Genuine question - why do some people have a problem with the grammar school system

[englishteacher78]

I went to one - my choice in part, parents would have preferred me to go to the Catholic secondary. As a teacher I have worked in two.
I know if I had gone to the Catholic school I would have coasted (even more than I did).
Some people seem to he very against the grammar school system and I'm not sure why. It was the making of my dad (miner's son from council estate in Scotland)and I think that all counties should have that provision. Surely it's just split site streaming in a way.

davidjrmum I have 2 DCs. DC1 is at a superselective. DS didn't want to even try to do the exam for the superselective, he wanted to go to the comp for which their primary school was/is a feeder school (that;s the system that operates round here, designated feeder schools). That was where his friends were going, that was where he wanted to go. DD2 has just passed the exam for the superselective and will go there next year - she was very firm she didn't want to go to the comp, she wanted to go to the grammar. DS doesn't have any problem with that at all (in fact he is rather relieved DD2 won't be going to his school). I think most kids realise that not everyone is the same and that people have different strengths and different preferences.

Aaargh. 3 DCs. I find it very difficult to type with my new talon like nails. Perhaps I need to go back to biting them incessantly.

Ouryve my DS year 10 has Aspergers and is in Grammar school (his choice). True he does not need 1:1 support. He has had many situations he has found difficult while he has been at secondary refusing to go to school at one point in year 9.
The school have been brilliant. The SEN support and pastoral care is great. He has made some really supportive friends who embrace his quirks. He struggled to make friends in primary. I feel he could have been bullied had he attended his local school. He was bullied in a state primary school. A friend withdrew her son from a local comprehensive because he was bullied in year 7.

I used to have an academic objection to grammar schools, on the basis that they divide children into academic successes and failures at 10. I really don't think it is feasible to say based on a set of tests at 10 which children are "academic" and which aren't.

I also used to have leftie egalitarian objections as I think they recruit predominantly from the middle classes. Even in their heyday there were many bright kids from working class backgrounds who couldn't sit the exam or take up the place, so I am not convinced they were working in that respect. I think the grammar school heyday coincided with a period of great social mobility and so lots of people "made it" into the middle classes, and attribute this to a grammar school education when actually I'd say it was probably due a demographic and economic shift - there were a lot more middle class jobs available at that point.

But since I've had children I am also heartily glad we aren't in a grammar area. DP and I were both very high academic achievers. But our dc, they're a mixed bag. One is highly academic in conventional terms. Tends to do very well indeed at exams and thrives on competition. Would be in a grammar school, absolutely no doubt. Another is very good in some subjects (good marks in maths and science, and in reading, excellent marks in art) but spectactularly poor in written English. Would have failed the 11+ and been in a secondary modern despite the fact she's in top groups for everything except English, and excelling in some subjects.

And the 3rd is only 9 still and it's hard to say but I really wouldn't bet on her passing an 11+. She'd probably be borderline. but she's improving all the time - she's changing quickly in academic terms.

So my children would have been divided into successes and failures if we were in an 11+ area. But there's only one of them who is clearly one one side of the Academic/not Academic divide. it woudl have been a horrible issue for our family if there were grammars and secondary moderns, and I think 2 of my 3 children would have been shortchanged by it.

Supporters of grammar schools: just stop a second and imagine that your children don't have a hope of getting in. Still like the idea?

English. I was wondering when one of these discussions was coming round again?

On this site people are always claiming grammar schools destroy the other schools around them, and that a fully selective system does not benefit the many.

One exception and proves if Kent/Bucks and Lincolnshire could get the organisation right is Trafford which is a fully selective system where up to
30% of pupils go to grammar schools. Trafford non selective schools
achieve up to 80% A* to C inc Maths and English and not one achieves less than 50% in these measures. Trafford is a great barometer as it has
some of the richest wards outside London interspersed with some of the poorest wards. It shows that properly managed schools can perform
above average for all schools even in fully selective areas.

I know i will get some people telling me that Trafford for some reason
does not count.

A question: Who closed the most grammar schools as education secretary?

However despite this vandalism there was at least the assisted places
scheme in its place.

The idea that by destroying or closing good schools would somehow make the bad good is flawed.

The destruction of grammar schools or the assisted places scheme is one
of the reasons why the establishment is more dominated now with
public school toffs than 30 or 40 years ago.

As someone who if i had taken the 11= would have been lucky to have got 1 answer right i am able to comment.

However i am grateful that both my niece and nephew have benefited from Trafford's Grammar schools.

A question: Who closed the most grammar schools as education secretary?
I thought that was Mrs Thatcher - but am willing to be corrected.

So what is it that Trafford does, which Bucks most certainly does not do?

Shoe I have one child not at a grammar school. I still like the idea.

For lots of the reasons that others have cited. For the record, I don't like streaming either: I like setting, which is probably more complicated to do in many ways, but means kids are actually less segregated and can work at appropriate levels in each subject.

I really wouldn't like my kids to be judged, at 11, 'non-academic' and siphoned off to a 'non-academic' school. And it is a genuine risk for my older daughter; judging by her secondary transfer grades, she would have got into a grammar in the days when you didn't have to be tutored for them, but would have needed a fair bit of maths coaching to be a shoo-in for it now. Two years on, she's now in the top maths set of what sounds like a fairly fiercely maths-ish year in a maths/science specialist comp.

