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.

18 isn't arbitrary: it's when you become an adult and don't have to go to school. So different universities having different entry requirements is just an extension of the fact that different jobs have different entry requirements. It's precisely because as adults there are so many different routes, possibilities and requirements that I believe all children should start from a level playing field. Located outside the same school.

It's when you become an adult because our government has decided that.

Well yes, but given that there's a lot of precedent for it, and all sorts of other laws would have to change for that to change, I think 18 is a reasonable age to decide people are adults. I don't know where you're going with this: is it something like 'if you don't like ten year olds being segregated by wealth or intelligence, how can you be ok with 97 year olds going to different care homes' or something?

Where to start Brycie!

You have now decided that mixed ability teaching and selection are the same thing. Whatever I say you will decide that you meant something else after all.

Those of us who are 'against selection' are as far as I can tell, against deciding that a test taken on one day at the age of ten should determine a child's education for the next 5+ years, and that a certain number must be despatched to another building to receive the said education or somehow they will be failed.

There is a big, big difference between doing this and constantly evaluating a child's progress and deciding that they need to move up or down a set. I would argue that this is what those of us who are 'against selection' are in fact arguing.

Of course, there are good schools and bad, and there are inequalities in society, and there are no easy solutions to either of these problems.

There's a lot of precedent for 16. If 18 comes in then married couples could be obliged to attend school. It could be anything from 15 to twenty.

That's exactly what I'm saying. People say "how can you identify potential/hard work/intelligence whatever at 10." Well others are now saying this is flexible throughout life and that allowances should be made at 18 for disadvantage. How far should this go? No selection for sixth form, for starters?

But it doesn't determine the standard of education for the next 5+ years, you said so. It seems, according to your own post, to determine only if they take two languages or three.

I just wanted to put my head round the door and say that it's not very often I learn something as a result of MN, but I did today. Out of interest I googled the free school meals data for the area seeker and I live in. The grammar schools have FSM ratios of circa 2% according to the centralised data across the region in qn (which is not what they say on their own websites). This is against a primary school average that looks to be around 10%, with some schools having 40% on FSM.

If that's true then it really is quite a shocker. I don't care whether the parents of disadvantaged children are lazy, too busy, or whatever; it is a very poor indicator of our society that 98 out of every 100 kids in the best schools in our area come from naice middle class mumsnetty homes. I really genuinely thought we were more evolved than that.

But it doesn't determine the standard of education for the next 5+ years, you said so. It seems, according to your own post, to determine only if they take two languages or three.

Er, isn't that determining their standard of education - if they are offered two languages as a standard with the possibility of a third as opposed to one; or being offered 3 sciences as opposed to one general science?

Which school are you going to want to go to if you want to be a doctor or a vet? Yes, please, I will choose the school which offers general science - I don't think so.

You do rather seem to be putting your own spin on what people are saying.

"You therefore don't answer my point about what you expect from grammar school students when they are educated with non grammar school students"

I don't expect anything of them at all.

Leaving aside the actual quite importance of two languages rather than three, it denies them the opportunity to move up, to be educated anywhere near anyone who is deemed intelligent.

And anyway, you know perfectly well it isn't just that.

@Cecily - No one is saying that Oxbridge is equitable. I'm just trying to make the point that it favours privileged kids from public and private schools. Yet various people doesn't seem to see the hypocrisy in being against GSs or Indies but in favour of Oxbridge.

StillSquiffy Doesn't surprise me at all, given the discussions I hear amongst DDs' peers including those at the local Grammars. What is shocking is that the schools have no strategies whatsoever for improving access for disadvantaged pupils, nor do they do anything to diffuse the madness, and near child abuse, that is the tutoring industry around here. In fact as DD's peers observe they seem very happy to get an intake of pupils already used to being pushed to succeed in exams and take up where the tutors left off. Local Private Schools have access schemes that aim to identify bright pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in local Primaries and encourage them to apply for bursaries, mostly this is because it is implicit in their ethos, but also to preserve their charitable status. Grammar Schools have no obligation to widen access, unlike Universities for which it is a condition of state funding, even though the stats on social inclusion are much, much worse.

Looking at these proposals they are nothing that the schools shouldn't have been doing all along. In particular it is beyond belief that it appears they have been so lazy as to allow VR/NVR tests to become so predictable that tutors can pull them apart and allegedly tutor to improve scores. It really isn't rocket science in terms of the implementation and practise of these tests to keep them immune to prediction, and therefore tutor proof, basic practise in their use for recruitment and assessment in businesses.

