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,

Thebestisyettocome--I don't actually have a house.!

The madrigal group thing was a joke.

And my point is that it is a good school. The problem is that because we have the system we have the negativity about it has not come from me or from ds's dad- it is just in the air of the town. The remark I quoted from the teacher is particularly outrageous because it was from a teacher, but is typical of the sort of remark he has been hearing, despite my attempts to protect him, since results day. If you have a test where people pass or fail, it is difficult for the people who fail not to feel like failures. And I am sad because, I tried very hard to shooed him from that, and I have obviously failed.

We moved areas of the country, from one where there are no grammar schools to being just inside one where there is, when DS1 was just about to start YR6.

He is bright so I took advice from his old HT about wether to put him in for the 11+ or not. He was of the opinion that it would be better for DS1, who had little self confidence, to go to one of the local comprehensives and be in the top sets for everything, rather than in the middle at a Grammar school. (fortunately we had the choice of 3 comprehensives, all excellent)

We chose this for DS1. He wasn't the only bright one there, they accommodated him really well and he left school last year with all A*s and As at GCSE.

He had the option of going to the grammar school sixth form or the local sixth form college for his A levels, he chose the latter. He has just got excellent AS level results, beating all of his friends who chose the grammar school or independent schools.

It is perfectly possible to get a very good education and set of exam results without attending a grammar or independent school.

Seeker is a mother and she has every right to feel protective towards her son. It is grim that we cannot insulate our children from bad luck in life.

Seeker has to work with the system that she has. Her son needs peers of similar ablity and that is why she entered him for the eleven plus.

"The fact he didn't means that he perhaps approached the whole thing in a too relaxed frame of mind. it's a classic trap a lot of 'really bright' children fall into, at GCSE, A level and 11+ level. "

How could he had approached the eleven plus differently. The fact that he did not have tutoring was not his fault. He is very young and needed help to prepare for the eleven plus.

I remember failing exams for posh independent schools as my parents had refused to pay for tutoring. It is quite a crushing experience and can knock a child's confidence to pieces. I feel for any child who fails an exam at ten/ eleven. I am thankful that we are not in a grammar school area.

Listen, if my child failed the 11+ and was headed for a crappy rinky dink secondary modern with no serious subjects, just loads of Leisure Studies and Security Management HNDs, I would be incandescent.

But seeker this is not the case.

And all my guff about footy teams and modeling and crooned teeth is to make the point that kids will always have some point of perceived weakness, something that people will comment on, and that as much as we would like to protect our children from teasing / feelings of insecurity / victimization, they will always have something they are sensitive about, whether it's a best friend who is recruited into Manchrster United's junior squad or friends all going off to grammar school or whatever.

The main thing to focus on is that the school is actually good. There are people in non-grammar areas whose children are allocated totally shitty comprehensives and there's nothing they can do about it at all. Other than go private, which is still an option for seeker. It's not just grammar areas which are riddled with injustices.

seeker If you don't actually have a house, why can't you move?

ReallyTired. I think the point you make about tutoring is a red herring. What is obvious is that a clever lad failed to pass an exam he could easily have done well in. As I said earlier this is something that happens to lots of clever children. Some children resign themselves to further failure, others use it as a tool to motivate them and go on to fulfil their potential.

Did you appeal Seeker? Was your grammar over subscribed?

I think I actually agree with Greythorne. Either you are a victim or you aren't. If the school is good, you aren't a victim, you were just unlucky not to get your first choice. If you are actually headed for 5 years of being bullied for being a stuck up snob who thinks he's clever until you dumb down to fit in, and day upon day of boring lessons disrupted by bad behaviour, that's different and not much to look forward to. Seeker's ds has had his confidence dented, which is not a good thing, and is busy reassessing what it means to be him. Seeker needs to make sure that at the end of it, his view is that he is clever and he's damn well going to prove it, and enjoy proving it, too.

Seeker, we had this 2 years ago. Ds's 2 best friends got places at the Grammar with fantastic scores in the 11+. DS passed, but with a lower score. We are all out of the area, so he was put on the reserve list. We had tears and lots of moments of huge self doubt.

I'm pleased to say that I went above DH and refused to appeal. DS is now doing really well in another school, which is co-ed rather than all boys, and he loves it!

This anguish will pass and he will make new friends... it's just hard for him to understand that now.

Seeker lives on a boat as I recall, which while it sounds like a mobile kind of thing, probably has a mooring in Kent. Additionally, she may well have other ties to the area such as a job, family, caring responsibilties, who knows what? There are just loads of reasons why she might be unable to move.

Seeker
Was your don coached for the 11+?

Very few parents pull their children from the 11+ - many don't want their children to perceive themselves as being treated differently to their siblings. I know of a lovely family who have a child who finds academic work difficult, but is taking the test next year. His parents don't want him to think that they expect any less of him than his brothers, one of whom passed and one of whom didn't pass. Being pulled from the 11+, right away, makes people think you're 'thick'.

Whether that is right or wrong is debatable, but it is being done because the parents care about his feelings.

Son!
Not don.

I didn't mean right or wrong thinking you're thick - I added a sentence. Whoops!

I meant right or wrong to make that decision...
Oh dear, now I feel bad........

Dear Seeker's son.

You didn't pass the 11+ but that does not make you stupid or not bright and more importantly it does not stop you being a wonderful person.

The 11+ is one day of your life. You didn't pass. This is the only time in the rest of your life that you will not get a second chance. It's not fair, it's not right but unfortunately it is what happens where you live.

If you do not pass your driving test, GCSEs or any other test you have a chance to take it again.

In the rest of the country (with a few exceptions) you would not sit the 11+.

