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,

I don't think all ten year olds will necessarily approach the 11+ as a game. I had a friend in primary school with very pushy parents who was a complete bag of nerves by the time she was 10. I don't know what happened in her 11+ because I moved house and lost touch, but she regularly disappointed with end of term exams and piano exams even though she was bright and fine when not being put under pressure.

Fruity, the points you make in favour of comps are intelligent, reasonable & wrong.

Schools are busy places - I know because I work in one. Each school has its focus and its priorities. A grammar does not just select-in mostly bright children, it also selects-out mostly disruptive ones. A grammar is therefore able to focus on managing the learning of a narrow ability band of pretty well behaved children (although they may well have plenty of complex issues of their own).

A grammar should be an elite institution, preparing suitable children for an elite future - high pressure, high demand, high reward. A child who is not willing to do his homework, and give it a little extra something beyond what his classmates can, might just not have what it takes to be a research chemist, human rights lawyer, FTSE 100 CEO or Chancellor of the Exchequer. If the state system cannot provide that kind of person, then I suppose we have to outsource it to the private sector...

Most comps however have a wide range of kids from the able & aspirational through the able or aspirational right down to the violently disaffected. It is impossible for a single school management team to provide the level of service to each of its pupils that a grammar can.

One of the joys of the academy programme (Its main joy, in fact) is that instead of having to follow LEA diktaten to be all things to all children, schools will be able to focus on a particular kind of child and a particular kind of outcome. My own school has decided to go for the violently disaffected end of the market: hard times but happy times (what the hell - !)

I thought you might ask me that yellow. No, I didn?t teach them rocket science the day they were born. Like everybody else, the day a child is born, (s)he comes with a clean sheet in the brains dept. Many scientists have said a child learns the most on the first day of his/her life and progressingly less and less as each day passes. In other words, the older you get, the less you learn. But does that mean one gets more and more stupid (for want of a better word) as one gets older?

Nope! What one learns, one (usually and hopefully) remembers. The knowledge is accumulated.

Back to ?tutoring? my kids on day one, I merely tried to look in their eyes and catch their attention. The idea is to make the child aware of my presence - another human being. Of course, the child may not even know what is it that (s)he sees in front of him/her at this stage but that is immaterial. The mere fact that (s)he is seeing something is lesson learnt on day one. Lesson progresses in subsequent days, weeks, months and years. One never stops learning!

You are assuming tutoring only involves academic subjects. But like I said, my definition of tutoring involves everything under the sun. When you read to your child, you are tutoring them. When you bathe your child, you are tutoring them, i.e. to keep clean. When you feed your child, you are tutoring them, i.e. hunger needs to be satisfied, etc. When you show your child (for example) another approach to solve a maths question and how it relates to real life, you're tutoring them.

As to how they?d have fared in life had they not been so tutored, well, I dare say for a start, they won?t be so streetwise and self-confident. They probably couldn't have asked me searching questions if something I said didn't make sense to them. They probably wouldn?t have taken an interest in sport and finished their graded piano exams to name but just a few things out of the hundreds if not thousands of things that they have been tutored. They probably wouldn?t have achieved the academic excellence like they did and visited the many countries of the world like they did.

Oh well if looking at, bathing and reading to your child is tutoring him or her then I think I've done that too. Fancy that!

Blimey, I did all those things when ds was younger and he didn't achieve academic excellence!

Hey ho, I guess you can get good tutors and bad ones......

Yes, which is why I don't understand why parents think "tutoring" is such a negative and bad thing. Most people probably would have done it but do not admit to doing it. I've had parents who sent their childern to me for tution and almost beg me not to let anybody know about it. How ridiculous!

No, I don't believe a word, I'm afraid, when parents say their kids are "not tutored".

Sorry, two days- misunderstood.

Is there anything I can say to convince people that the issues I have with the 11+ are nothing to do with my son failing it? That i have had the same issues with it since I first understood how it worked, and the more I find out about it the more I think it is iniquitous and divisive? That, although I don't think it 's the perfect school for him, both ds and I are quite happy about the school going to and we are both sure he will do well- and I have said this to him from the beginning? That I don't need to "move on" because I remain opposed politically and ideologically to the idea of selective education- and particularly to the 11+ exam, which I think unfairly favours the children of the privileged educated middle classes?

I've just read, petneras's post and I take it all back. Ds was tutored for 10.5 years for his 11+- who knew!!!!!!!!

flexybex- that is certainly not how the appeal process works in Kent. I assume you must be in some other 11+ county.

