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?

I was horrified that someone who was immensely privileged by having a good start in life themselves and has been able to use it it to get a high paid job to help their much loved children get an excellent start can then sigh because someone wants to help a poor child who has nothing-not even parent's love-to get a decent education.

I would be ashamed to elbow them out of the way and say 'my DCs are loved, bright and well behaved-it is the school for them and not for the likes of you-get back to your sink school'.

Well done the Oratory!

I do value the threads by Xenia about not hitting children, because its the only recognisably human thing I've ever seen her say.

I was going to ask whether she's one of the Turing Test posters- but then I remembered that I got a thread deleted last time I did that........

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

Thank you for that talkingnonsense. I wouldnt be surprised if TT has some policy in place to skew its intake. IME any school that is somewhere in the top third of the league tables is operating some sort of selection process be it
"backdoor" or otherwise. I do not have a problem with that and have strong suspicions that given freedom a lot of parents would make demands for such schools more widely if they could ( without being told off by those who believe every other cared for or deprived child is "Marie - Claire". In my career of 30 years now I havent met one.I have met a few "City Girls" though. But that is beside the point.

Many schools favour those who have disadvantage. There has to be a place for those who favour exclusivity too. Education these days is really a supermarket or department store. You can be Asda price or Waitrose or Fortnum and Mason.

Regards

"Many schools favour those who have disadvantage"

In what way?

I think that I have just now checked the Oratory and they give priority to children in care - sigh one of the saddest things that I have ever read on here.
It is the policy for all state schools to do this. It is to redress the balance where children in care do very badly in education. Many of them are very bright, they just have a terrible start in life and then lack love of a significant adult and support. A church school jolly well should follow the teachings of Christ and put them first, even if no one else does!
It also makes the assumption that all 'looked after children' are going to be troublesome. They are not.
I am further appalled that those who are born with every advantage in life can have the 'Fortnum and Mason' of schools and those without a single advantage are stuck with the 'Asda' of schools and 'little Johnny at Fortnum and Mason' doesn't want any association at all - it isn't his problem - by pure luck of birth he can get all the prizes in life- without doing the slightest thing to deserve it - just by being born to the 'right' parents.
Many of the fee paying schools were set up to educate the poor in the first place. My great,great,great,great grandfather was an orphan at 7 yrs of age and given an education. Quite clearly he was very negligent to have lost both parents at an early age and be left without money and should have been sent to the workhouse and down the mines!
Quite honestly whether children pass or fail the 11+ is utterly unimportant in comparison to this attitude. Children who have a loving, supportive homelife will do all right wherever but- as a so called- civilised society we ought to be helping those who don't.

But sometimes you might think you're getting Waitrose quality when in fact it's Asda-price! And vice versa!

It's a complete no-brainer that children in care should be given the best chances possible and if that means first choice of the best secondary schools (and primary ones) so be it...I cannot think that any compassionate parent could think otherwise. I have posted this very comment on the Graveney thread that's currently running too!

I thought so too gazzalw but compassion seems to be lacking. I can't honestly think of anything that I have found quite so depressing and all can say is that seeker's DS has had a set back but that he will do OK - possibly extremely well because he has a good home. I am still angry about failing but I had brilliant parents and it didn't make any difference in the long run. Luckily I wasn't alone in the world, unloved and unworthy to share a classroom with children whose parents only wanted the best and didn't want me 'tainting' their DC!

I do think that for some children failing can actually be the making of them - if that doesn't sound like a contradiction in terms? Some children need a reality check. Agree that it's rather a harsh system for doing it, but at the end of the day there are very clever children who turn into less-than-successful adults and children who would be perceived to have 'failed' at school (or just not done as well as others) who have done briliantly!

I went to a grammar school whereas my brothers went to the comprehensive in the opposite direction town (parents wouldn't have made the 'mistake' of having us all in expensive grammar schools!). We've all got degrees but in terms of 'success' I am financially less successful than two of my brothers.

DW is very academic and has a brilliant degree and post-grad qualifications too but she failed her 11+ - she is still embarrassed to have to admit as much even after all these years too!

I hear your pain Exoticfruits and this whole notion of 'failing' can leave a very bitter taste....

It doesn't follow any logic gazzalw! I have the sort of personality that says 'I'll show them!' and so maybe it made me more successful than chugging along in a grammar school. Someone saying that I can't do it is a catalyst for making me do it. It actually worked in my favour because it made my applications stand our from the norm and it showed determination. It has been decades since anyone was remotely interested in which schools I went to and exam results, so it just never crops up in an interview.
I don't always admit to being an 11+ failure-I guess that I still think that people will think that I wasn't as intelligent at 11yrs as a grammar school DC, which was untrue.
I have been married twice. DH1 was an August birthday so he was 10yrs when he won a full scholarship to a fee paying selective school without any tutoring or hot housing (he probably had the sort of background that jabed would allocate the 'Asda' school!)-DH2 was an 11+ failure They were equally intelligent-the only difference was that DH1 was a scientist and DH2 isn't.
The whole test is a mockery IMO.
Since only 4% get a state selective education I would say that now is the time to concentrate on getting every DC an excellent education-maybe not Fortnum and Mason, but we should be able to manage Waitrose for all!!

