Those of you in favour of grammar schools, come and tell me what to say to my Ds...

[seeker]

He woke up crying in the night because the reality had just hit him that he won't be going to school with his close friends in September because he failed the 11+ in September. "I can't be very bright, can I mum, or I would have passed" " no, it was just one of those things-you're going to a good school, you'll be fine" "I know- but if i was clever I'd be going to school with X and Y" "You are clever- look at your SATs-you'll be in the top set at the high school because of those" " it's not SATS that are important, though, it's the 11+"

Do you want to have more kids feeling like that? Then campaign for more grammar schools,

And while we're on the free school meal issue, is there any evidence that DC on FSM have better outcomes in non grammar areas than grammar school areas?

Do comps do better by DC from disadvantaged backrounds?

Completely agree with rabbit about the generalised anxiety surrounding children's schooling these days. It's pernicious. I've been savagely attacked on another thread for appearing to be consistently fairly relaxed. Admittedly it's only up to a point, but I'm relatively very hands off. Xenia makes the same claim. In a London context I'd be burned in Hampstead or Highgate as a witch.

I just checked the fsm figures for may nearest (not very near) grammar - just 1%. The neighbouring academy has 24% fsm, so it's not merely a locality/region thing.

24% must be way above the national average though gelatinous. Is it a very divided area in terms of income? If so them all sorts of mores come into play.

I think I am so relaxed I am almost comotose and refuse to pay for tutoring, never viewed a single piece of GCSE course work, never even remember their teachers' names, but I am sure the children will in some way imbibe the family work ethics and see what people earn and then make their own decisions. I think YT and I have an older daughter both doing a fairly similar first job in London.

I was reading Hello earlier (I do read the FT too every day... laughing as I type). The Goga Ashkenazi Kazakh lady is interviewed. (In fact I was with someone from that regoin yesterday for work - we probably need more girls getting into oil in the Stans rather than considering when to get their nails polished before they start work in the local call centre). Her main house is worth £28m. Just had her second baby. Mind you it probably helps to have an on / off oil billionaire partner. Anyway the reason I mentioned her is (a) she makes good comments about working parents not harming children but also (b) her older child seems to have a massive amount of organised activities. I feel like we have had just about the most gorgeous school summer holiday ever of peace and sun and just about nothing organised except a week away so everyone has just entertained themselves whih means so much more is then done (and certanily no tutoring although I ought to start a bit of music practice soon I suppose as they just won music scholarships and if they've forgotten how to play and sin that will not look too good.....)

Do poor clever children do better in areas without grammars nowadays? In other words have rich parents now gained a strangehold on the grammar system in a way that wasn't the case in the 1960s? That may be the case in some areas. Most areas have no grammars at all so it's not relevant.

@rabbit you aren't actually reading what those of us who have DCs at GSs are writing, are you? :(. We have told you our DCs weren't massively tutored (or tutored at all in some cases). We have told you they don't do masses of work after school (my DD1 seems to have virtually no homework, ever). But you persist in repeating your ill informed prejudices. It's very sad.

@yellow we'd be on the pyre together. Although I'm already on a pyre as far as the primary school parents are concerned for doing the job I do.

MordionAgenos - how silly of you to think those are my prejudices. I am merely repeating what I have been told by others about grammar schools these days (it isn't my experience of grammar school). Either they are lying, or some grammar schools are like that and this is precisely why those parents like them. You may not have massively tutored your children, but people on here have been telling seeker how silly she is not to have done that for her ds and anyone not doing it and getting caught out is massively complacent. Maybe you just haven't noticed these parents at your children's school, but they clearly exist and post on here.

Surely the MN Education threads are far more of a ghetto than any RL grammar though rabbit?

I certainly hope so, Yellowtip! If MN is to be believed, however, tutoring is the norm for any self-respecting middle class person in London and the Home Counties. And since it is undeniable that the market for private tutoring has blossomed in the last 20 years, it can't all be imagined by Mumsnet posters and nor can the decrease in social mobility. I don't think grammar schools are to blame for the decrease in social mobility, but I don't think they will cure it, either, and I don't think the reasoning behind their existence is very clear in this day and age, either.

