Genuine question - why do some people have a problem with the grammar school system thread 2

[octopusinastringbag]

Original thread full so here goes.

I think the people who are concerned about aspirational/non-aspirational need to trust their DCs to select friends who are like minded. Generally it is my experience that they find their own groups who are similar to them, especially with setting and especially once the GCSEs have started.

Actually losingtust, their are a lot of suits at the BBC. Mostly at the top.

Losing I'm so glad you agree. :) It really irks me, because I feel there is a subtle - unconscious - sexism there. But I am a product of my own experiences so maybe my views are compromised.

I think they actually want to look different from the kids who go to the
FE colleges or inferior schools... I also think some of them like looking
smart and belonging to something.

They also realize they have got more important things at stake than having a walk out "Grange Hill" style about not being able to wear trainers.

Maybe the top 10 but my sister has been there for years and is a director. Never worn a suit in her life since she stopped temping in her early 20s. Neither has her partner who also works there.

abbiefield Wed 30-Oct-13 08:09:56

Abbiefield:
The reality ( except forred ed) was rather different. I went to a school with what some here have called the great unwashed. I cannot say it was a good experience. I cant even say I learned anything worhtwhile from it either. I will not go into details. I have never forgiven my mother for that.^

I do not like the term "The Great Unwashed", but I have lived for long enough amongst the people the term has been applied to on this thread. It was not a good experience, and not an enriching one, for certain. But at least, I could come into my home, close the door and shut the world outside out. As I said, a child does not have that luxury at school, they are there all day, five days a week for the best part of the year. Where do they hide from bullies in a school environment?

If there is no option to change schools, it makes it all the more worse.

If you do not like your grammar, you go to a comp. If you do not like your private school, pick a different one, or still go to a comp. If you do not like your local comp, short of moving into a different area, you are stuck. This is what I object to.

I wouldgo down the route of school uniform myself but I am only an assistant head, I dont make that decision. If it were me I would have them all wear a simple school skirt and a bluse of their own choice under a school blazer. Similarly boys. Plain school trousers and shirt and blazer and a tie of their own choice.

It would also be a lot more economical for parents I suspect.

We have made the dress code such that there wont be any embarassment to us or the students as a result of wardrobe malfunctions.

Most girls do not wear trousers these days. They tend to wear skirts. They tend to wear too short skirts and too tight skirts. We cannot allow that in a tight co educational part boarding community.

Its just about common dencency really.

Summerworld, the great unwashed was not my term, as I said " what some have called" - I think it was talkinpeace who used it here.

Of course it comes from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton who I think used it to describe a group who we might term underclass now. I think he said, the uneducated who enjoy reality TV and shopping at Wallmart.

Sorry laqueen but that's ridiculous. I've already argued against the idea that all pro-non-selective parents went to private or grammar schools... Now it turns out we're all just jellus and lying to ourselves? Ooook. But, y'know, occam's razor... Maybe that's actually just what we think?

I do think there are some brick walls which rather revel in their own brickishness, and find it rather fun to count the smashed heads around them.

^losingtrust Wed 30-Oct-13 09:06:07
Interestingly we have a local comp that produces really good results -one of the best in the country but seems to produce kids with real attitude issues. Supply teachers refuse to teach there because 'they are treated like the dirt on the kids shoes. This in an area that is not socially engineered and the kids are all from MC areas.^

this is exactly my point. But other posters keep asking where I get this idea from? Well, from around me. The problem is as you say the houses around that good comp sell at £500K, so logic tells me it is only a minority of people who can afford it and have access to a good state education.

In too many areas there is no access to a good comp, I am not talking just sink estates. Excellent comps are genuinely rare. If I cannot afford a £500K house, I want at least to have an option of selection by ability and parental effort. It is still not fair on everybody, but there is no perfect solution. I certainly do not see comprehensives as one.

The point I made was that the school is trying to change this by giving priority to the school in the deprived area as there is currently a lack of respect for teachers. This is the reason why LEAs are trying to use socisl engineering. Initially I was very anti this as I said my DS did bit get into local school. However having seen the mix at the catholic school compared to the middle class school next door and the difference in the kids I am now fully buying in to the socisl engineering that is going on. It stops this MC stronghold but also seems to make the kids more respectful to teachers rather than less. Just the two schools to compare but it would certainly shake up the comps and reduce the impact on house prices,

"The problem is as you say the houses around that good comp sell at £500K, so logic tells me it is only a minority of people who can afford it and have access to a good state education."

This is obviously some new definition of logic that has previously escaped me.................

^WooWooOwl Wed 30-Oct-13 09:06:42
There will never be a system that is perfect for every family, because people are just too different to each other.

This is why I'm advocating choice for parents, as they are the ones who should be given the most responsibility for ensuring their children get a good education. Parents would have choice if they have access to a very high achieving grammar as well as at least one good comprehensive.^

there will never be a single system good for everybody and anybody, unfortunately. The disadvantaged kids equally did not choose to have a drug addict for a mother or to have a feckless father who they might have never seen. Those will probably have the least chance of passing an exam which requires preparation and a fair amount of dedication from the parent. There will always be winners and losers. The main point is not to find and rigidly implement the best "one sized fits all" approach, be it comprehensive or selective or whatever, but create a set of options which will constitute worthwhile alternatives.

