Middle class access to grammars via tutorproof 11+ part 2

[boschy]

May I do this? only there were some contrasting views at the end of the last thread which I found interesting.

One was mine (sorry!): "I think fear actually drives a lot of those parents who are desperate to get their child into GS, so they can be 'protected' from these gangs of feral teenagers who apparently run rampage through every non-selective school in the country.

Because clearly if you are not 11+ material you are a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal who likes nothing better than beating up a geek before breakfast and then going to score behind the bike shed before chucking a chair at the maths teacher and making the lives of the nice but dim kids a misery."

And one was from gazzalw: "If you had the choice would you opt for a grammar school or a comprehensive that has gangs?"

Soooo, do people really think that all comprehensives have vicious gangs, and all GS children are angels? Or that only those of academic ability adequate enough to get them through the 11+ should not have to face behavioural disruption of any kind? If you are borderline, or struggling but still work hard, should you just have to put up with disruption because let's face it you're not academic?

PS, re the knuckle dragging Neanderthals I mention above, should have said - "and that's only the girls"

I don't think the existence of private schools per se is a real challenge to social mobility. However, the expectation that the movers and shakers will all come from 4 or possibly 5 schools is certainly a bit of a bottleneck!

seeker
the expectation that the movers and shakers will all come from 4 or possibly 5 schools is certainly a bit of a bottleneck
but actually if you look at business leaders and the behind the scenes decision makes - particularly those under 40, that is no longer the case.
The Sutton Trust 71% research was a piece of carp.
The Eton bias is still there, but among new appointments is diminishing fast.
But the old codgers have to die before the earlier imbalance is reduced.

I'd love to think so, Talkin!

What's your issue with the Sutton Trust?

The Sutton Trust
That piece of research they released last week about "71% of important people went to ... schools" was just rubbish - their 'data set' was the birthday announcements in the Times Newspaper.
This morning their bit about University Application statements - more political stating the obvious rather than insightful research - that used to be what they did.
Not sure what's going on, but it is weakening their reputation.

Asinine, yes it was. Sorry if it was unclear.

Seeker: Obviously there IS a contradiction - there are a number of contradictions. I've detailed them. But I agree with you that people are being obtuse, though I've no idea if it's deliberate or not.

Wordfactory: agree with you about lots and lots

It was about movers and shakers, though, the Sutton Trust recent thing, people mentioned in the papers. The Times decides who is famous or important enough to make announcements about. I don't think it's wrong to assess who those people are where they went to schoo. That doesn't mean someone like the Aldi owner who just died whom most of us have never heard of is left off - he even has quads (!) but I never even heard of him - isn't successful and very rich. Some people try to keep out of the public eye.

I am very thankful that I am not important enough to have announcements made about me- if I was I would guard my privacy fiercely and stay out of the public eye! There is no way that you would find me with the 'in' people at 'in' places!

The Aldi owner was obviously very successful because not only was he rich, successful and influential, but most of us had never heard of him-a good result for him.

It's pretty much a choice unless you're royalty, as to whether you want to court publicity or not.

Exactly. You would wish that more would follow the example of the Aldi man. (I feel sorry for the people like royalty who have no choice)

Xenia
up to a point - some people become well known as a side effect of their real work, or by accident of news stories
BUT
the list of 'influential' people seemed to have a disproportionate number of London based journalists who the rest of us have never heard of or cared about ...

I also think the list of who is influential is often out dated and is in fact very fluid.

Many of the people who have massive macro level impact on our daily lives are names we wouldn't recognise.

However, these people wil still generally come from one small strata of society.

Not all influential people are celebrities, even in this day and age. You can be a scientist or a doctor who innovates in a way that affects lots of people and be totally unknown to the public at large.

But you will have a great brain and probably have had a lot of opportunities in life to get to the sort of place in life where you can innovate and have impact.

I think all the recent publicity about privately educated and grammar school educated people getting the positions of power is all about these people cynically trying to return things to the status quo ante - after all, it is very successfully getting a lot of people talking about it and agreeing with it (and therefore possibly putting their children's names down as they speak for private school places/ringing up the 11 plus tutors...). You CREATE situations by making people think they still exist. It's not as if anyone believes the government in a time of economic austerity is actually going to anything that will genuinely improve schools - it is, instead, trying to cut them all loose to sink or swim on their own.

