For anyone who still thinks that access to selective state education is a level playing field.....

[curlew]

I have just read the latest OfSTED for my dd's grammar school.

There are no children in Year 7 who are eligible for FSM. None. Not one.

See I think if you don't have money to buy books,decent food etc that is a huge disadvantage.Families on less than £16k will find it harder to fund so many things it can't help but put those kids at a disadvantage.That said so will those on 17,18k.....Poverty leads to other things.

Not all families but the stats must show many do need support,let's face it the gov aren't keen on splashing money about.That said I do think they should widen the net out.

Families on less than £16k get top up benefits, and books are very easily accessible if a parent makes an effort.

I agree that having a low income doesn't give a child the best possible start in life, but there are so many things that could be considered disadvantages, that I begin to wonder if it actually is a disadvantage.

books are very easily accessible if a parent makes an effort
not if you are in an area with Library closures
and the school no longer has a library (see other thread)

Disadvantaged children get funded pre school hours a year earlier than most, and should be able to borrow books from there. As well as the free books that are given out to all pre schoolers.

School libraries closing is outrageous though. I'm not on FSM but there is no way I'd have been able to pay full price for every book my dc have read, they get new books every week!

woowoo
Disadvantaged children get funded pre school hours a year earlier than most,
link please
and proof that there might be books at such things ...

In my case, the family circumstances were what DROVE them to ensure my DSis and I got the best we could get. We were read to nightly, we were taken to the Library. We were encouraged to take part in "healthy" pursuits - Brownies/Guides/Sports etc and not to hang round the streets. We were never going to be a position of scrabbling for every penny. That was their focus and intention.

My DM was pregnant with me aged 16. Over her dead body were her girls going to throw their lives away. PS I don't mean that as any kind of judgement - just that that was the attitude that I encountered growing up. Poor people are not stupid as a class. They are not feckless as a class.

I got my Grammar School place - as did Dsis - without any form of tutoring. We didn't qualify for FSM, but were very much working poor. I am thankful for it - I was clever and was encouraged to do well. These days the whole system makes me cross. As someone posted - you don't need tutoring to pass the test, but it helps you get higher marks and helps to guarantee a place, maybe denying one to an innately brighter child who has had no extra help.

I agree the pupil premium should be used to help the children (and their families) most in need of it.

Funded early years education

No idea how to prove that pre schools have books, but it seems common sense to believe that they would. Every one I have ever worked at or used has encouraged children to borrow books to share at home, but I appreciate that not all will do that.

woowoo
that link goes through to councils who activate it on a discretionary basis

No idea how to prove that pre schools have books, but it seems common sense to believe that they would.
One in three households in the UK own no books
I sold books at a boot sale to a kid whose granny would have to hide them from her mum who "did no like books"

No it doesn't, it's the main government website, which says this

2-year-olds

Some 2-year-olds in England can also get free early education.

You must be getting one of the following:

Income Support
income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
support through part 6 of the Immigration and Asylum Act
the guaranteed element of State Pension Credit
Child Tax Credit (but not Working Tax Credit) and have an annual income not over £16,190
the Working Tax Credit 4-week run on (the payment you get when you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit)
Children looked after by a local council are also entitled to a place.

If your child’s eligible, you’ll be able to start claiming from any of these dates after they turn 2:

1 September
1 January
1 April
Contact your local council to check if your child’s eligible.

New rules from September 2014

From September 2014 more 2-year-olds in England will be eligible for free early education.

As well as the current rules, a child will then also be eligible if any of the following apply:

you get Working Tax Credits and earn no more than £16,190 a year
they have a current statement of special educational needs (SEN) or an education, health and care plan
they get Disability Living Allowance
they’ve left care through special guardianship or an adoption or residence order

Your example of selling books to a Granny just proves the point that it's parents that are the problem, not school systems.

yes but if you follow on through, it leads to how it is implemented in your area - and in my area ITS NOT (yet)

and I thought we were not meant to treat schools like childcare ( thinks back to all the snow day threads )

Owning no books is not the same as not having access to books.

