Selective independants

[poppydoppy]

Do they look better on League tables because the standard of teaching is better or just because they select the children most likely to do well?

No it is not stupid. I think after 16 months now of discovering MN i do agree that it is the green eyed monster at play here. Nothing about seeker et al makes sense its all about berating hard working people that don't drain the system.

I think there is not too much to worry about. Most of the country has no selective state schools. I can see a huge injustice in different provision by county. That might be corrected. What is it about the genes of the children in the NE compared with those of the children in Bucks which means the state thinks selection is great for one group and not the other? However if the Sutton trust found children of comps do as well as children from grammar areas then it does not really matter - they are not being failed.

If mothers who pick good careers and can afford fees can buy an even better education then that's great - it's the free market at work. It will stop women going into low paid jobs and actually get ahead and earn more to benefit their children so that will be a great knock on effect in feminist terms.

There is no such thing as a 'comprehensive' school.

Every school is a product primarily of the parents of children at the school, with the exception of special schools where children may have genetic disabilities and so on.

Private schools will beat state schools because they have more resources and won't have to deal with parents who aren't interested in education.

Selective schools, such as Catholic schools, beat those without such policies because again they successfully filter out bad parents.

Higher achieving state schools will be targeted by good parents, and again this makes those schools better.

Finally you've got schools like the one my DS was allocated to (he's going private instead), special measures, hopeless, where most good parents will avoid it, leaving the school with a very high proportion of bad parents.

Talk of abolishing private schools, grammar schools is therefore absurd, because until we invent personal teleportation devices, schools' makeup are determined by geography - somewhere in a leafy part of North Yorkshire will be dominated by middle class parents, somewhere in a rough part of Stoke won't be.

So it's absurd to say all children will be educated together. They cannot be.

Oh the barbed wire etc was never my plan - my ideal is only to educate people together, all armed guard stuff was a playful exaggeration of objections which have been made!

Socareless, I don't know where you've really got any of that green-eyed stuff from to be honest, and neither have I seen any berating of hard working people etc etc. But that would certainly be an easier argument to win, so I see why you've settled on it.

Xenia, those posts are full of holes, but they're just the usual ones so I shall leave them alone!

Ah, the old jealousy card. It mans you don't have to think about anything- you can just dismiss anyone who doesn't agree with you without n actually having to form a rational argument.

Nothing you or TOSN have said has been rational. So excuse me if i settle for jealousy. Yoni has given a better explanation as to why you cannot begin to level the playing field. Some parents are simply not interested. What will you do about their children? Employ prof parents?

Not sure what you think I am jealous of!

Children with committed involved informed parents will always do well. And can buy or access privilege for their already privileged children. And they will always do that. There are many, many children who don't have that advantage, and are often the ones who fall by the wayside. We need a system which focuses on those children as well, makes up for what they don't have at home, and enables them to discover their potential. Which makes it at least possible that, for example, they could go to Oxford.

How seeker? I have read posts from people posting about the wonderful initiatives that their state Schs are running but little buy in from parents. These initiatives are usually free by the way, the only input from parents was to make sure dcs turn up.

Have you? I haven't.

And I'm talking about the normal school day, not "special initiatives"

yoni explains all the many unfairnesses there are, certainly: I'm not sure that's the same as a concrete and absolute reason why you can never level the playing field.

I say this every time, but.... Yes, life is unfair. Some children have better parents, live in nicer places, have better health, are innately brighter..... All that. To me, that's exactly the reason it would be good if, at the very least, they went to school with children with other circumstances, and at least during the school day everyone had equality of resources and opportunity. Of course it wouldn't be perfect, because real life is still there at 3.30, but it would be better. And yes, people will move to nicer places, always, if they can, but I don't think that would radically undermine a system where children went to school with other children who lived near them, rather than based on their intelligence or parents' wealth.

The Sutton Trust is all in favour of grammars, in principle.

Yoni Private schools do not always 'beat state schools'. Some catholic schools in certain areas get very poor results (although they are not necessarily poor schools). They do not filter out the 'bad parents' they filter out the 'non catholic parents' which is not necessarily the same thing.

Schools with a higher proportion of deprived children will be allocated MORE resources by the state.

No amount of extra cash is going to level the playing field compared with professional, motivated, educated parents who will do what they can to give their child the edge (since life is competitive, it is relative rather than absolute attainment that is key here). The state cannot parent for people.

What it can do is try and reduce the proportion of bad parents, e.g. by changes to the benefits system, but that's unlikely.

So things don't change much and never will IMO

Ok lets forget after sch initiatives like extension classes for maths and homework club. What special thing do you want done during sch hours? How will you deal with disruption? What Do you think happens in GS and private schs but missing in comps during core hours?

