11+ being scrapped

[musu]

At one school in Essex here

Interesting development which follows on from Bucks CC overhauling their 11+ and trying to make it tutor proof (although everyone I know in Bucks is still employing tutors).

beatback it's true that the indies are pretty desperate to clean up on those who miss out on the grammars. Our local indies claim a cut off date for application and give themselves a massive puff then regularly 'find room' for those not allocated a place at the grammar.

TOSN I'm not sure if that's an accusation that I myself am a champagne socialist. You'd be on fairly thin ground.

No, it's not: just struck me as a bit of a dry definition of what a joke can or should consist of!

So the private schools do a nice line in 11+ fails... Not entirely sure how that's a market place for most.

Yellowtip. Even if this was true NOT NEVER". The fees for benenden would still be 26k a year, that is the "UNTRUE HIKED UP " Untaxed average wage in the uk. The point is Seeker should not be going after middle income people who just want the best for their DC"s. Go after the real "PRIVILEGE". And as bad as the social mix is in Grammar Schools the mix in public schools is 10 times worse. Getting rid of Grammar Schools will not rid us of "TOFFS" from "PUBLIC SCHOOLS" running the "BANKS" GOVERMENT" and holding all the power and real wealth, "REAL WEALTH" is not someone who has worked very hard and lives in a 4/5 bed house and has a couple of cars, It is people who have Millions stashed away all over the world.

Since it never purported to be a definition Nit perhaps you should lighten up.

Well, fair enough, although the post I made was never intended to be 'heavy' anyway! I quite liked seeker's joke about black market 11+ help and I thought the quibble on it was a teeny bit over-zealous, that's all!

Yes zealous or even over zealous is fair but not without provocation from a well heeled pony owning armchair socialist who doesn't deal magnanimously with adversity on the grammar school front yet still clings to the high ground. I should apologise for ennui.

I think given the relentless attacks on here, magnanimous isn't a bad word for the response they get, actually!

On a personal level, I wish people would get less vociferously cross with seeker not just because it's rather unpleasant and is often seized on by less astute posters who shall not be named, but I get frustrated by the way it obscures the actual discussion and becomes so personal.

Seeker is a very irritating poster with a personal vendetta against her own fantasy world.

Well if you feel that way, wouldn't it be worth not engaging with that any more?

I just want to say i have "LOADS" of respect for seeker and can see she is a very caring person, the country needs people like seeker if we are going to make the changes we need. These are not in anyway personal from me towards seeker. I just wish seeker could use her energy in the right way, and target the people who need to be targeted.

I don't think I've been culpable so far but when seeker is sniffy about real efforts those in charge are making to increase access to grammars while she reclines and pontificates whilst all the while sending her own DC to grammars or appealing when they're turned away - yes, fair enough to call time. Or she could do some groundwork and educate herself about the progress actually being made instead of the limp despairing and the calling for salts. It's too tiresome.

beatback seeker could have done more before now surely if she really, truly cared. She appears not to have done, so I believe the caring is limited. I'm very happy to be proved wrong, but passive whining from a privileged position really bugs me.

I know my last post was over the top. But that is the reason we need Grammar Schools to at least offer something that compares in a small way to a public school.

But why would she want to increase access to grammar schools whilst also campaigning for no more of them?

The thing is, encouraging more children to take the test who might not otherwise do so (and might in any case have a lower probability of getting in than those from more 'traditional' GS-attending backgrounds, who have money and know-how to navigate tutoring et al) doesn't really address the problem if you don't believe that a segregated education system is a good model for universal high quality education for all. It's a kind of 'arranging deckchairs on the Titainic' approach - a fiddling at the margins rather than addressing the root of the issue.

Counties with similar demographics to Kent, but with non-segregated comprehensive systems of secondary education, achieve very similar results and avoid the divisiveness of the 11+ system. For those who wish it, such counties also have thriving private schools to provide choice for those with money - and so many of us cannot understand why wholly grammar school system such as in kent continues to exist, dividing 'sheep' from 'goats' by a margin of a single mark at 10.5 and decreeing wholly different educations for those on either side of the magic 'pass mark'... despite the fact that if they took similar tests on another day, those children who 'just passed' and those who 'just failed' would almost certainly swap places. Whereas in a comprehensive system, those children would have the same opportunities as one another.

I agree, not all comprehensives are great - but then the secondary moderns really aren't great at all, and any supporter of a grammar system has to accept that for every grammar school there is a secondary modern, so 50% of the schools in Kent are 'not great' by that definition (of course, many do very well given their intake, but that's not the point, is it? Nobody moves to Kent because they are dying to get their child into the excellent secondary moderns...).

Hear hear!

Well I agree with that TOSN. I think word is misguided if she thinks seeker has any place in access. I'm sure she'd be positively dangerous. But yet she appears to do nothing except moan, which is phenomenally unproductive and tedious. I'm studiously avoiding the word hypocrisy here, obviously.

Yes, good studious avoiding.....!

I don't know seeker. But I know that what I post on here doesn't reflect all I do or say or campaign for in real life, and I'm sure that's true for many of us.

But of course it does at least make some small inroad within the current political constraints if you do believe that the grammar model is a good model and you've seen its benefits first hand.

And the same goes, I suppose, for the comprehensive model, which is what I've seen and whose benefits I've seen!

I think it is really rude to talk about a poster in their absence.

Seeker gives as good as she gets but she needs to be here to defend herself. I am uncomfortable with this level of personal criticism when the poster is offline.

And I say that as someone who has locked horns with seeker numerous times.

greythorne you are right. Billions of ajopolies!

I came back for a discussion on grammar schools and found everyone slagging seeker off.
I totally agree with Greyhorne and likewise have had several heated debates with Seeker

I'm so glad I chose to H.ed

However, would still like to argue the fact that if you were so hell bent on your dc attending grammar school, transport would not be unaffordable on min wage for some people. Including myself. To argue that other things would be more important, apart from base needs obviously is clearly speculation as nobody can speak for a whole demographic.