Grammar school tests to be made 'tutor-proof'

[breadandbutterfly]

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/9653189/Grammar-school-tests-to-be-made-tutor-proof.html

[seeker]

Anybody who doesn't think the concepts of posh/not posh never cross children's minds is not a gritty realist.

[CouthyMowEatingBraiiiiinz]

Now that I DO agree with, Seeker!

[seeker]

Oops, double negative. But you know what I mean!

[Yellowtip]

I am a gritty realist seeker and I never, ever, ever thought of whether the school I was trying for was 'posh' or not. Sorry. Fact. Perhaps it was my odd half foreign background. Though my mother was a mc Scot. Please don't tell me what I thought.

[Yellowtip]

I don't think my own DC do the posh/ not posh thing either come to that. DD4 doesn't discriminate in any way at her own very mixed school. Is this a Kent/ Essex thing. It sounds utterly grim.

And I thought you were a man of the people too seeker.

[losingtrust]

To be fair at 11 I probably did not do the posh not posh thing but it kicked in a bit later but kids now seem a lot more aware. I do remember going to a friend's house when I was about 12 and they had napkins and brown bread which was the first time I thought somebody posh.

[losingtrust]

For me it was whether somebody used sterilized milk or not. When we switched I knew we'd made it!

[Yellowtip]

losingtrust I think that when I was a child aged 11 it wasn't a deal. I don't think seeker is allowing for change over time. seeker's Kent today is very likely not going to replicate my Croydon back then. And it's a bit imperious and not very imaginative to suggest that it does.

[losingtrust]

Unfortunately my kids know all too well what is posh or not posh even the 8 year old but it is not about money and certainly my des who is 12 tends to choose like-minded people. He hates chavs all money and no brains!

[losingtrust]

Mind you they all did stories about the titanic and my dd kept asking what class we would be in if we were on there so now it would be very apparent but it could be then we all grew up in close communities and did not mix as much. My mom went to gs from a local community and hated it as she had no local friends so she was very anti when we were growing up and we moved to an area where nobody did the 11 plus. My dad also anti as he ended up in secondary modern but ended up doing better academically as more motivated hence my aversion.

[CouthyMowEatingBraiiiiinz]

My 9yo knows who's posh and who isn't. It's glaringly obvious we aren't posh, we don't have holidays, not even UK ones, we can't afford the 'school' coat (and this is a state school), we don't have the embroidered PE kit.

I talk in a very 'Essex' accent, unlike 75% of the parents in the playground.

Even my 9yo with SN's has his ideas about who is 'posh' and who isn't.

[Blu]

It was a huge deal when I was at school!
LOL at the sterilised milk benchmark.

Of course the parents put the kids up for interview - or not - but as I say, you don't know who DIDN'T do it, due to feelings of intimidation. I can tell you that many people felt like that then, and do now. I was talking to some teenagers about it only last night, and how they felt intimidated and 'out of place' on a visit to an Oxford college. Some unpicking of the issues and some conversation made them realise it could indeed be for them - but it took someone to give that perspective.

Yellowtip - you haven't actually said why you think an interview is an improvement on a test.

[CouthyMowEatingBraiiiiinz]

It's hard to talk effectively about current affairs at 11 if your parents don't watch the news or buy broadsheet newspapers.

I first thought of one of my friends as 'posh' when I went to her house and she had a piano, a music room to put it in, AND a dining room too. None of these were things I had encountered on my council estate.

While it never altered our friendship, the differences between us WERE apparent.

[CouthyMowEatingBraiiiiinz]

And I'm talking about 20 years ago. So if it was obvious to me 20 years ago that my friend was 'posh' compared to me, then I'm quite sure it is obvious now. If not more so.

[Blu]

The thing about direct grant schools was that while half the pupils were the highest achieving 11+ scholarship girls, the other half were 'merely' selective private school pupils, and some had been there since the prep school and hadn't even passed the 11+. There were non-posh students alongside the mc ones - and they were the really clever ones.

