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.

farewell That data shows that the South West does better than practically everywhere else on practically every measure. If we leave aside for the moment that political issue that the region the author is calling the south west isn't in fact the south west, what we see is that a 'region' which does in fact have two of the top selective schools in the country, Pates and Colyton, and several other selective schools in Gloucestershire also, does better than practically everywhere.

I don't really think that a selective in Gloucestershire plus one in Devon and 'several others' could account for better results for the whole of the South West, stretching as it must do from Cornwall to where - Dorset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire?

There must be other reasons for the SW doing better. The selective schools won't be making a significant difference. Population density, socio economic make up of said population, employment........complex factors at play. I would imagine.

Kingston only has 2 grammar schools and they serve many children who come from outside the borough. Very few Kingston children attend them (i.e vast majority aren't at a grammar school). it has a higher than average number of children attending private schools and it has some of the most expensive houses in the UK. It's difficult to know how all of this could give you good enough data to judge whether or not grammar schools are a good thing (or even how kingston compares to other LAs.)

Merry why don't the local children go to the GS, shouldn't they get priority? or are they attending private schools

People bus their kids into Pates from all over.... it is not just local kids who go there - the reason it is one of the top is that it takes a lot of kids from public prep schools - not many "locals" get in. Local children do not get priority - it goes on who got the highest test scores - no matter where they came from.....

It would be a "local" secondary to one of the poorest areas of the town....

This part of the local SW region does very well indeed - it is a high employment area, loaded with higher socio-economic groups with very few high population cities....

There are many single sex grammar schools too and most good secondaries in my particular region are science/technology/language specialists - very few schools under-perform as the local area does attract many good teachers - I think these are all part of the reason that we do so well for education over here....

Superselectives don't have catchments. A child living 20 miles away would get a place over a child living next door if he got a higher score.

english- your earlier remark : "I think GSs are a valuable part of the education system. But then, having been to one I would." is interesting.

I went to a GS, too (at the age of 10!) back when (1973!) they maybe did cater more for the 'brighter local DC', in that it had a catchment and there was one DD in my class who'd come from a private school. Even so, there were quite a few DDs there who shouldn't have been (I mean, 4 or 5 'O' levels?!) and we had a reasonable influx from the local girls' SM into our 6th form who had the requisite 7 'O' level, but no other local SM fed into our 6th form other than the odd one or two DDs. I should add that I never exchanged one word with my headmistress in 7 years, there, either! You only did if you were in big trouble or heading for Oxbridge.

The same school now has no catchment and is full to the gunwales with Prep schooled DDs and tutored-for-2+ years DDs. I know this as a fact.

But the thing is, I am opposed to GSs in their present form- more on this in a sec. When we arrived back in the UK from abroad, we inconvenienced ourselves to buy a house in a comp area; I suspect DS1 may have passed the modern 11+ for the boys' GS, but DS2 would not have, therefore I wasn't going to risk a SM for him.

About 'types' of GS: I am not opposed to the existence of a few, highly specialist schools for DCs -ahem- burdened with the SEN of being extraordinarily gifted but with off-beat social or inter-relational skills, 'oddball' but brilliant (in the same way as we have specialist schools for DC at the other end of the more or less NT spectrum). I'm thinking of, say, Winchester College where being 'just clever' (and rich!) isn't enough. You have to be off-beat, quirky, a bit 'other'. Mainstream public-school heading 'clever' go to Westminster and St Paul's (generalisation alert!). I can see a need for state school DC who'd fall into this 'quirky and very clever category to maybe be siphoned off into something other than the local comp, but as for the rest (and I mean, hey, if we're talking '23%' of the DC' as quoted, hardly a glittering, tiny, special minority, is it?!), a well run, properly resourced comp should be the destination of choice. I would add, entry to such a specialist school would not be via a single exam on one day. There would have to be years of evidence of this DC's particular abilities. It would be utterly 'untutorable' for.

Before you bleat 'but plenty of comps aren't 'well run and properly resourced', I'd counter 'nor are quite a few GSs!' (many of my teachers would have been slaughtered by a similar SM class!) but I'd also say, I wonder if 'the local comp' just might be 'better' if GSs didn't exist albeit miles away to cream off the brighter MC DC? Wouldn't such DC be an asset to their comps? I genuinely can't see why the clever and the less clever can't walk about the same campus in the same uniform together, separated into sets in each subject?

Finally- yes, example of 'good comps' do exist: In rural Australia in the 70s where if you wanted something other than the local comp, you boarded, they managed to run schools that sent DC to the best state universities and taught vocational well. DH was at one which I toured with him 5 years ago at a reunion. Well, there were flash, sparkly science labs, there was a professional quality theatre, there were industrial catering kitchens, there was a woodworking shed with bloody great gantry mounted band saws attached to the ceiling, there was a working farm where the sons of farmers learned how to birth cows, lay fencing straight and do farm accounting. This is a big school (2000+ DC) and DC do have journeys of 2 hours each way to get there (being rural Oz) but they didn't feel the need to cream off, into their own school, one group alone to be given special treatment because their ability lay in academic subjects alone!

The schools have to give priority to children with highest scores in exams. If 2 children got 100% the child who lived closest would get the place. Otherwise any child who can reasonably get to the school each day from where ever they live is entitled to a place as long as they score highly enough.

I think that is unfair and the dc who live in the catchment should get priority as their dp's are probably paying their council tax to the borough etc. I am surprised they don't consider them first and then have places for people out of the borough. All it does is clog up the roads etc if they need to be driven.

Also alot of kids are tutored for the exams.