Either way, I think we can probably agree that some children don't get what they deserve in terms of education. But my point is that this a a problem with parents, not schools.

and mixing kids who have crap parents in amongst kids with great parents (as comps do but selective schools do not) is the best remedy

If there are councils that don't implement this, then that is big news to me and I will stand corrected. I have been working in early years for quite a long time, and as far as I was aware this was a nationwide initiative.

I don't think that early years education is childcare.

and mixing kids who have crap parents in amongst kids with great parents (as comps do but selective schools do not) is the best remedy

That's exactly what I object to, and I don't believe it is the best remedy anyway.

A better remedy would be to improve parenting standards. Using government money and other adults. Not children.

Children do not go to school to support adults who can't parent properly.

But the children who go to Thomas Telford DO travel miles to go to school lottysmum; they're even got a map of the motorway on their website! I thought we'd established that it's a 'selective' school - with an entry of only 1% low attainers it has to be. Yes, they take a higher percentage of children on fsm than some schools but they only take poor 'clever' children and not poor 'stupid' children - a model 'grammar' school in effect! They also require the parents of applicants to provide a copy of their child's year 5 report and attendance records, agree to commit themselves to actively support their child's education and intend their child to stay for sixth form so they weed out all the undesirables. Which 'comprehensive' school do the troublemakers and poor 'stupid' children go to?

Woowooowl
A better remedy would be to improve parenting standards. Using government money and other adults
could you cite an example of where that has ever worked, anywhere ?

And as somebody who is well educated and highly motivated for my kids, I'm not in the least bit bothered that there are less advantaged kids elsewhere on the same campus.
A lot of you who support segregated schooling are clearly rather precious because you are scared of what you have not experienced
(as I was when I was 21 - having only breathed selective air till then)

The problem with these arguments is that people refer to their own experiences, and everyone has different experiences.

There is no argument about whether, IN GENERAL, extreme poverty lowers children's educational outcomes. It is one of the most consistently established facts in every study of education and society everywhere. It is, as has been pointed out, why we have the pupil premium. How anyone can think it's patronising to acknowledge that fact is beyond me.

Arguing about single cases anecdotally is then completely irrelevant. Yes, there are very poor children who do well as school, just as there are certain individuals who smoke like chimneys all their lives and never get cancer. So the fuck what?

So the question then arises whether children on FSM are under-represented in grammar schools because they can't afford tutoring, or because their background PRIOR to the year of the test, taking into account all factors like parental support, reading at home etc - is such that they don't even get in the ballpark in the first place.

Now it's just occurred to me that it ought to be possible to answer this question (and I honestly have no idea what the answer will be, so it's not a leading question or just another attempt to win the argument).

We could answer this question by finding out the ratio of the children on FSM who pass the 11+ to the number who sit it, and then comparing this to the equivalent ratio of other children. This should work in fully selective areas like Kent because when teachers tell parents their kid is grammar material, they don't tell them only to sit the test if they can afford a tutor. On the contrary, generally anyone who is even vaguely within a shot of passing will sit it. Often parents insist on their kids sitting it who really don't have much chance at all, against the advice of the school.

It might not work so well with superselectives because there might be a perception among some FSM families that it's not even worth trying if they can't afford tutoring. But I gather that superselectives are not so much what we're arguing about here, since they take very few pupils and don't skew the whole system for the others so much.

So: If it turned out that (say) only 10% of those children on FSM who take the test in somewhere like Kent pass the test, where (say) 50% of those not on FSM who take the test do, then there would be a good argument that the ones on FSM have likely been disadvantaged by not being able to afford tutoring.

OTOH, if it turned out that roughly equivalent proportions of both groups pass the test, but hardly any FSM children end up in grammar simply because hardly any of them sat the test in the first place, then tutoring can't have anything to do with it. Those children were obviously not in a position as they approached Y5, that their teachers would recommend for sitting the test at all. The place to look for answers would then be the circumstances of their life in earlier years.