Where I live, there is only one grammer school, and it is for girls, so you would not be able to go to grammer school if you lived here because you are a boy. Does that mean all girls that go to that school are cleverer than all the boys in the town? Of course they are not.

This exam dictates which school you go to, and that is it. You are just as clever and wonderful as you were the day before the test.

Lots of people don't pass their 11+, but get good exam results and have successful careers. Just follow the link for some examples.

www.friendsreunited.com/celebrities-who-failed-the-11-plus-exam/b/f39e9700-8bb3-492d-a5ae-a00a01316556

sashh - that list is incorrect on a number of counts. Firstly I know for a fact Robert Kilroy Silk went to Birmingham Grammar. Ann Widdicombe didn?t take the 11+ and went to an independent school. Paul Merton famously claims he went to a secondary modern but in fact went to a comprehensive

You could add to that list people like Einstein and Newton but neither of them took an 11+ because it did not exist.

There is a big difference between failing the 11+ and not taking it or taking different exams or even taking it, passing it and still being stuffed in an SM - as I well know.

The only one I know who is truly an SM boy is John Prescott. Maybe we all want Slugger Prescott as a role model for our kids?
I think in many ways he does say it all about what happens when you go to SM as an 11+ failure.

Alan Titchmarsh and Delia Smith definitely went to secondary modern schools - I can't be bothered to look the rest up but tons of highly successful people went to secondary modern schools. Rather than look to celebrities you could just look at ordinary people and find the masses of successful people who had successful careers from a secondary modern school.

Colin Firth went to a secondary modern school - his parents were both academics - DCs of academics can fail 11+! My very intelligent friend from secondary modern had Oxbridge educated parents and a brother at grammar school. She went to university - and a good one. Many did. In Colin Firth's case I expect that early life in India and Nigeria meant that he missed out on education.

Anita Roddick was at a secondary modern and went on to be a teacher - a route for many secondary modern pupils- before she became a business woman.

I am not going on but it is incorrect to say that John Prescott was the only secondary modern one from the list.

Jabed- I do think you have to accept that "secondary modern", or high schools.( it's not just me that uses that term, btw- it's the one that KCC uses) are very different now to how they were in your (and my day). I do think your posts could be very alarming to anyone who doesn't know that. The school my ds will be going to is a good school. It offers a wide range of GCSEs and has a rapidly improving 6th form. It has an excellent and inspiring Head. The problem specifically for a child like mine is that there will be very few like him- and for a bright, competitive boy who likes to pit his wits against his peers this could be an issue. The education provided is, quite rightly, pitched towards the middle and lower ability children who a the vast majority of the school population. They will of course cater for my son ( or I will wantnto know the reason why) but there will be about 10 at the most at his current ability. Understandable that the majority of resources and effort go to the other 179.

The problem for all the children in the school is the outside perception of it. It is impossible to avoid the general feeling that it is the school you go to if you either weren't considered bright enough to take the 11+ or failed it. I have tried to explain this before, but people dismissed it as my imagination, or me projecting my feelings onto the situation. But it is very real- as exemplified by the remark by the teacher I quoted earlier. It is a small town- the two schools are less than a mile apart. How can it not be that the children who go up the hill to the high school are going to feel, to varying degrees, inferior to the children who go down the hill to the grammar? Even if, in many cases, they will emerge in 5 years with very similar qualifications? Surely that's just human nature? And it just can't be good for individuals or a society to do that to them.

It isn't and the feeling still lingers decades on and then gets dismissed as 'a chip on your shoulder'!

Wasn't Seb Coe a famous 11+ failure? Although the schools he went to are now comprehensives, I am sure that when he started his secondary education the one he went to was a Secondary Modern.

I have got friends who went to SMs and have done very well in their adult lives. They were lucky in that they went to 'good' SMs. They all say that you don't get over that feeling of being branded a failure at 11.

When the letters with our results were being dished out at school our headmaster tried to feed us with some guff that you had been selected for the right school, but you could turn down a Grammar School place and go to the Secondary Modern, you couldn't do it the other way round.

Poor seeker's ds: my dd happens to be going to the one of two comprehensives that her primary feeds to which is not the same as her three closest friends, and feels rather sad and nervous about that- if you added selection to that situation, I'm sure she'd be feeling much worse because obviously not being allowed in because you did didn't pass a test is rather more hurtful than not being allowed in because you live in a different street. Of course it is!

when things like this happen to our dds, as naff as it sounds, we refer to an episode of REd Dwarf where the time space continuum or whatever is altered when Rimmer gets held down a year at school as an eight year old- you're supposed to think the successful confident Rimmer was the one who didn't get held down, but... You guessed it.... Not that we usually use RD as a guide to life of anything, but just that what seems like a rum deal at the time may work out in all sorts of ways you can't predict right now.

Not everyone who doesn't get into grammar school need turn into a bitter resentful adult!

seeker I have no doubt that you tried hard to protect your DS from the "grammar school children are cleverer thus better than you" ethos but you were swimming against the tide. My DS's only spent a few years in state ed in Kent yr R - 2 but they quickly picked up from the school staff and those with siblings further up the school about the "Kent Test" and that clever children did it and went on to "nice" schools. Everyone else either went to church or paid and there were loads of schools in the area for "nice middle class children who couldn't pass the Kent test" you heavily critisize independent ed but IMO the state sector certainly in parts of Kent is equally divisive.

Oh seeker I suspect that this is just a pre-secondary wobble. All dc have them.
DS is 13 and still pretty damn nervous about the school he's joining in September.

Best thing all round is to acknowledge the fears and play it down. As you say, he's bright, well supported and it's a good school he's going to.

ps turning it into another anti grammar school thread probably isn't playing it down .