[piprabbit]

How long would it take to interview the 4000 children currently sitting 11+ in my area? How would you go about recruiting and training enough, very high quality interviewers to be sure that it all happens in a fair and timely fashion?

[sashh]

It was the golden jubliee last summer so I expect that sharp seven year olds might be able to work it out.

2012 - 50 =1962

It was the diamond jubilee, 2012 - 60 = 1952

Still not the year of the coronation

[ReallyTired]

lol... I wouldn't get into scary selective school.

Imagine with seven year olds they are looking at a ball park figure rather than exact answer. Ie. they might cross off any seven year old who though that the queen was crowned last year or in 1066. I doult that any sensible school would worry too much if a seven year old said 1952 instead of 1953. Prehaps an intelligent interviewer would ask the child how they came to their answer.

A child explaining their thinking processes (even if they get the answer wrong) shows more about their intelligence.

[gazzalw]

I am very uneasy about all of this and I say this as someone's whose DS now attends a super-selective.

I think the problem is that this whole posh/non-posh debate (which is not terribly helpful but unfortunately is the reality of the situation) has probably meant that the very socio-economic demographic whose children would truly benefit from a grammar school education (such as me when I was a child), tend to self-select themselves out of the running. Not always (before I am shouted down) but often....

It all comes back to this 'added value' debate. My DS passed three 11+ exams (but then we are educated, if not monied parents) whereas a couple of his classmates from less educated backgrounds did not, but only by a narrow margin. Now, I would not have wanted to do our DS out of his place, but it could be argued that given their relative backgrounds the others actually did better than DS - does that make sense?

[Chandon]

yess gazzalw, and that is the problem some people have with grammar schools.

but at the same time nobody should blame you for doing the best for your DC.

and that is the root of the whole issue.

[seeker]

Which neatly sums up why grammar schools should be abolished. It wouldn't matter if they were all in a comprehensive school.

[LettyAshton]

The cleverest girl at my school (and she was exceptionally clever) was probably the poorest. And I don't mean playing at poor, either (you know what I mean here: the beat-up Subaru Forrester, the ancient Boden, etc etc), she came from quite a scary council estate.

BUT - her parents were behind her. They worked alongside her at home and helped her until she was helping them. She did very, very well.

You are never, ever going to level the playing field as long as children have different homes. Note - I did not say backgrounds . And, as in my example and in many others "poor" does not preclude success - what does is if your home life is not in any way aspirational.

[gazzalw]

I wonder if you're aspirational from some homes and have a great sense of entitlement from others?

[losingtrust]

Let that is an interesting point and links in to my son's views on chavs. All money and no brains. When I was a teenager a sign of being posh was a tv in the bedroom. This was after strerilised milk!! However now probably not having a tv in the bedroom is a sign of coming from a nurturing background although not always. A family who may encourage reading at night and not tv. Therefore money should not be a barrier to progression and it redefines what posh is in terms of education. Research has shown that parents influence is more important than money. However the attitude that in order to get into grammar you need years of tuition or private primary links into money which still makes the grammar school system an issue. If everybody went to streamed comps the bright kids would flourish from any financial background but you would expect the poor kid with a nourishing educational parent to do much better as a result of taking away the grammar barrier of tuition and more expensive school uniform which like it or not was a barrier for my parents generation and even then my dad's sister was tutored for grammar by the local priest.

[CecilyP]

There was a direct grant GPDST school a reasonable journey from where I lived in London when I was 11, and I thought it was posh. Even at 11, I was bright enough and knowledgable enough to know that it was a private school that offered a proportion of free places to pupils who had achieved exceptionally well in the 11+. I knew this despite having only one British parent. You also had to apply to the school separately; it was not part of the ILEA preference system. Some girls from my class in state primary school went on to this school - they were already quite posh before they went.