Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Education

Join the discussion on our Education forum.

Original poster

Middle class access to grammars via tutorproof 11+ part 2

999 replies

boschy · 06/12/2012 13:27

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" Grin

OP posts:
TalkinPeace2 · 09/12/2012 19:17

Name the LEA where figures ARE declining due to other than migration?
data set please (linK)

and no, round here the indigenous underclass NEVER use nurseries or childminders - even sure start only has 20% penetration
the mums do not work so they look after their own kids till school....

locally we have HUGE numbers of immigrants - the local paper is published in Polish - but their kids are NOT the problem ones.

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 19:21

Your first paragraph makes no sense to me, TalkinPeace2. Nor does it make sense to me that you think figures in an entire LEA are what I'm talking about - I'm talking about the small area of a LEA in which I live, fgs. Different parts of the county have completely different demographics and completely different patterns of migration. All I know about is my local schools. And I know a lot more about THAT than you do.

TalkinPeace2 · 09/12/2012 19:36

rabbitstew
at 18.00 you said
It seems to be seen as a general trend across the whole area, though, not just within one school's intake - the general attainment level of children on starting reception is slowly going down over time,

so was that just about your own school?
LEAs include as few as 60 schools
what is your evidence for that assertion
and frankly, migrants are irrelevant to the bigger issue of

what do we do about under achieving Anglo Saxons?

people have ideas for minorities of all hues and creeds
but NO idea for the bit of the majority that is left behind
and THEY are the people who vote UKIP and BNP ...

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 19:44

No, the whole area is MY TOWN and immediately outside it. THAT IS MY AREA. THERE ARE 10 PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN THIS AREA. I have very little interest in any area outside my town, I'm afraid, because I compare my dss' school with other schools relevant to me. And in my area, employment is very high, but lots of people work very long hours to make ends meet. Not at all like your area, then, but school attainment is still falling on entry to primary schools (but not by the time they leave in year 6 - just schools are noticing they have to do more work to achieve this, as they can rely less these days on middle class parents having done half the work for them).

TalkinPeace2 · 09/12/2012 19:48

school attainment is still falling on entry to primary schools
Evidence.

APMF · 09/12/2012 19:50

Brycie - As it has been argued upthread, schools and teachers can only do so much.

I knew someone who became a teacher because she watched Sidney Potier in the 60s movie 'Please Sir'. She chucked in teaching after 5 years. Contrary to the movies, failing schools aren't full of kids who will discover a love of learning if only they had a teacher that cared.

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 19:57

What evidence do you want, TalkinPeace2 - or do you have tourettes?...

The only evidence I have is, as I have said, for my dss' school, teacher assessments of all reception children, moderated by the LEA, and with respect to the other schools, just anecdotal evidence based on the schools talking to each other about what is happening with their intakes and whether there are any trends in common. Since I don't collect the data or do any of the assessments, I'm quite happy to accept these schools are making it up and telling a load of lies to make their progress levels look better, if that's what you are implying, TalkinPeace2?

Brycie · 09/12/2012 19:58

APMF: it doesn't mean they can't do more than they are. I don't like that attitude: it's shrugging off the prospects of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of children. I loathe that attitude.

Brycie · 09/12/2012 20:00

"what do we do about under achieving Anglo Saxons?" are you now talking about the underachieving white working class boys mentioned in the news last week? I haven't paid attention propoerly

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 20:01

Or maybe the person informing me that other schools are finding similar patterns was making that up and it is just our school attracting a different group of parents and children, now, while everyone else stays the same?

TalkinPeace2 · 09/12/2012 20:08

Brycie
one of the persistent downward pulls on UK school results are the White native underclass.
None of the intervention policies seem to get to them.
And selective schools pass they and their parents by.
SO
back to the thread title : how does a selective school seek out the bright, potential achievers, among them?

rabbit
fair enough, but the multiple of anecdote is not evidence.