Nit Oftentimes, going to school with people who live near you is exactly the same as selecting on wealth. Had my comp been restricted to people who lived near it, I wouldn't have gone there nor would anyone from any council estate in Croydon. If DD1's school was restricted to people who lived near it, again it would be primarily wealthier people (or at least, people living in an expensive location) going there.

Russians yes that is true to an extent, and I know it is not a perfect answer.

I still think it is more rational and thought through than, say, 'private schools get better results than state schools so lets have more private schools and fewer state schools'. For example. How can that be an answer?
Socareless, you ask What Do you think happens in GS and private schs but missing in comps during core hours?. Well I think they don't let in poor and/or not very bright children. That's what I think is different. And that's what I don't want to emulate, or my children to experience.

Russians, no not all Catholic schools do well. Some don't even manage to get a majority of Catholic pupils. However those that do do well, such as the Oratory, succeed because their selection policies exclude the less motivated parents. Any school can adopt a selective admissions policy, but unless the school is relatively better than the competition, the policy won't have an effect. So yes there are some low performing Catholic schools, and funnily enough they are undersubscribed, whereas the high performing ones are very oversubscribed and therefore can enforce their selection policies, which are substantially more effective than random chance in selecting good parents (of course even the preference system itself favours those parents who select the best schools and research which ones they can get into, cf. a bad parent who just leaves the form blank - the more oversubscribed a school is in general, the higher the proportion of good parents will be on its list).

As for private schools and state schools, private schools do substantially better on average, but obviously individual schools range on a spectrum.

An oversubscribed selective school
Is going to do better than a non selective school, regardless of the selection criteria. People often get the cause and effect the wrong way round- they are not "better" and therefore people want their kids to go- they are "better" because people have to jump through a hoop to get their child in.

I think that this thread is in danger of completely ignoring the fact that schools and universities do have strategies that are succeeding in helping level the playing field in terms of university access. The London Challenge www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/london-challenge has proven that you can close the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and the achievers, and reduce the impact of poor parenting. Indeed the outstanding comps in the most deprived areas of London are enabling disadvantaged children to reach higher levels of attainment than they are in our leafy suburb.

University strategies for widening access such as outreach programmes and the use of contextual data in admissions are also becoming more sophisticated and effective. My uni has had contact with 3000 pupils in deprived schools this year in it's attempts to motivate them and equip them to apply to university. Our students' union is now devising it's own strategies for peer programmes building on that success, which look like having the best results of all, those who have benefited going out to encourage others. As we know teens are much more receptive to a message that comes from other teens . The Fair Access Tzar would doubtless love some good soundbites for Gove to hand to the Daily Mail but instead he is quietly signing off those strategies.

I am not saying that we are anywhere near equality of opportunity, just that the will is there and schools and universities are slowly developing strategies that work. The London challenge was all about sharing best practise and building networks that support and motivate schools to improve and I am sure there is much that will be shared nationwide,

Effective improvement is achieved by the slow iterative development and implementation of effective strategies not sweeping changes that throw the baby out with the bathwater, I am sure most people would agree with that in relation to Gove's Education Strategy but it applies to fair access too.

Yoni Don't assume you won't encounter poor parenting and parents who do not take an interest in education at private schools. Believe me plenty of parents think that paying means delegating those responsibilities. SPGS Head calls it iphone parenting. I know that my DDs would have encountered less extreme behaviour in our local comps had we been lucky enough to get a place, though they are outstanding and in the suburbs.

Seeker an oversubscribed nonselective school IS selective. The oversubscription criteria invariably favour motivated parents.

Usually on proximity alone, though- you don't actively have to do anything. Except move, I suppose.

Yes, the London challenge is interesting. Children in inner London in many schools now get 2 GCSE grades higher - B not a D compared to state school chidlren in Hull. Teach first teachers want to work in London where their friends are not Hull. London state schools have lots of ambitious children of immigrants who value education more than perhaps some families in Hull plus all the other reasons (apologies to Hull) . I was talking to someone involved with London academies recently. It seems to be the freedom to decide what things to do which is helping those schools - academies a bit like the old Direct Grant schools abolished int he 1970s where some children paid fees and some did not and there was a state grant to help the costs.

Copthall those who like to breast beat don't want to hear about innovative strategies which are bearing fruit.

seeker it takes a lot of motivation and money to buy a house in the catchment of many schools.

Not much chance of that if you live in local authority housing (transfers like gold dust).

There are loads of immigrants in cities other than London

But yes, teachers deciding where they want to be is undoubtedly a factor.