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).

pickled yes you would.

The way I see it, those 20 ought to be getting A*s. They ought to be being significantly challenged beyond the curriculum.

That's not happening. No doubt someone will come on and say all their top set got A*s, but that's not the national trend, is it?

So that top set need somehting different. I'd say they need to be in a different system altogether. Not least because if you start pushing resources and what have you at these kids, the rest of the school will get mightily pissed off!

They see these kids as already having significant benefits. They will say a clever kid ought to be able to crack along just fine!!!

I certainly don't think you should take the top set, or a significant proportion of it, away.

Put it this way, if you took the top 20 kids out of my neice's school and put them in a GS, where they were challenged every day and worked with lots of peers with similarly ability...you would see a very different outcome for those DC.

Word - you are so right. Especially. When you consider that the way the current system is designed, kids with SEN have significant obstacles in accessing t exam grades even if they don't have problems in actually accessing and benefitting from education at a level beyond what would be required to obtain those grades if they didn't have additional challenges. IYSWIM. Despite being a 'good at exams' person myself, I agree with Bonsoir that the exam system as currently set up is indeed anti education. I prefer the idea of the Bacc to some other exam systems but even then, it's not great. I do have high hopes that the extended project will turn out to be something good and worthwhile, but I don't really know enough about it yet.

Thinking about the CEFR further, music exams and drama exams are similarly arranged although over 8 grades and there is a lot of flexibility over when and what exams are taken. It is difficult to define what constitutes taking exams early in this context.

Bonsoir, I'm interested in your statement about sitting exams early being anti-education. There's a lot to think about there. Is it your sentiment or one you've read and agree with?

That's my opinion, based on personal experience and observation.

I haven't said anything of the sort. I have said that I don't think an education system should be formulated based on the needs of the outliers. That doesn't not mean that their needs should not be met, or that they should be disregarded or marginalised. I have even been convinced by you and others that there might be a case for superselectives. What I don't think is that you should allow a system to disadvantage the vast majority because it favours a tiny minority. You make a system that meets the needs of the vast majority. Then you look at how that can be adapted to cater for the extreme ends of the curve. And you make bloody sure it does that properly. I have never said anything else, except in your imagination.

pickledsiblings - the whole point of music exams is that there isn't an early or a late - they work on the same basis as the CEFR in that they measure achievement in progressive stages. However, when you get to university entrance, there is a natural "cut off" and DC can be compared to one another at a given point in their musical education.

If all DC did CEFR-linked language exams at 16 rather than GCSE, some would get 2x B2 and a C1 and others a single A1. The point being that B2/C1 capture higher levels of achievement than GCSE.

If you took the top 20 students out of my daughters' school, you'd be left with a very different school, and not one which I think would be benefitted by that. Word's niece's school, from all one hears, has some serious flaws, and I'm not dismissing that. But I think it would be a very sad thing in any school I can think of to remove the top 20 students, and I don't think it would be a good thing for anyone.

I should also say that my dd attends a school where the top five or ten percent are not present (lots of selective schools in the area) and it has no negative effects. The girls are happy and the results are fab!

Oh Word, sorry but that's a ridiculous comparison. You've said numerous times that you're very impressed by the facilities, the attitudes and the results of your dd's school - it's not a place where the powers that be have decided 'it is not possible for bright children to do well here: they must be removed' - it's a school full of wealthy, middle class girls who've chosen to go there, in some cases over and above more academic places! To extrapolate anything about that school as applicable to a normal comprehensive where the brightest 20 students have been removed is not helpful and it doesn't make sense.

How does a GS disadvantage the majority?

The only disadvantaged SM kid is the one that hits the glass ceiling and is working at a level that is beyond his/her top set cohort. For the other SM kids many will never hit that glass ceiling problem.

Then that's alright, isn't it MomOfTom?

Actually nit, the schools USP is that it isn't the place for the ouliers! They are well catered for elsewhere.

I was agreeing with seekers post of 10.09am
I dont understand what Russian is trying to say in her last post.

Snide digs?

Oh, fucking hell. I give up.

I think the fact that it has a USP should tell you something....!

Sorry to use an MN cliche, but I think it's highly disingenuous to make comparisons between the atmosphere and ethos of such a school, and a comprehensive where you pick out the 20 brightest and say 'come along now, you'll never get your 11 A*s in this gaff, off with you to grammar' and leave the rest in situ.

I think seeker is actually being somewhat flexible in her thinking.
All in all I think it has been a good thread.
I for instance have learnt rather crucial things that I did not appreciate before.
For instance, that it indeed must not be very nice to go round in a school uniform from an unchosen school.
And I did used to think, obviously wrongly, that setting was the same sort of thing, but I can now see that it is not.

Flexible in a nice way I mean.

Maybe that is the answer wordfactory. That not so many are taken off. Just say 5 or 10%, as opposed to the grammars that take 20%?

It may have been debated on education threads before. I dont know. I have hardly been on any.
But with the degree system as it now is, or has been, that takes 50%.
And yet, people nationally dont seem to mind that. Which I find curious.
Because the ones or families I have spoken to locally, do feel that they are very much the "not haves" or whatever.