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"

[APMF]

@seeker - Your DD got selected by the GS with level 4 maths? Isn't that the national average?

It doesn't sound as if your GS is particularly selective. I mention this because you are essentially a one-issue poster ie bright son had an off day and failed 11+. DS now consigned to an inferior education at Sec Mod.

Exsqueeze me for being blunt but if your DS couldn't get into a relatively non super selective then should you really be spending the last couple of years going on about how your bright boy is not getting a GS education because the 11+ is not a true test of ability?

And before you start with the how dare you rant - Confucius, he say, MNetter who not want DCs discussed , should not regularly cite them in posts.

[gelo]

Tantrums, depends on the schools and the children. Some children actually do better in an environment where they are near the top rather than where they are muddling along. I have seen a child move from selective (second set) to non-selective and achieve A* (higher than expected at the selective).

[TantrumsAndBalloons]

Oh of course I know it's possible. I know my ds2 will achieve better grades at the comp than if we somehow got him into a selective.
It's just not the expectation at the comp is it? So whilst some children honestly do a lot better in that environment, there's also a lot who don't reach the grades they would be expected to achieve at GS

[Brycie]

Nit, if you wanted to clear up some of those claims, I'd still find it helpful.

[Arisbottle]

I can list from the top off head about a dozen children who got level 4s in one of their SATS and managed to get a place at the grammar. Not that unusual.

This further serves to make the point that not all grammars and not all comprehensives are the same and therefore to be told by a random stranger on the Internet that my children are doomed to failure because they are in a comp is a tad ignorant.

To then be told with great glee that their children could "rip the shit" out of my children and the other 90% of children in country is... Well it's the kind of nonsense that only gets spouted on this website.

As someone battling with real problems this thread is starting to get to me and i am usually an oasis of calm. And yes, before people spot someone a thread they can all leap on and rip to bits, you are quite right, I do not have to post on here. I am off to take another sleeper in the hope that this time it actually does make me sleep.

[gelo]

LaQueen, ds is a biit like the students you are talking about I think. He went to a selective independent, but nowhere near as selective as a grammar. It bothered me a bit at the time that he wasn't able to take his exams early, but with hindsight it did him no harm at all. His end of year 10 exam was an iGCSE paper for which they had only been taught 70% of the syllabus - he scored 100% (having figured out how to do the calculus questions from first principles without ever being shown). He didn't sit the exam until the following year. When it came to A level, his school only did 5 modules instead of the usual 6 in year 12 and then 7 in year 13, quite a long way behind your GS top set schedule. I worried this might disadvantage him for Oxbridge interviews - it didn't. All along he just found other ways to extend himself it was never an issue. He's now keeping up happily with the top people at university.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

Be right with you Brycie... Just going to click back, don't want you to think I've forgotten, and have now had a meal and chance to stop being so annoyed ....

[losingtrust]

In an area where there are no gs the top set would almost certainly be as high as a gs because what you forget is that where there are no gs there are a lot more comps and more sets than just five. At ds's school there are 8 sets for 200 kids but there are plenty of comps each with a top set and therefore the top set would indeed be the top few in the area and be on a par.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

that those denied access to grammar are/are not denied access to a better eduction - that those given access to a grammar are/are not the brightest - that the 77 per cent and their schools would benefit/not benefit from the inflow of the 23 per cent. Those are the sorts of thing.

Right. I am not sure I've ever said any of those things, and would ask for indulgence from anyone opposed to selection at 11 for whom I might be thought of as setting myself up as spokesperson..... However.

I think those denied access are denied a better education in the broader sense of the word, although I am sure there are some incredibly dedicated and talented teachers in secondary moderns/high schools, the main issue they are facing, I would think, is that they're teaching a group of children who've been told at 11 that they've failed.

I would imagine that those who pass the 11+ are more or less the brightest in their year group, but with the obvious caveats about coaching.

I do not think that the 23% themselves as human beings and individuals are personally and individually capable of turning a school around, but I do think a school that's missing the top .25 (give or take) is going to struggle with its aspirations and its sense of what is possible or realistic. A school you go to if you fail is clearly, to my mind, going to face different challenges from the school you go to if you pass.