And I don't think the poorer outcomes for children not at grammar schools, in areas like Kent where there is a grammar school system, are imagined, either. Comprehensive schools generally do better by the majority, but unless incredibly well run, probably less well by the 1-2% at the top of the ability spectrum. My children are at that top end of the spectrum, but I don't think it would be fair to design a whole education system focusing on them. You can't bring back grammar schools and think you've fixed anything meaningful. You have to know what you are doing with everyone else, make it coherent and have people buy into it, so that they don't think they are being seriously diddled by the ruling classes.

And if less than 50% of people enter their children for the 11 plus in a county where 23% of children go to grammar schools (as someone has mentioned upthread), that doesn't strike me as a successful system that the majority of people are buying into. It seems to me a lot of people are just assuming it isn't for the likes of them.

@rabbit Not all grammar schools are in London or the home counties. Some of the very best grammar schools are outside London and the home counties.

Actually, I know that the outcomes for non-grammar school, state educated children in Kent are worse than any other country, statistically, if looking at the supposed gold standard 5 A*-C GCSEs (and even worse still when requiring English and Maths to be in that list) with a higher proportion of schools deemed to be failing than in any other county. Isn't that a pretty strong advert against the system for the majority of people, if the majority of people hope for good academic qualifications for their children, in a day and age where these qualifications have the most currency and employment without them is not as easily come by as it used to be?

Doesn't it also explain the level of stress and paranoia of a lot of middle class Kent parents?????

Not a clue (re: national av fsm) yellow. I wouldn't have thought it was a particularly poor area (don't know it all that well to be honest), but the grammar would serve a much wider catchment than the academy. It's a superselective and children travel a long way to go there.

Anyone who is very happy with their dcs schools (as xenia, yellow & I am) are naturally far more likely to have a relaxed attitude to education. I don't think it's quite fair to criticise seeker or anyone else who has serious concerns about the education their dc are receiving on that count as we've never been in her shoes in that regard.

That point about parents who are happy with their school is obviously fair gelatinous, though I happen to have been pretty hands off right the way through, well before my DC went on to secondary. Secondly, I'm not in any way making a seeker specific point: generally it seems to be the case that parents these days are far more interventionist with their DCs' education, far more competitive and generally far more uptight. I would hazard a guess that high levels of intervention are probably more likely to be detrimental than an interestd but arms length approach. At the very least it should lend iself to DC taking responsibility for their own learning and success and to less pressure at exam time and all round.

I am sure that I have read somewhere that grammar schools (as opposed to comprehensive ones) tend to benefit most not the super, super gifted and talented but the more average pupils.

I've read that somewhere, too, gazzalw, although its impact was somewhat diminished by also having read that, when all factors have been taken into account, it is only the very brightest of the children at the grammar schools who obviously benefit from grammar schools and the rest can do just as well under a system of comprehensive education. But then my view these days of statistics and learned articles is that human beings are a bunch of biased individuals who cannot avoid slanting anything they research towards what they want to conclude.

seeker - so sorry to hear that. Rotten luck.

DS will be fine though . Remind him he is still very young and has a lot of growing up to do and things to achieve. We win some, we lose some sort of thing.

From my experience , kids get over such 'failures' very quickly.

Not the grammar school's fault really - is it? I am surprised you applied in the first place , I understood you were against selection of any sort.

But unfortunately this is exactly what selection is. Some get it, some don't.

Tell him, school is not everything. He can do very well in a comp.

Out of my all many DC , some in selective private, some in comps , the best A-levels results/uni place so far was produced by a "comp" one.

The UK isn't covered with grammar schools, so those of us in other areas have little choice. If our children don't get a place in an outstanding secondary, we can either home ed, make do, or send them to a private school. Why don't you just do one of these?? It's unfair, we all know that. You just have to get on with it or look at the other options. I know you're anti private school, but a grammar school is basically a free private school anyway, so you should look into it. Most offer bursaries and scholarships for bright children. I think you need to put your dislike of this system aside and do what's right for your child, as you clearly have problems with his allocated school.

I think seeker has been very clear though ladysybille that she actually doesnt have 'problems with this school': she has problems with the system in which it exists, which is a different thing.

So if her child did get in, the system would have been OK?

When seeker says "it's a good school" I visualise her with a peg on her nose.

If I was ideologically opposed to grammar schools, I wouldn't choose to live in one of the very few counties who operate a grammar system. But if you live somewhere else, you would face a very similar problem unless you could afford to live on the leafy avenues surrounding the desirable comprehensive schools.

With any school, you have to ask yourself it it's good because they come or they come because it's good.