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.

@bread - I don't think it is fair to blame the government. Some parts of the UK have excellent schools while others have crap ones. If you blame the government for the crap ones then who do you credit for the good ones?

Brycie - re your comment on my previous post, i don't see 'wail' as as objectionably as you do - I meant 'wail' of anguish, as you sound upset - sorry if you misunderstood. Cerainly not meant to be rude!

Re your point about changes in rules to targets for levels not being helpful, that does not seem o be how it's worked out. Maybe that is just because the new rules were not in place when those in yr 6 now doing KS2 were doing their KS1s? Maybe schools will stop handing out Level 3s in year 2 in the future - but then again a school that had no Level 3s at KS2 would look pretty poor too, so I'm not sure they'd wish to do that.

With my dd2 who was basically ignored after getting Level 3sat KS1, as soon as the new rules started was suddenly given lots of help to reach KS5 and beyond! (had made v little progress since KS1, not surprsingly having been ignored!). so for her it's made a massive difference.

APMF - not all parts of the UK have the same levels of inequality and not all schools have the same intake of pupils with identical levels of inequality. Often those schools taken o be 'failing' are actually those schools with the most challenging intakes to start with. What I'm saying is that it's not enough to blame the schools - the solutions go well beyond education.

Obviously, schools in good areas with 'easy' pupils, as Brycie describes, who just don't try hard enough or have high enough expectations ARE guilty of failing their pupils and should improve standards urgently.

I wish I hadn't been familiar with the National Curriculum. It has been the discrete factor in outcome differences of the many schools my children have attended. These schools have had widely differing ESL experiences, wealth/poverty of parents and so on.

I'm not surprised to hear that your daughter in a state grammar is experiencing the benefits a private school can offer. It's not representative.

@Brycie - I am no fan of the NC. I think that it holds back bright kids by making them learn at the same pace as the national average.

However, I wouldn't describe the NC as being the reason why schools are 'bad'. They are bad for various reasons - uninspiring/crap teachers, low parental involvement, social problems. If the NC is a contributory to the problem it can't be that significant, not when it is sharing the list with the above.

NC not in effect here, this is Scotland so we have a different curriculum - but same issues.

"tell you what make me cring, when people talk about school, and say in a sniffy way, well if they child is bright they wil suceed in any school"

Oh, but didn't you know - if you send your bright, keen kids to a comprehensive, they will bring up the overall standard and benefit the low achievers and disruptive kids, but magically, the low achievers/disruptive kids have no effect on the bright, keen ones...

A friend's son took himself out of state secondary and studied at home, as he felt he wasn't learning anything at school due to the difficult pupils. He did very well!

APMF - low parental involvement and social problems are not excuses - they are the reasons schools should look at what they do and change it.

Sorry, getting a bit off the original topic here...

whiteandyellow, I think that's due to a degree of herd following in children and the difficulty that teachers have in differentiating properly between dc of different abilities in the same school. It can work (I'm told), but it's harder. If all a child's peers are achieving, strugglers will tend to pull their socks up of their own volition, if many aren't then more able dc may be more inclined to be lazy and can slip under the net if the school isn't very hot on monitoring them.

Having correct expectations for a child is very important and some dc are probably hampered by too low expectations, from both school and home. I also agree strongly with just about all breadandbutterfly has said - including that properly set school targets can be helpful in setting correct expectations.

Notgood - actually I think it's central why does tutoring make a difference? because primary outcomes are poor.

No, tutoring makes a difference because if you put more effort in you get a higher attainment out. However good primary schools were, children could always do a bit better with more work.

Caveat - applies to tests that can definitely be trained for like maths and english and science. VR and NVR maybe less so, but why would schools want to teach these? If there was a test that actually you couldn't tutor for, then maybe not, but I don't think such a thing exists.

IN what way is that different to "primary outcomes are poor"?

You can't have it both ways. Either what and how you teach a child makes a difference, or it doesn't. Frankly I think it does. I'd be suprised in any teacher in this whole entire world disagreed with me.