[losingtrust]

Interestingly here parents use their pushy was to help their kids get into top sets and therefore important to get 5s to get into these. To give you an example ds in year 8 and is not in the top set for maths but is a 7b and therefore top set minimum 7a which is very high and that is an accelerator group. I went to a comp and behavior even in mixed ability was determined by the control of the teacher and not by the kids in the group. I was in top sets for everything apart from maths which I still managed an A. All of my peers got minimum 9 O'levels.

[teacherwith2kids]

Not read the whole thread, but the point about the 'top set' seems to me to be a red herring.

A GS top set will have in it a collecton of the individuals who, in a true comprehensive system, would be in thtop sets of several comprehensives.

Those individuals would almost certainly get the same results in either type of school system.

Whether the other individuals in the top set in the comprehensive would get as high results is not relevant - they wouldn't be in the top set in a grammar school, and so their results are not relevant to the discussion.

The discussion has to come down to: would invididual a, with the strengths and weaknesses they have, get the same results in a GS as they would in a comprehensive? And that depends on many more variables than simply 'academic' ability. (Home background, parental education, character, friends, housing, out of school interests, SEN, colour, race, to name a few)

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

My daughter left primary with a not very striking level 5b in maths, she's never got higher than bronze in the UK junior maths challenge: she's not one of nature's mathematicians. But she's in a group that's working beyond the GCSE maths syllabus, she's predicted, and almost got, already an a in maths. You can argue from that that a in maths is too easy, but not that she's been held back, or that she would have been better either in a grammar or a high school, I don't think.

[teacherwith2kids]

DS is at the local comprehensive (technically a secondary modern, as we have superselective grammars).

Their end of term 1 maths assessment test in Year 7 had a top mark of 7b or so ... certainly no evidence that they are 'holding back' their most able mathematicians by giving them tests and tasks with an artificially low ceiling...

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

I think if you feel like that, laqueen, you might need somewhere more specific than a Lincolnshire grammar.

[QuickLookBusy]

There's is such a lot of bullshit ignorance on this thread.

We are very lucky to live in a comprehensive only county. DDs have gone to the local comp, both have done extremely well, (with not one bit of tutoring) both accepted at their first choice of RG uni on very competitive courses.

DD1 even has an A* in Maths and get this, she isn't really that great or even interested in it, she wasn't even the near the top of her set. Two from her GCSE set were accepted for places at Oxbridge.

12 miles down the road, in another county, we have a super selective grammar, as my DDs are bright it was assumed that they would be tutored and be put in for the 11+, like several of their friends. Well they weren't and it has been extremely interesting to see what has happened to their friends who did go to the grammar. My DDs have done just as well, if not better, than those at grammar. They got the same GSCE and A level results and are now at or going to the same group of unis. So what is the point of a grammar school?

Just make every comp as good as my local one and there is no need for grammar schools.

[gelo]

The very top ones work at their own pace - they don't need the push. They are already ahead of the rest so it doesn't actually matter (within reason) what the rest are doing.

[TantrumsAndBalloons]

It isn't. And the teachers do not have the same expectations for the students as GS teachers.
There will of course be students that do exceptionally well at a comp but they are IME the exception rather than the rule.
There is a big difference in the oppourtunities and expectations and a grammar school and a comp.

[QuickLookBusy]

Tantrums your last post is utter rubbish.

The teachers of the top sets in comps do often have the same expectations as a grammar. How the hell do the dc in the top sets at comps manage to get straight As at A level if their teacher don't have high expectations?

[Brycie]

"My daughter left primary with a not very striking level 5b in maths, she's never got higher than bronze in the UK junior maths challenge: she's not one of nature's mathematicians. But she's in a group that's working beyond the GCSE maths syllabus, she's predicted, and almost got, already an a in maths. You can argue from that that a in maths is too easy, but not that she's been held back, or that she would have been better either in a grammar or a high school, I don't think."

This is at a comprehensive, right?