If your DC is academic, there is a grammar. If not, there is a good vocational school. If they have got mixed ability, a comp would suit them. Several posters have suggested this approach and I think it is fantastic. It will be the best of both worlds anyway IMO.

I also know that the school does not offer SEN provision and there is a lot of private tutoring taking place so these would both have an impact on the results.

I disagree with the State offering this option for the reason that it segregates children at too young an age and when parental input is at its highest. When your DC is 13 you cannot force them to study. When they are ten you have more control. Those kids with mom and dad who have time to help them will always win in the 11+ scenario and only a very small amount from non perfect homes will get in. This is wrong for the state to support this. Comps until a lot older are the only way to give all kids the chance and as this is state funded, this is what should be happening. Not MC enclaves or grammar schools.

Also how do you know a child will be a academic or not at 10/11. Being academic is more than raw IQ.

^WooWooOwl Wed 30-Oct-13 09:21:23
If pupils are disruptive to the point that other children are not receiving as high a quality lesson as they would be without the disruption, take them out of lessons and make them sit in an empty classroom until they can behave. If their behaviour means they can't access their right to education then so be it, it's for their parents to deal with.^

this might work well with a MC child, but it will be absolutely useless with a disruptive child from a disadvantaged background. The sad truth is those kids do not know the value of education and they are not driven to get it, they might not know anybody "with education", so it means nothing to them. What is putting them into an empty classroom going to do? Another opportunity to bunk off, great! Their parents do not care more often than not, they barely scraped the grades themselves. So that wouldn't work either.

I think this is in part why some posters feel so passionate about the disadvantaged kids. Because they have got nobody to help and they got no role models to aspire to among the people they know and identify with. Hence, let's put MC children in together with them "to show them a different way", or like they used to do in the olden days, take them out of their "Great Unwashed" and put them into a "MC ghetto" of a grammar. It did work, they came out MC kids (albeit without the money), got MC jobs and led MC lifestyles. Now we seem to want to go the other way, put MC kids in a comp full of disadvantaged kids (yes, I know there are exceptions) and watch everybody go down.

This is of course presuming that MC way is the better way

^curlew Wed 30-Oct-13 11:03:26
OK- often but not always the disruption is caused by children who for whatever reason are detached from education.
Those children are unlikely to be in the top sets of a comprehensive school. So why can't the parents trying to "protect" their children be happy with sending them there?^

unless you stream and not set, this will not be achieved. Then, what is the difference between selective education at a different site and separating the top from the bottom completely on the same site? Doing the same thing, IMHO.

^Xoanon Wed 30-Oct-13 11:57:34
I'm not sure it's not a little bit dysfunctional to be so terrified of bullying before child has even started school to move house.^

I should have waited until he comes home bruised? Would that not be a stupid thing to do?

Mmm, it depends what you mean by 'excellent' I guess. If you mean great results, that is probably always going to be partly a function of where you live... if you mean ofsted outstanding, not so. If you mean something less tangible.... then I don't know.

I've seen that smug virtue-sad necessity construction before as a way to dismiss others' arguments on a few subjects, and I find it a little dubious. It's quite clever, because it seeks to locate other people's perspectives as fundamentally nothing more than the function of their own dullness, poverty or self-delusion, and it's quite effective as a way to silence argument or make people feel their arguments are already discounted, but I find it a little convenient.

Finally - you can't have a system where some people get comprehensive if that's what they want but also have grammars which they might try and fail to get into. What's left is not a comprehensive, when one key reason you might go there is if you failed to get in elsewhere.

The only way that system might be fair would be if any child, no matter how promising or otherwise at 11, could have access to the grammar, and do the academic subjects etc. So if Bill's parents think that, even if he'll never be awesome at it, he'd really like and benefit from Latin, and Annie's parents, who know she's very academic, think she'd rather have a focus on drama and sport all have the same choices and options, not determined by test result. But where you have a test, the choice is a false one.

Those who harp back to the days of grammar schools seem to think disadvantaged kids would be helped because the clever ones would get to grammar schools. Get real they did not get there then. Grammar schools were then populated primarily by the advantaged but it was worse then because secondary modern kids did different exams that were not valued. Only through the workplace and apprenticeships with good companies did these intelligent but educationally reduced children shine through. That is why they were reduced dramatically. God forbid we see a return because all the good companies are far reduced in number. Cadburys for instance used to recruit early and educate their workforce who would never have got to grammar school. Social engineering in comps like it or not is the only way to level the playing field with sets not streams. Why should somebody who is really good at English but not so good at Maths be in a lower stream or art or music?

I taught in a Hauptschule in Vienna where the majority of children went grammar or vocational. It was an experimental school with really good teachers but vast majority of children were disadvantaged - it was in a very poor area. There was a lot of learning difficulties but we had a handful of children in each year that were really academic and worked really hard themselves. Their parents would have chosen a vocational route otherwise but that school offered them a real chance. At 14 they could then switch to the Gymnasium (grammar). Without the Hauptschule under that system they would have been destined to go vocational. Mind you the behaviour there would horrify our UK sensitivities. Oh and some teachers wore jeans, shock horror!