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 20:12

Well, schools in localities are encouraged to talk to each other and share information and even resources - presumably because it is not expected that they will lie to each other about things like this? So why do I need to insist I be given print outs of other schools' data to prove that what they are saying to my children's school is true? Why should the schools in a locality lie to each other like that? And why should my school lie to me like that?

exoticfruits · 09/12/2012 20:16

There is a typical letter in the Sunday Times today asking Chris Woodhead's advice.
The DS sat 11+ and failed by 3 marks. He had a level 5 in Maths,Science and English and his older brother is already in the grammar school. Quite clearly it is a parent, like many on here, who is all for the grammar school system and fully expected his DCs to get places. Interestingly the answer sticks to the truth -'appeals are never easy'.
I would say he is one of many and his chances are slim- despite the fact that he is just as clever as his brother. He is just unlucky in the number of places and the competition.
No one can assume that their bright DC will get a place. Be sure that if you like the grammar school you like the secondary modern because, in reality, that is what you might get.

seeker · 09/12/2012 20:17

"In short: look at how prep schools get good results: remove the prejudice that it's wholly down to intake: look at what else is different."

Why is it prejudice? Selective schools do better. Obviously. However the selection is made.

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 20:20

Yes, all you need to do is select out the white Anglo Saxons. Smile

APMF · 09/12/2012 20:35

Brycie - You may loathe that attitude but what would YOU do to change the lack of aspiration and/or love of learning found in what someone upthread has described as the indigenous population.

glub · 09/12/2012 20:41

hmm. let them get so poor they have to catch rats for food then they might start having aspirations again?

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 20:44

Or might they just start getting more vicious and angry? I think London is generally considered a safer city now than it was in Victorian times, when some people were so poor, they had to catch rats for food, and spread revolting diseases as a result of the squalor in which they lived?

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 20:45

Although, of course, we could always experiment with letting people starve and spread disease, to see if we can cope with it better these days, now that even more people have crowded onto this island to live? Sounds like a plan...

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 20:49

Amazing, how even when you could starve to death, we still had the "feckless poor."

rabbitstew · 09/12/2012 20:52

If we had a huge proportion of people who LOVED learning, what would we actually do with them all? Clearly sending them all to university hasn't worked very well.

teacherwith2kids · 09/12/2012 21:05

Brycie,

What is different about prep schools?

  • They contain the children of parents who can afford the fees OR those clued up enough to work their way through the bursary system.
  • Theu contain the children of parents who tend themselves to be educated.
  • They contain the children of parents who were often privately educated themselves.
  • They contain the children of parents who care about education, at least enough to select that school over another.
  • They often select pupils, so they have a lower proportion of SEN children than the general population.
  • Due to selection, they take in a narrower band of abilities (so a single year class may typically have an ability range of 2-3 years, not 5+ as can easily occur in a state school)
  • They are sited in 'better' areas (ie not in very deprived boroughs or neighbourhoods) which again skews their intake.

Once all of those factors to do with intake are removed, I suspect that the gap in attainment between all but the very best prep schools and an average state primary is fairly small.

It may also be a question of what is tested. Locally, some prep schools tend to prep intensively for the 11+ (others for the 13+ schools they feed into). They therefore do well on those measures ... but whether they do ,better' across the whole range of subjects is not measurable because the exams taken by leavers are not comparable to the SATs taken by state school pupils. (And of course, those results would have to be corrected for cohort, so if the prep school is selective, then the comparison with state primary pupils would only be valid if it only included those children who COULD have passed the selection test at 3+ or whatever but chose to stay in the state system instead).

glub · 09/12/2012 21:14

there will always be the feckless. it's nice to sit next to someone who is at the same level as you in maths.

Brycie · 09/12/2012 21:51

It's prejudice (as teacherwith2kids demonstrates) because of the assumption that it is only the selection that makes a difference. What do they do differently in class? They don't follow the NC, a lot of them, for a start. Obviously that's outside the remit of state schools. They have to follow the national curriculum. So what else? Do you assume they teach the same way?

Brycie · 09/12/2012 21:53

AMPF: teacherwith2kids desribes how they motivate and put extra effort into children from disadvantaged backgrounds. It's a good start.