My dps both went to grammar schools but that was in the 50's and they both came from working class backgrounds. I think things have greatly changed.

Where we live most schools are catchment based. Mind you all it does is get people moving into areas who don't always live there but buy a flat then let it out etc or for several people to be registered at the same address. They may live miles away.

La Volcan - there are quite a few grammars in Gloucsetershire. There are 3 in Plymouth, 4 in Torbay, 1 in Devon. And at least 2 in Dorset (maybe more though). That's essentially the superselective model and per those stats, it's one that works for ALL the kids in the 'region'.

Something to think about.

Curlew That's hilarious. Those stats purported to show that grammar areas aren't any better than non grammar areas, and what they actually show is that a superselective area - which has pockets of the most extreme poverty in Europe thus qualifying for the old objective 1 funding - is better than everywhere else except London.

You are happy to accept the stats when they support your argument but the minute it is pointed out to you that they also support the argument for supers electives (rather than the clearly discredited Kent method) you decide the stats must be incomplete or wrong in some way.

www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/635438.Grammar_school_cheats_exposed/

I couldn't actually get in to look at the figures- so I was speculating. You can find it hilarious if you want- but so much better just to explain where my speculation was wrong in a civilised manner, surely?

curlew People can do anything with stats, without context (which the linked article doesn't provide) they mean nothing. But when the article link was posted nobody (including you) said 'but surely there are reasons other than having a grammar system that Selectiva doesn't do as well as comprehensive areas?' The author of the article excluded Essex (and the previously little known but now famous TRAFFORD) from 'selectiva' presumably because had he included them, the stats wouldn't have come out the way he wanted them too.

But, if we are taking the stats at face value as people were prepared to do when they thought they showed that selective areas were worse than non selective, then we have to accept that they indicate that the Kent model is bad but the superselective model is good.

I did mention in my first post on this article that it's rubbish anyway, based on a false premise. The administrative 'south west' is a nonsense, most of the places being included for administrative reasons being neither south nor west and there being no social, economic, political, educational, anything really cohesion between the geographical south west and the other bits which are really the midlands. But there you go. Those are the stats which were posted.

The Sutton Grammars are 'super selective taking, on a competitive basis - the highest exam scorers from children in Lambeth, Southwark, Croydon, Merton, Wandsworth, Kingston, even kids from Lewisham. i.e the whole of S london - anywhere where you can travel on the train for up to an hour and a half. These super selectives - 3 boys and 2 girls - account for 5 out of 14 schools in total. 5 super selectives with no reference to catchment or distance (actually one of them does: out of 180 places Nonsuch reserves 100 for girls within 5.25 Km - a big catchment for a London school and which takes it into Kingston and Surry and possibly Croyden), 9 comps . Not statistically comparable as 'Selectivia' with Kent, say.

Sutton isn't compared to Selectiva though, is it? It's subsumed into 'London'. I suppose.

The fact is, LEAs aren't comparable. They run different systems - the selective ones all select differently, there are massive differences in the non selective LEAs as well, some run bilateral schools, some run banding systems, some operate selection by bank balance, some operate feeder school systems, some have a disproportionate number of private schools, some are rural, some urban, some have 6th forms, some have colleges, some have middle schools.....and so on and so on. A key issue also is that funding levels are wildly different. The schools in the south west are some of the lowest funded in the country, so that did make the results from the stats posted above even more interesting - but as a general thing, it is simply impossible to say Kent doesn't do any better than Hampshire (or insert other non selective county here) so the selective system doesn't work

What I found hilarious was the fact that curlew, who is very fond of making generalisations like the one above, immediately became a fan of nuance when a generalised stat didn't support her idée fixe.

The article was talking about counties with a high number of grammar schools e.g. Kent, Buckinghamshire. Where you have very few grammar schools (e.g. Kingston, Dorset), I think it's difficult to judge how much effect they have, particularly where, e.g. in the case of Kingston, most pupils come from a different LA.

Kingston is a borough where you could go to a grammar school. It isn't really a grammar school LA. It just has a couple of quirky schools that are attended by very few local children. The main effect on locals is to create panic around the 11+, but to be honest I don't think it's any worse than in neighbouring Richmond - most intensively tutored children will end up going to a private school.

A bit of googling tells me that in Buckinghamshire there are 13 grammars and 23 non grammar state secondaries. In Essex there are 4 grammars and over 70 non grammar state secondaries.

I suspect that Essex wasn't included in 'Selectivia' as it didn't meet the criteria.

I still can't see the article, but surely Selectivia should only consist of wholly selective areas? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick again?

"What I found hilarious was the fact that curlew, who is very fond of making generalisations like the one above, immediately became a fan of nuance when a generalised stat didn't support her idée fixe."

No I didn't. As I explained in my post suggesting we keep the discussion civilised. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The article was seeking to demonstrate that the Kent way of doing things doesn't give any better results than a non selective system. The 'selection' of areas to form part of selectiva was designed to serve that aim. An unintended consequence of the exercise was to demonstrate that an administrative region with several superselectives, possibly more than anywhere else in the country, plus comps, does 'better' (as defined by the measures the author chose to use) than practically everywhere else. This becomes even more interesting if you know about things like the objective 1 funding qualification and the position in the school funding tables.

However, it does seem to me that in order to justify the expense, the stress, the upheaval, the angst and the divisiveness, selective LEAs would have to do much better than non selective ones. And I mean much better, better so you can see at a glance, not by trawling through pages of stats. And I don't think they do.

Merrymouse - the southend grammar schools are usually included with the Essex ones. At least thats what the 11+ forum seems to indicate.