"tutoring makes a difference because if you put more effort in you get a higher attainment out"

how on earth is this an argument against tutoring

"if you put more effort into teaching children you get a better outcome"

Cripes we wouldn't want that would we

primary outcomes may or may not be poor, that wasn't what I disagreed with - you said that tutoring wouldn't make a difference if primary outcomes were good. But attainment can always be raised by extra work so if all primaries were equally good, parents would still tutor to try and give their dc that extra 'edge' and to try and ensure they were the ones in the top x% of a selective entrance test.

@Brycie - There is a limit to what schools can do. I had kids in my comp class that just did not want to learn. You could put them in front of the most inspiring of teachers and you still wouldn't get them interested in crop rotation.

As for parents evening, one time the teacher congratulated me because BOTH my parents attended. A lot of kids didn't even have one parent attending so for both parents to attend was a big deal.

I accept that some kids are self motivating and have the ability to over come parental indifference if only the school could do something to help. But how many kids like this are out there? Even if the schools could reach these kids and turn things around for them these kids only form a minute part of the school population.

pupil effort, not teacher effort Brycie. Perhaps I should have said time. If a child spends an extra hour a week learning than their equally able peers, they will most likely outperform them. (That's before you've factored in the advantage of 1-1 tailored learning in the tutor environment against the class environment too).

Gelo: it wouldn't matter.

If primary outcomes were very good, not to say excellent, a few things would happen.

Firstly, the importance of the grammar would start to evaporate. The vast and febrile competition to get into a selective school would start to disappear. If all primary school children carried their very good, not to say excellent education into secondary, then secondary outcomes would also improve enormously.

Secondly, you assume that all parents who enter this competition do so willingly and with enthusiasm. Not so. They'd probably rather not spend the money and time, and rather not put their child through the stress of it. And if they didn't have to, because they were getting a damn good education anyway, they wouldn't do it.

APMF: you need to get the children earlier. It's probably too late by secondary. Poor primary education is my main beef.

Just an hour, gelo? So primary schools don't have a spare hour? Or a spare few hours for this?

One to one - yes, accept. To mimic the benefits of one to one you need stricter discipline. Desks to the front, not round tables, etc etc.

Why don't state primaries look at prep schools and think - ok we'll do that. We'll do whatever we can to change the gap and stop blaming pushy parents or lazy parents or rich parents or poor parents. Let's do as much as we can in the same way.

Because, as I said upthread, they are not allowed. They are not allowed to spend time practising VR and NVR tests. These are supposed to be tests to measure intelligence. If they practice them - they invalidate them. That is not to say that parents can't or don't practice them although some LEAs like to pretend otherwise.

Primaries are not going to produce whole cohorts of equally abled, equally motivated children.

While selective schools exist with competitive entry there will be people striving to get into them.

Primary schools are specifically not allowed to do more than 2 familiarisation papers to prepare for the 11+.

I am not a huge National Curriculum fan either, although I do think it is a good idea that there should be some basic guidelines about what q child is expected to know before leaving primary school. But " I think that it holds back bright kids by making them learn at the same pace as the national average." is just factually incorrect. In my ds's year 6 class, for example, the were children working at all levels from 3 to 6, and they were all following the national curriculum. And this is true of all the primary schools I know of. If a child is being held back specifically by the National Curriculum, then the school is using it incorrectly.

Cecilyp: I agree that what they're allowed and not allowed to do is a problem. But with the maths and English? They should be up to the same scratch.

"While selective schools exist with competitive entry there will be people striving to get into them."

But it simply won't matter - because the "masses" will be having an excellent education too. They will have had an excellent primary education and this will feed through to improvements in secondary education. So what if some people go off and educate themselves by themselves - there will not be the same feeling of resentment and envy because all children will get as good an education.

While I admire your idealism Brycie, I don't think such changes are anything like as easy as you seem to think. I'll drop out of this debate now as it seems too far removed from the real world.

children will always learn from their parents whether the NC mandates it (does it even?) or not. Abolishing homework will make little difference to that (and incidently, your much admired prep schools usually give lots of homework).

That's what I would have thought. Probably where state schools got the idea from.