My own spin? These are your exact words about what kids get from a grammar:

"Chance to learn two languages as standard and possibly a third, chance to do 3 separate sciences, (although admittedly that didn't apply to my girl's grammar school either), possibly higher standards in music although that generally seems patchy these days, being supported in an application for medical school instead of being told you were aiming too high and pushed into nursing. Possibly better sports and technology facilities at a sec mod."

So the only definite thing I can see in there as being consistently and definitivelely different is the opportunity to learn two languages instead of three. Are you now sayying (in contradiction to yourself) that education at a secondary modermodern is significantly worse?

This is exactly what I mean by self contradiction and confusion.

And being educated alongside people who are deemed intelligent, as opposed to people who are intelligent? What benefit does that bring?

You expect nothing, seeker? Why do you want them in the high school?

LaVolcan wants them for other children to be educated alongside, except if they were available to educated alongside they would not have been "deemed" intelligent by the 11+, so I don't really see what the benefit is there.

I can't make any sense of your last paragraph, Brycie.

APMF Oxbridge, and elite universities, actually do a lot better than Grammar Schools at widening access, they actually have strategies in place. I work with a charity that mentors West Indian pupils in failing inner city schools so they have positive role models, and Oxbridge are practically falling over themselves to work closely, not least because they know that bright pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds outperform those from Private schools and good state school (and universities don't discriminate between whether good schools are state or private). However they are dealing with a system that has already limited the chances of bright pupils as a result of the culture that prevails in poorly performing schools.

Grammar Schools, unlike Universities have no such obligation to widen access as a condition of public funding, even though it is at that point that the biggest difference to life chances can be made, and certainly around here they are socially as well as academically exclusive. Here www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/10/how-cambridge-admissions-really-work is an insight into how the Cambridge admission process works. We have similar markers for contextual information about applicants at my own uni. Perhaps if Grammar Schools had a good record on enabling bright pupils from disadvantaged background to succeed as they once did, certainly at my northern Grammar School, and the Grammar Schools that my successful peers attended in the Welsh valleys, North London etc. people might see that they had a useful social function.

If parents are prepared to tutor their children for two years to gain a place at GS would it not suggest that it?s the caliber of parent/child that makes GS look so attractive and not necessarily the actual teaching standards?

Does this help, Nit?

LaVolcan said this : it denies them the opportunity to move up, to be educated anywhere near anyone who is deemed intelligent.

I assume she means grammar school kids but no doubt that will be denied shortly. I can't think who else she would mean. I assume also that she doesn't think there are no intelligent children in secondary moderns though I expect that could be contradicted to.

So it seems to be entirely about perception. Either LaVolcan wants comprehensive schools to publicly "deem children intelligent" or she is leaving the public "deeming intelligent" to the 11+.

If she doesn't want comprehensives to publicly deem children intelligent, and she wants rid of the 11+, then there will be in her ideal world no public deeming of intelligence, thereforce there will be no children "deemed intelligent" for the "77 per cent" to be educated anywhere near.

All you have to do is think clearly about what you're saying and think abouit what you've said.

I think you've misunderstood what LaVolcan said. In a non grammar school in a grammar area, you have removed those the system deems intelligent at 11: she is saying, I think, that that is not a good thing. So you carry on deeming people intelligent if necessary, but don't hide them in another school.

This whole thread is a bit patronising towards working class parents( whateber that means these days)

In your strive for "equal chances" (and who would not want that?!) you say that working class parents are, ...what, too useless to further their kids' educational chances. And therefore middle class parents should not be allowed to further their kids educational chances either....

Isn't that odd, and patronising? I can not be the only person who knows working class parents who are very involved in their kds' education. And laissez-fair middle class parents aplenty too!

I do not want to offer my children on the altar of the BritisH class war. Iam not even British, and I do not want to play this class game. I simply look for the most suitable school for my children. I want there to be good education for every child and I feel that is not available. This ought to be addressed on a national scale.

There is lots of room for improvement in the state system. Abolishing successful private schools will not do much for that, now will it?

It would piss off posh people though, and that can be a goal in itself for some type of socialists I guess...

I give up with Brycie!

I too don't have a clue about her last sentence, even though she is trying to attribute those thoughts to me.

Oh good, LaVolcan, I'm glad it's not just me.

Haha, I posted on the wrong thread! I meant this one for the thread about abolishing private schools.

Not so clever

Not even going to get into that thread, Chandon!

@LaVolcan - In that case, please allow me to translate Brycie's last sentence.

Long version: you should revisit what you previously said and compare it to what it is you are saying now.

Short version: you are talking crap :)