I mean).

The country needs excellent education for all-especially the most unloved and vulnerable.

Watford Grammar is not a comp and I would regard the findings of any league table that labels it as such as complete rubbish, sorry Xenia!

It is not 'backdoor' selection, it is officially a semi-selective (you might have guessed the selective nature from the name, possibly?).

Re children in care, you'll find all state schools prioritise children incare - as they are legally required to do.

Should add I've been teaching a lovely girl in care this year - incredibly difficult background. But she is exceptionally brilliant and determined. The idea that all kids in care somehow drag down the rest of the class is not just offensive, it's simply wrong factually.

Ah, I wondered if that was so. But I went to a school with grammar in its name, that was a comp ( amalgated with the sm in thr60s), so didn't like to assume.

My husband is also teaching some children who are in care, with appalling home backgrounds. It's unthinkable that they shouldn't come first.

I do see a place for interviews in the state selection process, but it's unlikely to happen. The time cost would be huge and the likelihood of it greatly increasing appeals is an extra deterrent. But in theory I'd like to see it used in the same way that Oxford and Cambridge use their interviews: to look for real potential and get behind the smokescreen of hothousing, if possible. Definitely not to create an apartheid, as appears to be the primary concern in Jabed's schools.

xenia
I know you delight in saying the unsayable and you love to overstate what you think most parents secretly thing. But it's this comment that makes me really angry:

I just now checked the Oratory and they give priority to children in care...sigh.

We live in a civilised society. Yes, a capitalist one, but what marks us out as civilised is the way we treat the most vulnerable. Statistically, looked after children represent a tiny minority. If we cannot safeguard them by providing a stable and decend education when their family lives may be unstable and damaging, what do we become?

You can defend your right to educate your children with other clever, bright, motivated kids. You do it endlessly. But please don't start sighing because looked after children are getting one tiny break.

Sigh.

Quite. As I said, the looked-after girl I teach brings up the average standard, not brings it down. Very shoddy thinking, to swallow all the cliches about kids in care. Just because they have had little support does not mean that they are not as intelligent - indeed, their lack of support has often forced many to be more mature and determined than the avaerage middle-class child. They know that a rich mummy or daddy won't support them in everything they do - if they are going to make a go of their lives, it is down to them.

I just now checked the Oratory and they give priority to children in care

Most state schools do. Quite right. 'Looked after' children need the state to look after them as they have no pointy-elbowed parents to do it for them.

Ah well, seeker and exoticfruits, the nice thing about a thread like this is that whilst we may be on opposite sides when it comes to grammar schools, we are all brought together by nutters suggesting schools should discriminate against children of single parents, children in care etc.

I honestly believe that the grammar school system should not be used. The idea of the 11+ when it was invented was that it would measure a child's 'intelligence' and educate them accordingly-as though intelligence is something you are born with a fixed, measurable quantity of.
We know now that children a largely (not exclusively- I know) a product of their home life and educational experiences. So the children who perform well at 11 do so because they have had good experiences/ support so far. I'm not suggesting that this is a bad thing- good on their families. BUT it is unfair to then give these children a better educational experience at secondary level, funded by the tax payer, to the detriment of other children whose opportunities may not have been so great, which is what a grammar essentially does. There are limited funds after all.
FWIW I live in an area with great comprehensives (80% ish get 5 A*-C GCSE)- it is also an area which is miles from the nearest private school or grammar and where the schools have catchment areas with kids all along the socio- economic scale. I don't think this is a coincidence.