And as for people right at the beginning of this thread arguing that you shouldn't get a big chip on your shoulder for failing your 11 plus, because most people do... they are clearly very stupid people with no emotional intelligence whatsoever. It's also like saying that nobody should ever have resented the aristocracy because they were such a tiny minority and the majority weren't like them. And we all know THAT didn't work.

Interesting people seem to think all grammar schools use setting, too. The only two subjects set for in my grammar school were maths and French. People generalise far too much. The size of a school, its location, the group "personality" of a particular year of children, the way it is run, even the individual teachers pupils end up with all have an effect. Grammar schools definitely aren't the answer to all our problems, nor are they an answer to all the problems of the "academic elite."

Apologies about rude remark about stupid people - that was unfair. However, I spent the last year at my primary school in a selective area (nearly 25% going to grammar school) being victim to the bad feeling generated by the 11 plus amongst those not expected to pass (and in those days, everyone took it - I don't remember a single person opting out, or even realising that this was an option, even the boy who could barely read, yet, took the exam on the day).

And a lot of them did resent the fact that they already knew they were entering an exam which would label them a "failure" while the posh-sounding girl who lived in a bigger house than they did was already labelled an expected pass.

However misguided you might think it I am sure the Government is hoping to improve schools. Heads of companies like Tesco often say they want 16 year olds who can add up and spell and turn up on time. It is in the national interest that state schools is better.

I don't think anyone knows what is going to happen to state education in the next 10 years - too many different things going on at once. I don't see how that is a good thing. It certainly isn't a good thing for the people who have to go through the turmoil stage.

They may not be stupid, rqbbitstew. But they are speaking from either a position of ignorance or of little emotional intelligence. Or, more likely from a position of "lalalalalal can't hear you!"

Most grammar schools in my experience only set for maths.

Please remember that what was done when we were at school is NOT what happens now.
AND
please do not generalise about all of education policy unless you have direct experience of schools in many counties and types (private, selective, comp, special, boarding, day, infant, sixth form)

I cannot see why a grammar would NEED to set in other than maths, because the setting was done at admission level.
And grammars are often smaller schools too (compared with our local 300 per year comps that it)

We still have the same grammar schools in the town where I grew up, though, still taking 23% of the children and still doing pretty much the same as when I was at school - and the top 23% of children all in the same set is a wide ability range, TalkinPeace2, so people claiming top sets at comprehensives have a wider ability range than the top sets of grammar schools don't know what they are talking about with respect to all grammar schools... Also, in a huge comprehensive, you do, surely, have the capacity to genuinely take in all ability ranges? In which case the top sets can still be a narrower ability range in a large comprehensive than that which you find in a small grammar school? Unless you are talking about super selective grammars... which nobody has specified. Nor has anyone mentioned the fact that there are still a substantial proportion of gifted individuals who do not attend super selective grammar schools, anyway, even if there are any within a 20 mile radius. And within our family, we have considerable experience of grammar schools and private schools, so I think we are fairly knowledgeable about selective education. Those members of the wider family who were comprehensively educated have not ended up in "lesser" careers - they have ended up in the sorts of careers you would expect of people of their social class... and have chosen a range of different options for their children's education. So what you can learn from all that, I don't know, except that wittering on about the wonders of grammar schools doesn't seem very educated an opinion to me, at least not if you are arguing for their return in great numbers, as per in Kent, which I would argue is a county which shows that grammar schools are not good for the education of the majority, they often drag down the quality of the education of the majority and do not sufficiently benefit the substantial minority for everyone to want the return of such a system on a wide scale. In other words, they are not a great example of the benefits of selective education for the country.

" Those members of the wider family who were comprehensively educated have not ended up in "lesser" careers - they have ended up in the sorts of careers you would expect of people of their social class... and have chosen a range of different options for their children's education."

Certainly this is true of my immediate family (parental generation grammar educated, my generation part private and part comprehensive, current children overwhelmingly comprehensive so far). Our experience seems to demonstrate that whether you go to a highly-regarded private school or an ex-secondary modern, the over-riding factor when it comes to university attended and career followed appears to be level of parental education / social class, as we all ended up at the same universities doing the same degrees and gaining the same final degree marks.

The question then becomes how we as a society ensure that bright children from less-educated, less middle-class backgrounds (so with those over-riding factors working against them) get the education that will take them to where their raw ability deserves.

I would argue that that is NOT going to be achieved via the current grammar school or private school systems, but by having proper comprehensives that enable all children to meet their full potential regardless of parental input or coaching ouside school.