"I do think that for some children failing can actually be the making of them - if that doesn't sound like a contradiction in terms? Some children need a reality check"

A reality check? At 10? We're not talking about getting shocking marks for your GCSE mocks when you're 15 and realising that maybe you do actually need to do a bit of revision, you know!

exoticfruits - 100% agree with your Waitrose for all analogy (I love Waitrose...). :)

That's the real issue - all schools should provide a high quality of education so that every pupil succeeds. Whether the school name is X Grammar or not isn't important - what matters is that whichever school a child goes to, on the basis of an exam or house prices or lottery or whatever, it is a good school which meets the needs of all he children in it.

Obviously, schools aren't magic and teachers aren't magicians - we need to focus on support for families before school and outside school so that kids come to school ready to learn. Plus we need jobs for those kids to aspire to so that work at school doesn't seem like a waste of time.

It doesn't help if people put their fingers in their ears and say "lalalalalalalalal can't hear you!" whenever anyone tries to talk about the downsides of selective education. It's a debate that has to be had, because there is political will to go for more selection, and unfortunately the debate is currently only being had by people who either wouldn't touch the state system with a barges pole for their own children or who are pretty sure that their child would be in a grammar school. As others have said, there is very little drive for a return to secondary moderns!

seeker - The solution is a lot simpler - move houses.

Whenever there is a thread about selective education there you are with your standard and repetitive posts about how the SM/GS model is bad and how you hate the system. You then rehash the 10 year old kids being made to feel like a failure by the parents and kids in the community posts.

If I was living in an area where the education system is so repugnant to my politics and the people are so unkind as to make children feel like failures for not passing the 11+ then I would vote with my feet and move.

@Seeker you are the one who puts your fingers in your ears. You insist repeatedly that only those who are certain their children would end up in a GS support selective education and completely ignore those of us who, unlike you at the moment, already actually have 2 DCs at different schools, selective and non selective. You keep trying to brush my argument under the carpet by saying that my GS is a super selective - but in fact that means there is an even more marked difference between that school and the comp.

Metabilis- I am not brushing your argument under the carpet. If you take the top 5% and educate them separately, the school which remains has 95% of the ability range. that is very different from the old fashioned system which pertains in my area, where about a quarter of children go to the grammar.

PooshTun, if your purpose on here is to have an interesting discussion about selective education, they you are welcome. If it is to continue your bizarre fascination with my private life, then you are not.

Sorry, missing sentence. The school which remains has 95 % of the ability range and is therefore practically a comprehensive.

"if your purpose on here is to have an interesting discussion about selective education, they you are welcome. If it is to continue your bizarre fascination with my private life, then you are not."

Its irritating isn't it? Now you know how it feels when a parent wants to discuss her private/grammar school options with like minded parents and you turn up and morph the thread into a "SM /GS Model is bad" bun fight.

As for it being "an interesting discussion about selective education" this thread is merely a platform for you to go "lalalalalalalalal can't hear you!" when meta presents her views and for you to then launch into your standard stub speech. Its not as it you are adding anything new to your stub speech.

As I've said above, if I hated the place I lived in as much as you I would move as opposed to spending all this time on MN complaining about it.

@seeker that might be true in theory. In practice, the booming private school sector where I live means that a huge number of 'top set' kids who don't get into the GS go private instead. Not all of them obviously. But a surprisingly big number. We wouldn't have - but many do.

I've asked you this before but you've dodged the question - do you admit that superselectives for the very top of the ability range are a fair and sensible response to the educational needs of those young people?

"Its irritating isn't it? Now you know how it feels when a parent wants to discuss her private/grammar school options with like minded parents and you turn up and morph the thread into a "SM /GS Model is bad" bun fight."

Had I ever done that, I might. What is actually happening is that I am beginning to have some idea what it's like to have an insane stalker!

"I am beginning to have some idea what it's like to have an insane stalker!"

... says the woman who spent a whole say going - apologise ... apologise .... apologise .... APOLOGISE!

:o

Anyway, don't flatter yourself. I was just looking to see what was being said in Education and I saw you here, posting the same stuff as in the other threads so I thought that I pop in and say - Hi Heeker.

"I've asked you this before but you've dodged the question - do you admit that superselectives for the very top of the ability range are a fair and sensible response to the educational needs of those young people?"

Sorry, I thought I had answered that. I can certainly see more of a case for the super selective model. The concerns I have about the "bubble" effect in the ordinarily selective schools would still apply though. I would need convincing that it is in the best interests of the "super bright" to be separated from their peers in this way. But as I don't have a super bright child and I don't have any contact with a super selective school, I could be convinced. Crucially, though, I don't think the super selective/comprehensive in all but name model is as damaging to the cohort as a whole and to society in general as the old fashioned gs/sm model.

Does that answer your point? I wasn't deliberately ot answering it!

I asked you to apologise because you posted unforgivable lies about my child on a completely unconnected thread.

Sadly, your posts were deleted. As I said on that thread, I wanted them to stay to show you for the vile person you are.

Anwqy, back to sanity.

Metabilis- did I answer your question?