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,

It does fascinate me that people would rather berate me than actually
address the issues.
Or does nobody actually mind that a system intended to give the
disadvantaged a step up has been hijacked by the the privileged middle
classes?

No it is not a comprehensive school. The top 23% are in a different
sxhool. The school
Attended by the remaining 77% is
not a comprehensive.

But what is it that makes you so convinced that GSs are full of the 'privelidged middle classes'?

There are a lot of children who come from families who fall somewhere between being on benefits and being definatly middle class and earning enough to pay HRT or afford private fees.

I would really like to know what your definition of middle class is.

By that definition Seeker, is any school truly a comprehensive if children in its catchment go private?

Bamboo,

Comprehensive = takes the full range of abilities = no children 'creamed off' inro other state schools such as grammar schools.

By definition, no secondary school in a grammar school can be comprehensive (think of what the word 'comprehensive' means). 'Secondary modern' is the best available term to describe them, as 'true comprehensives' in non grammar areas are often called so and so high school, (as are some selective private schools, particularly those for girls).

The other schools in superselective areas are 'nearly true' comprehensives - it is perhaps not fair to call a school a secondary modern if only a very tiny minority go on to grammar (it would be like calling a comrehensive school a grammar school just because a small minority of low ability SEN children go to a special school).

In areas like Kent, where there is a fully segregated system, then the 'other' schools are NOT comprehensive - they do not have a proper representation of all levels of ability. This secondary modern is the only accuarte term to describe them.

Outraged, I was wondering that myself as i posted.

However, the 7% or so who go private are spread across the ability range. Therefore their removal does not skew the ability range a school caters for to any great degree (it does skew it slightly at the 'very low ability / SEN' end I suspect - but no more than variations of catchment etc cause variation between comprehensive schools).

The removal of 23% of children, all at the top end of the ability range, DOES remove a school's ability to be called comprehensive.

@seeker the system wasn't intended to give the disadvantaged a step up. It was intended to give the brightest children the opportunity to fulfill their potential, whether they were disadvantaged or not. Then, as now, the privileged went to posh schools.

Many people are taking issue with your posts because you are displaying inconsistencies both in your actions and in your arguments. One minute you claim that the brightest children do not, in fact go to grammar schools, you complain about tutooring which you claim is pervasive and has the result that privileged dullards get the grammar school places that would otherwise go to brighter children. The next moment you claim that the schools in which these children who are defrauded of their GS places by the privileged tutored children find themselves are not in fact comprehensive schools because the brightest kids aren't there. You can't have it both ways - which is it?

It's not a top 23% and bottom 77% though as you know well. It's more like half of the top 50% at one school with the bottom 50% + the other half of the top 50% at the other.

In a much poorer catchment area the mix at a local comprehensive school could be about the same.

I'm sorry, Seeker, but you've commented on how unfair this system is quite a bit. The UK education system is unfair, you just have to do what's right for your child. If you want to change it, then stand as an MP or something.

Since CTC is available up to what most reasonable people would call a very comfortable income, I'd estimate that many, many, many gs parents 'claim benefits'. The FSM is a ludicrous indicator if it's used to define exclusively who is 'poor' or 'not middle class'. Are those on a joint income of £20,000 somehow comfortably off by dint of falling outside the cut-off for FSM? What a nonsense.

And I'd have said schools these days can properly only be called 'secondary moderns' if the resemble the old style secondary moderns, with their different syllabus, only lower tier exams and a culture of little academic hope. Is that what the non grammar schools in Kent are really like?

In Kent, however, creaming 23% of children off the top does have a sufficiently detrimental effect on the remaining 77% for the results of children in that 77% to be less good than the results of children from similar backgrounds in parts of the country where the creaming off does not take place in the same proportions.... meaning that Kent's high schools are not like comprehensives anywhere else. To say they are as good as comprehensives, because there are comprehensives in really poor areas that perform just as badly isn't really comparing like with like.

Lots of cross posts. teacher it may not be accurate to call the schools comprehensives as, on semantic grounds, clearly they are not. But nor is it accurate to call them secondary moderns, with all the baggage that suggests.

Oh I agree that having a system that removes such a large proportion of children doesn't leave an area with a true comprehensive, but then I wonder if any schools that have private schools nearby can really be called comprehensive?

