Grammar offers 10 places to those triggering "pupil premium"

[legallady]

Forgive me if this is a regular occurrence at other grammars but for those on the recent grammar thread, I thought it was interesting that Nonsuch High ( highly selective grammar in S W London) has reserved it's first 10 places for girls who have triggered the pupil premium at their primary school at any time in the last six years.

I know it's only ten out of 180 but at least they have thought about it. It may well be that they're just after the additional money but I like to think that their motives are a little more altruistic than that!

How do you think we got that "privilege" curlew? I will tell you how, it was by working hard all our working lives and contributing ...yes contributing a hell of a lot of taxes and claiming nothing ...and you are so wrong...there are poor immigrants who value education for their children as a top priority - many grammar schools are full of children of those cultures, as well as children of nurses, teachers and other solid middle class contributors to society and immigrants are overrepresented at grammar schools based on numbers of local population (you only need to look at Tiffin). You'd like life to be black and white, middle class vs FSM, I know but it rarely is.

Tiggy it doesn't help,it shuffles the same places around.The same rich kids will still get in.

Just why should a kid from a family on 20 or even 30k lose out to one on £16?Not much incentive for families to take on extra shifts or jobs if you know your kid will be penalised from both ends of the spectrum.

Let's paint this scenario...FSM and parents who have not worked for years vs child of single parent family whose parent worked as a nurse for years...who are you to say who is more deserving?

better option would be to focus on real educationally disadvantaged kids at primary level than try and "level" things by awarding places for those who don't make the cut otherwise academically

And lets not forget the pp kid will have advantages such as free G&T courses,school trips etc which those just over won't have.

£30-50 G&T courses cost,I know middle income families who can't afford them, the pp kids get funding.

Also the fact is the loss of those 10 places will make it even harder for those on just over pp and the middle to get in.

Not fair.

And the pp kids in Outstanding primaries will have advantages over those in crap primaries just over.

Life is unfair,you make the best of what you've got.

What are you defining as middle income though Retropear? A single mother who was a nurse might well have children eligible for FSM - the salaries of the lower bands aren't very high at all, so wouldn't be 'middle income' by any stretch of the imagination. Even a band 5 e.g. GP practice nurse, may only get something like £27K - which is just above the average wage.

I was thinking more in terms of the couples who are earning £50K + £30K between them, who surely can afford a bit of tutoring?

But in general, I think you have a point in that the people who are just above the cut off, do draw something of a short straw.

See I really do see retros point. We recently went from being a reasonable wage "MC" couple to being the low earners relying on tax credits and JSA. Through no fault if our own (redundancy)

I won't be claiming any FSM as there's no point dd won't eat them and we are exactly the same people we were a few months ago. Nothing has changed with regards to the support she gets or my educational levels and where we are, my kids are so far down on the list for a decent secondary that my dds only hope is to pass the 11+. Now there would be 10 less spaces fir her to get of this Dane into play.

I don't begrudge any child getting a chance. But my kid deserves a chance too. And will be amongst those who are looked over because we chose not to sign up for FSM.

I think this is what retro means ?

Tre real problem us kids who oerhaps shouldn't be there because they can't keep it up without the tutoring and what happens if the parents can't afford the tutor any more and the child can't keep it up.

It's the parents who are rich not the child and the child would have no idea of what could actually happen to them. I feel sorry for those children too.

LaVolcan we are in that middle bracket and can't afford tutoring- it costs £s for a single hour which is diddly squat when you factor in the need for 3 areas to be covered.I think it is pretty well documented how little spare cash families have at the moment and no we don't mismanage money,fritter it on gadgets,holidays etc.

Seriously for the above you could easily get the same on the Internet.The rich have dc in private primaries or have bought places through property in Outstanding primaries,they then pay for several hours of tutoring on top.For most families £30 an hour x 3 or 4 times a week is out of budget.

The fact is for the rest of us there are advantages and disadvantages and unless you stop applications from private schools alongside primary encouragement and 11+ information for all there is little you can do re fairness.

So making the best of what you have is the only option and something we can all do.

But Giles, your child is already hugely advantaged because of the family he comes from. As are mine.

Nobody is suggesting giving disadvantaged children more chances than non disadvantaged ones. Just to even things up a bit.

But there is no way of knowing which kids are and which aren't as the pp is the only indication. And you already said that the really disadvantaged kids are statistically unlikely to be the ones passing the test.

But as I said before, I do appreciate that a chance is a chance and of course they deserve that.

It is just a shame that it possibly comes at the expense of another child who may be no better off and just have the FSM as the difference between them.

Which is one of the many reasons selective education is a crap idea.

I expect it is. But my secondary catchment school is shit. I will be doing all I can to keep her out if it and round her unfortunately it means taking the 11+

What do you mean "the catchment is shit"?

It's just not a very good school. Has a bad local reputation ofsted rated it "requires inprovenent" and now it's closed and reopened somewhere else as an academy and currently has no report.

Friends whos children go there don't rate it very high at the moment. I'm hoping it changes for the better because if she doesn't pass that's probably where she has to go. My do went there as have his siblings so I have seen first hand some appalling inadequacies that it has had in the past (and there are a few years between them all so wasn't just "2bad years" ) there's literally only one school I want her to go to because the other is single sex which I don't want.

You don't happen to have a winning lottery ticket do you? :)

Curlew, when you bang on about preps and midddle classes with sharp elbows - can you tell me why there is an "overrepresentation" of certain cultures in gaining places at likes of superselectives like Tiffin (coming from afar as Langley and Slough?) ....hardly leafy, affluent areas ...it is not to do with economic disadvantage or FSM ...I do believe a lot of it is due to cultural lack of educational aspirations in certain families/sectors - poor white working class is one (at risk of generalization but Sutton Trust and others point out the same) but people conveniently prefer to ignore that when focussing on middle class vs. working class.

oh, are those children from certain immigrant cultures on modest incomes hugely advantaged also because they have a culture that focusses on high educational aspirations as opposed to one that doesn't?