Quite honestly, I don't think people outside the system quite understand the massive industry that has grown up around the 11+, along with all the anxieties and parental manipulation that accompanies it. So, no, I don't think you can say anything to convince them.

Yes, I'm in backward Bucks.

There you go. We all tutor our kids. Admittedly some do it better that others. Some pay for others to do it for them for whatever reason(s) - it's not a question of whether the educational system in the UK is fair or unfair. If you think the UK educational system is unfair, wait till you go to some other faraway countries where they actually have quotas as to who goes to university.

Ah, Bucks, don't you win an appeal if you're a hard man to hounds there?

I think the problem is the many people Ching to idea of grammar schools because of aa romantic vision of eager faced miner's sons and gardener's daughters walking barefoot through the dawn to better themselves and climb the sunny uplands of academe under the benevolent stewardship of some charismatic pedagogue after being spotted as clever by the vicar......

It isn't like that now. Actually it never was.

Oh Peteneras, don't be such a pratt!! The normal, natural interaction between parent & child is NOT tutoring!

Tutoring is when, for whatever reason, you pay someone outside of your child's normal social and/or educational cycle and / or circle to provide them with additional learning, for whatever reason.

It might be to help them get into a particular school; it might be because you think that being part of a classical music ensemble will help damp down their hyperactivity; it night even be because you think a child fencing in the background will help you seduce the sexy young dentist down the street... The point is, you are buying in an external service.

I have taught DD to cook & clean; DP has taught her to use bleach to catch fish & clear DNA: depending on her career choices, either could be useful but neither is tutoring.

She also speaks some Arabic and is Grade 4 on the Saxophone: that is tutoring.

For goodness sake peteneras. We don't ALL tutor our kids, because some of us do not have the financial means. And some of us don't give a shit. And some of us don't understand the system. And some of us don't understand the language. And some of us lead transient lives, because our husbands are in the forces, and we have no idea that tutoring in our next home is necessary.

Tutoring is a niche pursuit.

I have q friend who says she home educates because she does qn hour's work ith hr children aft school. [helpful]

On that note, seeker I'm off to pursue some beagles!!!!

The one thing that made an impression on me, from day one, was that a baby is not a clean sheet of paper in any department. I had thought they were. I have brought up 3 in my way and they couldn't be more different- and that includes the 'brain department'.

OhIdoLiketobe's post is exactly what I pay fees to academically selective schools for. Of course most parents try to do their best for their chidlren at home too and some are useless parents at that and some very good. Some are great as parents but they have a child who is not very bright or has other difficulties.

The reason children from high income and middle class homes do better is not just inherited higher IQ it is because parents are ilke peternas. We explain and try not to shout. We talk. By the age of 3 children from educated homes have a massively higher vocabulary than children from home where parents are not very clever or don't talk to them.

seeker I am sure most of MN accept that you have been expressing your opposition to the GS system on here for years.

However many (most?) feel that actions speak louder than words, and that your actions have not been consistent with ptoper opposition.

Will you convince people otherwise? I don't think. But actually why care? Btter to move on.

As for the issue of GS in general, I suspect that whist it is clearly a major issue for you - your pet interest - it is not for the majority of us. In the scheme of things it is somehting that is probably unfair, but hardly a tragedy.

To b ehonest most of us can probably point to half a dozen situations that are equally unfair and take place in a non-grammar school area.

seeker, I am afraid you are just not being honest with yourself here (post at midnight), that is why so many people don't "buy it".

I understand your frustration at your DS not being with, what you think is his academic peer group. I agree the system is "not fair".

The problem is (and you ignore everyone who mentions this) that on the one hand you are ideologically opposed to grammar schools, yet on the other hand really want your children to be at the Grammar.

That is just a bit hypocritical, hence the bun fight that ensued.

Don't you see that?

Which is exactly why those who don't get that at home need the very best education to compensate Xenia. In this unfair world the parents don't care, or are inadequate, and they get the worst.

I think that seeker wants her DCs at a comprehensive but sadly she isn't near enough to one for daily travel.

I think seeker has set the comprehensive system up as the holy grail.

Yet many many posters at the coal face will attest that it is deeply flawed.

If I was unfortunate enough to live in a grammar area, I'd still put ds up for the 11+ if that's what he wanted, and if I thought the grammar was a better school and a better fit.

Wouldn't stop me wishing I didn't feel compelled to though.