Private secondary schools may or may not take children of a certain academic ability, but they do only take one group of children, bar a couple on scholarships who are probably only different in terms of income. So it's not really all that different.

I expect the 7% statistic is not true of all areas, I think it's probably much higher than that where I live, and I still think our local comprehensive is comprehensive enough to be called one.

...it's just that one of the issues that jumps out is that you were fine with the system when you had 1 child in grammar and the other potentially. Now that it did not go as you wanted, you claim to be against "the system" but I think that if your son got in on appeal, you would be quite happy to educate them within the system, and your anger would dissolve. Right?

Im imagine in kent as its full grammer system that

the range of incomes of parents whose kids attend the grammer are variable.

I also think that theres that push child to better life when at lower end of income scale.

We not well off but if we had option of private tutoring to get child into school they wished to go to that was good school then we would do it.

yes its unfair but the whole uk education is blighted by unfairness.

im assuming seeks boy is bright but not had much tiuition so maybe wasent the content was the format that he failed on as shes clearly a bright boy.

Comprehensive schools are comprehensive if they just ignore that section of the population which would rather ignore them .

I was made to feel very posh at my primary school and always felt far better off, materially, than the overwhelming majority of my friends at grammar school. Then I went to Oxford and realised that there were a lot more people from my sort of background in the world than I had suspected.

It wouldn't Chandon. As has been pointed out already, Seeker has steadfastly held on to these views for a long time, and I from reading her posts I have no doubt her opinion would be exactly the same even if her child had scored 100% in the 11+ and been offered a place at every grammar school in the country.

I hope that if grammars are re-introduced the architect of the new system comes up something a little more satisfactory than the Kent model. I'm very grateful not to have to live there, it sounds bloody.

To be fair, seeker has always been against the grammar system and looked set to continue to be against it regardless of her ds's 11+ outcome.

I'm not saying her ds's new school is like a comprehensive, it clearly isn't. I'm trying to say that there probably exist comprehensive schools that are worse, so it makes no sense to say you'd be happy with any school that was technically a comprehensive.

Faith schools also distort the comprehensiveness of school intakes as well as private schools, grammar schools and leafiness of catchment. However you look at education in this country it's riddled with inequalities of which 11+ is only a small part.

@yellow I strongly suspect that if grammar schools are reintroduced by this government they will only be restricted to very leafy catchment areas.

Well they won't be re-introduced in any imaginative way Mordion, that's for sure.

I still can't quite rationalize the being against grammars on principle whilst selling out by taking the tests and compounding that by accepting a place. If you're prepared to do that, how different is that to shooting up principle and going private?

Mordion you are probably right.

shame really, my dad went to a grammar school in the 1950's which was in the area where the riots took place. definitely no leafy suburb. perhaps they should have been kept and there wouldn't be such competition for the remaining ones.

there was definitely more social mobility then I think.

gelatinous, I don't know how you can claim to be against a system, and then support it actively by trying to get your own kids in.

It is no different from being against the existence of private schools, but then sending your own kids private for "personal reasons".

It is just a bit hypocritical. And not many people are tolerant of hypocrisy.

Outraged, I don't agree, I don't think she would have started this thread in that case.

Also, my heart isn't really bleeding for a parent of a child who is obviously capable, bright, top of his class. He will surely do well. He really will.

But I do agree the UK education system is not great and IMO often lets down the brightest kids as well as the really weak ones.

One of the problems I have with the system here, is that from age 5 or so kids are streamed in HA, MA and LA, and once you are in LA, the expectations will be very low. My DS, at age 6 in his SATs was already "written off" by the school as he would not make level 4b by y6 anyway, and he started doing worse and worse, and he is not the only one. Children are put into streams/tiers/comp-grammar/ etc much too early, and there seems to be no chance for a child who doesn't "switch on" until a later age. parents of HA children rarely question the system, even though their children are often held back.

I wish schools would have a good level "minimum" expectation for ALL children, it is too differentiated and you are labeled HA/MA/LA way too soon with disastrous results.

I agree with seeker that the current system is not fair. And it is frustrating too.

@alemci do you mean Tottenham? Or Croydon?