Anyone know if it's possible to obtain information about how many children on FSM sit the 11+, in various boroughs?

Maybe, just maybe one of the ways to improve things for the future is to stop telling children that they are failures at the age of 10? Stop telling them that they are the sort of children who will infect "nice" children with yob and dim?Maybe they would be more engaged in their children's education and less disaffected if that never happened? ( and I know it only happens in a tiny minority of LEAs. But they are big LEAs, and there are a lot f children involved.

I'm not in the least bit bothered that there are less advantaged kids at my dc's comp either, in fact it's a good thing because it helps him realise how lucky he is.

My other dc will be among the least advantaged kids at selective school, although he is certainly not disadvantaged, and that's fine too.

A better remedy would be to improve parenting standards. Using government money and other adults
could you cite an example of where that has ever worked, anywhere ?

No.

But there will be plenty of anecdotal evidence that various interventions have had a positive effect somewhere.

Can you site an example of an area that is fully comprehensive where all children have good quality educational outcomes?

"That's exactly what I object to, and I don't believe it is the best remedy anyway."

Fantastic. Another honest person out of the woodwork. I want to award prizes to the people who will just come out and say I like grammar schools because it means my child doesn't have to mix with the great unwashed". I can have respect for people who say that. It's all the weaselling that pisses me off.

Not sure where the stats came from but press article Oct 13

Bucks County Council rightly says it has one of the widest gaps between the attainment of children from poorer families in Bucks and their peers. What it didn’t provide are the figures. These show that 70 per cent of pupils in Bucks got five good GCSEs in 2011/12. However, only 35 per cent of pupils from poorer families got five good GCSEs.

Nor did BCC say that the Government’s Schools Minister blamed schools in Bucks, saying their record was a “disgrace”.

He said: “Schools in the most affluent parts of England are failing pupils from poor families, who are getting better exam results in deprived areas.” Children from poorer families would do better if they went to schools in Manchester or parts of inner London.

What the Minister fails to understand is the gap in attainment is not between deprived children and their peers in the same school. It is not the schools that are failing our children. The gap is between the children who go to schools at the top of the league table (which are the grammar schools) and those who go to schools at the bottom (which are not). Children who go to the grammar schools are from relatively affluent families (only three per cent of children in grammar school are eligible for free school meals). Children from poorer families overwhelmingly go to other schools (schools at the bottom of the league table have up to 50 per cent of their children eligible for school meals).

It is the two-tier, 11-plus system in Bucks which is failing our poorer children. It selects children at 11 and sends the more affluent to high-performing schools and the poorer children to the worst performing schools. Poorer children do not get selected for the top tier.

Bucks County Council needs to face up to the failure of its system and move toward non-selective education in Bucks.

I want to award prizes to the people who will just come out and say I like grammar schools because it means my child doesn't have to mix with the great unwashed"

Since you've decided that that's what we all think anyway - and clearly nothing we can say will convince you otherwise - why is it important to you that we confirm your prejudice?

Lots of good points there FastLoris. You are right that people draw on their own experiences and I am very guilty of this in these debates.

I think I might need a poker up my arse to remind me that more people's experience is of a fully selective area, which I agree I wouldn't like either. But an attack on grammar schools feels to me like an attack on parental choice, and that's not something I can be comfortable with.

We could answer this question by finding out the ratio of the children on FSM who pass the 11+ to the number who sit it, and then comparing this to the equivalent ratio of other children.

^^ That would be really interesting to answer, and I agree with the rest of what you say.

FastLoris-the problem is that nobody has actually given me any other plausible reason why the 25:75 grammar /non grammar system is a good idea. I'd be glad to hear one if you have one to offer?

I accept that there are arguments for super selectives- I don't agree with them, but there are valid arguments. But the 25:75 system? Nope. Can't think of one.