I live in a GS area and my eldest is unlikely to pass without heavy tutoring (& even then nothing's guaranteed). The local comprehensive quotes a dismal 50% pass rate for maths & English GCSE & we're not in a position to go private or consider the schools. I have no idea what to do bar move or hope we can magic up a place in a a marginally better comprehensive out of area. It's so sad to think a child's future is determined at 11 in part because of parental willingness to chest the system faith or finances.

GS is great for those that get in but in our area 'the system' fails many others.

"The local comprehensive quotes a dismal 50% pass rate for maths & English GCSE "

What's the intake like? How do the high achievers do?

"CORRECT" La Volcan. Regarding Trafford, i think they are very succesfull
at Primary level. this would explain why they have relatively small number
of low attaining pupils entering even the non selective schools .
This can be seen on the Dept of Education Performance Tables....

With the exception of a few "NUTTERS" Passing or Failing does not seem
to be a Life or Death situation that it appears to be in "KENT".

We are in an area with an excellent grammar school..... so it has become a middle class bubble - people pull their kids from far and wide to attend - a great deal having attended public prep schools.

They load the top end of the list of "qualifiers" because they have been tutored for the test. State schools round here do not even have a practise test...
Hence the view that a lot of the grammar school places around here can be "bought" - rather than earned by the children a grammar school was supposed to be for.....

The other (many) grammar schools in the county take off the top however many of the state school system... (though many are tutored to get there ) this then means that the top of the state comp system is lower than it should be. I guess this means that the state schools perform less were specifically because of grammar schools....

*less well... not were

None of my dc have been bright enough to plass 11+ and Grammar school was obviously out of the question.
If your child is bright they deserve to be in the grammar school if they pass the test, simple as that.
So what if some get tutored, my dd is tutored to have an advantage in gaining a place at a specialist music school. Should I not pay for her lessons now?
It strikes me that those who object want to spoil it for other dc because their own were incapable of passing the test.
We all want the best for our dc, at a level that suits them.

I do love these debates... on a recent tour of a local GS, someone asked the head about SEN. he said "oh yes, we do have a few dyslexics".

I think that kind of sums up the approach really.

"It strikes me that those who object want to spoil it for other dc because their own were incapable of passing the test."

Oh, the old jealousy argument.

boschy All my DC have SEN. Two of them have passed the 11+ and will both be at superselective next year (the younger one is in Y6). The SEN provision could definitely be better, I realise, having now some knowledge of what it's like at private schools - but the SEN provision at the comp is even worse. So, what can you do but try and improve things in both places (the course I have taken). Incidentally at our grammar there are to my certain knowledge kids with not just dyspexia but also dyspraxia, AS, ADHD and complex processing issues which don't fit easily into the more well known categorisations. Your local GS seems on the face of it to not be very good in that area but one throwaway comment doesn't necessarily tell the whole story...

I have a problem with the selective system (not sure why you have called it the grammar school system, OP) because it is based on the assumption that children fit into one of 2 discrete groups - the academic and the non-academic - when children's abilities obviously fall on a continuum from the very dull to the genius. If you split them into 2 groups, regardless of where you make the split, the ability of the children either side of the split will be identical.

When grammar schools were first introduced, the school leaving age was 13, so perhaps 11 was the latest they could leave it. Now the school leaving age is 16 for everyone, there seems little point in selecting out a few at 11.

Would people still be so anti of it was a system with more room for transfer - like the German system?

To me that would make selection seem even more of a nonsense. One would assume that the selected children in their selective school, not held back by having to mingle with the dull, would be making such progress that they would leave even the brightest children in the non-selective school behind. (Actually I know this isn't true as I have known people who passed the 13+)

That's the point,potatoprints. Many parents look around their local comp and think it's not going to offer enough to their children but there's often no alternative. And there are many children languishing at the bottom of comprehensives, doing nothing worthwhile, yet being urged towards some false 'target' to improve the league tables when, in fact, they'd be better learning a skill or 2 and getting out of the classroom.

The comprehensive ideal has truly failed many children. It's fine if you live in an area where you can afford the inflated house prices which conveniently reduces the,er, more disaffected cohort, so you end up with a mono-cultural intake which isn't exactly comprehensive but whatever.

Grammar schools can and should offer more to the type of learner they're designed for than the average comprehensive. That's why parents will go to such lengths to secure a place. Unfortunately, there are too few.

^A question: Who closed the most grammar schools as education secretary?
I thought that was Mrs Thatcher - but am willing to be corrected.^

People keep saying that but I don't know if it is true. Most places I have lived 'went comprehensive' between 1974 and 1979. Thatcher, as Education Secretary, allowed LEA's to do as they wished with regard to transfer at 11.

Would people be so anti if the transfer age was 14?

This selection happens, in practice, when children get put into GCSE sets, although they stay within the same school.

Just musing: I went to a mediocre grammar school, which is heaps better as a comprehensive, and my children went to comprehensives.

Forteen would seem a more natural split in that children are choosing their options and they will be put in for exams at different levels, but I don't really see why that has to be in different schools.

I went to a very good grammar school, LaVolcan, which is now in special measures as a comprehensive.

The funny thing about grammar schools is that in my experience they are almost all single sex. This might be completely anecdotal, but I heard that when grammar schools were the norm, many girls 'failed' to get a place at a grammar school, having scored better than boys who got in because of the distribution of places across the sexes.

Another issue is that Grammar schools date back to a time when it was assumed that a large part of the population would do manual work/be part of the typing pool/give up work on marriage - education really was differentiated according to what job you might do. Is the old grammar school/secondary modern model of education relevant now? When we had grammar schools 3% of children went to uni, now apparently 50% and rising are supposed to go.