Changes to 11-plus to stop middle-class parents 'buying' access to grammars by hiring tutors

[breadandbutterfly]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2241411/Changes-11-plus-stop-parents-buying-access-selective-schools-hiring-tutors-children.html

Similar article in the Times apparently but paywall.

The reason that everyone tutors now is that the job market has changed.

Once upon a time jobs were:
Professional: Paid a good salary, no overtime but might be benifits such as company car. Eg Lawyer, business executive. Jobs through nepotism or University. Might be able to work your way up from shop floor in certain industries. Pay increased throughout your working life.

Skilled: Hourly paid, benefits such as overtime, holiday pay negotiated by a strong union. Good salary after your aprenticeship, unlikely to increase much during your working life. Nepotism in certain industries, eg Film for some roles.

Unskilled: Poorly paid, very little job security, little chance for improvement.

In Slough with it's Grammar school system it was better that your nice but dim son, went to the local secondary-modern, left school at 16, got a trade and was earning good money by 19/20. Very few people tutored because the wrong kid in the wrong school would never work and a decent salery was available through other routes.

A huge chunk of those skilled, well paid jobs have gone, hence the rush to get to University.

Eton school boys were all weird and really looked down on by my school, posh boys, bought brains, never thought they'd get anywhere. Never miind the tutors it's Dad's money that really gets you places.

I can't believe some of the generalisations made on here. We were a working class family, my ds took the test and passed. We moved to a grammar school area so he wouldn't have to go to school and get bullied for being intelligent. His primary school said they had to concentrate on the 'lesser abled'. Our parents worked hard to give us a better education. My sons school has a mixture of children from private schools and looked after children. I would never begrudge him that opportunity.

There is no way on earth either DH or I would have made it into a grammar and we were both very academic. Our parents would never have paid for tutors and would never have tutored us. They would certainly never have paid our bus fares into school , the expensive uniform , never have taken us to sit the exam. Both DH and I also had very poor attendance because of our family backgrounds, so in some ways we were late bloomers, DH especially.

Having said that, we went to the kinds of schools that would make most MNERs bleach their eyeballs in fear, we were never bullied for our geeky ways. We were not Mr and Mrs popular either but certainly not picked on.

Most of my son's friends at the grammar are not from state primary schools, they tend to be from the preps who openly advertise themselves as prep schools who almost offer a guaranteed place at the grammars.

I don't think any parents begrudge their children their opportunities. It's the fact that their children don't have the opportunities your son is lucky to have that they begrudge.

In our area, the kids take the exam in their primary school and they all sit practise papers. The parents don't have to take them to sit the test. The primary school assess them and give parents an honest opinion in whether that are suitable, not necessarilly academically but also in terms of work ethos.

How do they do that Arisbottle? Do they tutor kids specifically for 11+ within an inch of their lives..or is there another secret? If the former, is a new "tutor-proof" test likely to change the intake in favour of state primaries?

(accepting for the moment that there could be such a thing as a tutor-proof test)

That's why we moved from inner city london so he could have a better opportunity. Grammar schools tend to be in better areas. Lots of parents, especially ethnic minorities have moved to get into better schools. Parents will do all they can to give their children the best education they can. Like it or not, the future is grim for our children especially under Gove.

You have to go and sit the test here. My daughter was teased mercilessly by the other children on her table for not going for the grammar. They told her that she must be thick as only thick children don't go to the grammar . She has also been teased for not having a tutor , Apparantly only thick poor children don't have tutors.

I have not taught in a prep school but having spoken to friends who have their children in prep schools they are heavily tutored in school and then parents have the income to tutor them outside if school. I suppose because they are not having to study the national curriculum they can rehearse skills needed for entrance exams, whether this is for a grammar or for a scholarship to an independent.

here is a canadariffic fact: there are no grammar schools, and private schools are mostly rare, and confined to large cities. i grew up in a town of some hundred thousand people, with no private school at all. this is pretty standard.

In Quebec about a fifth of DC's go to private school and in Montreal it's about 40%.
(this may be a bit out of date)

Laqueen, but do you really think that all bright children - or even all middle class children, come to that- are innately well-behaved? I'm afraid I don't. And of course you can be bright and well behaved and polite to teachers and still be a horrendous little bully, too.... It seems to me terribly naive to assume you can eliminate all nastiness or bad behaviour of any kind just by making sure your intake is either academic, or middle class.

@Arisbottle - You never taught in a prep but you think that having friends whose kids went to prep equips you to generalise about what goes on inside a prep???

Because the child who gave my daughter the unhappiest time in primary was probably the brightest in the class: very able, very manipulative, very skilled at playing one child off against another. Luckily, they're both at different state comprehensives now.

notnagging - well said.

Arisbottle - your experience is not my experience. V few kids from prep schools at either my dd's school or mine.

CrapJokeThing - agree absolutely.

(would also suggest that if the children in the high school you've seen, laqueen, seem wary of and disrespectful towards, academic achievement, it might be because they were told at the age of ten that it wasn't for them and they weren't having any if it. It's the system, not the children.)

@chibi - I like how you said that there are no private schools in Canada APART from in the large cities.

It may surprise you to know that sparsely populated parts of the UK don't have private schools either :)

LaQueen - also totally horrified that a parent could cite as an example of good practice a student needing to be rewarded by a cinema trip just for turning up to school! What do they get if they actually do some work? Sweeties? Cash? A new car?

That is exactly the kind of ethos I would run a mile to avoid. Any school where the discipline is so poor that this kind of blatant bribe is necessary has already clearly lost the plot.

there's nothing you can't prepare for in terms of testing.

reasoning - doing logic problems before hand will get you in the frame of mind
numerical reasoning - basic maths and arithmetic and related problems will aid

so there's no point in this.

as already said, this effects very few areas of the UK.

Mind you, Kent is fairly densely populated, isn't it? (as opposed to having a dense population ).