I think all the SW London grammars are trying to revise their intakes...have noticed that SGS and Wilson's are introducing catchments for some of their places

I think it's an excellent idea TBQH although would love to know whether there will be the uptake and help provided from the prospective pupils' primary schools - the Head of our DCs primary is dead against selective education so pretty sure she wouldn't help those pupils who are eligible...

A report by Iain Duncan Smith's Social Justice Policy Group revealed that white working class boys are performing least well at school:

"They do markedly worse than other groups from similarly poor backgrounds, scoring only a quarter of the exam passes of teenagers of Chinese origin and fewer than half the exam passes of those of Indian extraction. Even black Caribbean boys from poverty-stricken backgrounds – long associated with high levels of classroom underachievement – score a little better than their white counterparts.

Only 17 per cent of white working class boys gain five or more A-C grades at GCSE, slightly fewer than the 19 per cent of black Caribbean boys of similar backgrounds attaining this benchmark. But among boys from low income Chinese families, the success rate is 69 per cent."

IDS lists the main factors that appear to explain the underperformance of working class white boys:

A lack of parental interest in education exacerbated by family breakdown;

Peer pressures that make it “uncool to study”;

Parental drug and alcohol abuse.

IDS:

“The fact that poor children from Chinese and Indian backgrounds, where family structures are strong and learning is highly valued, outscore so dramatically children from homes where these values are often missing suggests that culture not ethnicity or cash is the key to educational achievement. The policy-making implications are clear. To prevent the growth of an uneducated and unemployable underclass of forgotten children, we have to get their parents to engage in their learning and schooling from an early age.”

Completely agree with Retropears posts on this. The middle classes are spectacularly shat on by the systems that they pay a lot of money for.

I'm all for levelling the playing field, but this doesn't do that. Saving spaces for certain children based on their parents income is just paying a lip service to the idea of making things better for the poorest in society, and it does it by taking something away from other children who may well be in a similar or worse position.

HurstMums point is also a very valid one. It is true that certain grammar schools have a massive over representation of ethnic minorities, simply because they have a better work ethic and attitude to education than many of their native counterparts.

yes, and here's a leftie newspaper The Guardian saying the same thing in 2011 - which is why I think the whole focus in these threads on FSM vs middle class is erroneous and it's much more to do with cultural aspirations of certain groups (and by the way I am not Chinese). Tell us again Curlew, how you think FSM means automatically disadvantaged?:

"The domestic statistics show that, at GCSE, children of Chinese ethnicity – classed simply as "Chinese" in the data – who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) perform better than the national average for all pupils, rich and poor.

Not only that, but FSM Chinese pupils do better than those of most other ethnic backgrounds, even when compared with children from better-off homes (those not eligible for free school meals).

A detailed look at the figures makes this clearer. Some 71% of Chinese FSM pupils achieved five good GCSEs, including English and maths, in 2009. For non-FSM Chinese pupils, the figure was 72%.

Every other ethnic group had a gap of at least 10 percentage points between children who do not count as eligible for free meals, and those who do. The gap for white pupils stood at 32 percentage points.

In 2010, the picture changed slightly, with the gap between Chinese FSM pupils (68%) and their non-FSM peers (76%) increasing to eight points. But it still compared very favourably with the equivalent gulf among white pupils, which was 33 percentage points.

In primary schools, the picture is similar. Remarkably, in 2009, in English key stage 2 tests, Chinese FSM pupils outperformed not just their counterparts from other ethnic groups – easily outstripping white children – but even Chinese pupils not eligible for free meals."

The Chinese must laugh at us.Over there if you push your kids,tutor(over 80% of kids are tutored in that Province that did amazingly well)and work hard you get rewarded(the results speak for themselves).

Over here any parent who pushes their kid and works hard to get them on is berated by gov and media as sharp elbowed,those that don't want to push their kids are rewarded and you get threads which parents profess their hatred and refusal of doing homework.

Maybe this is why we're in the shit.

The whole point is that the children have no choice in this. Yes, their parents might be crap, but in a fully comprehensive system a child who wants to do well and maybe "better themselves" (shudders at hideous term) can. Regardless of parental involvement.

And the point about immigrant families is a false one for two main reasons.

1. Immigrants are by definition the sort of people who are looking to improve their lives, otherwise they wouldn't have decided that the massive upheaval of moving to another country and making a new life. They are therefore the sort of people who, wherever they are, whatever social classed they are, will do everything they can to help their children. The crap parents are still back in their country of origin watching Sky TV, just like they are here.

1. Many immigrants, regardless of income and occupation in this country are educated middle class people. It's not simple or cheap to emigrate- it takes brains, organisational skills and money. They are "people like us". That's why their kids get into grammar schools!

that is absolute rubbish curlew...it's cultural...not all immigrants are the same there are certain that are hugely successful for their children's advancement in education like Chinese and Indians (not all of course but noticebly so) others immigration groups that are much markedly less so ...you choose to deny the factors for grammar school entry may be cultural and down to work -ethic and parenting focus on education at home because that doesn't suit your anti-middle class theme.

The day may well come when the schools have to positively discriminate in favour of white working class children then...but possibly not those who've appeared on the school premium map for a year or less (because of a middle-class parent's redundancy) but those genuinely in need.....

FWIW I think that possibly the introduction of catchment areas for a lot of the SW grammars is partly to redress the balance so that white children aren't in the minority....

I don't agree that the point about immigrant families is a false one at all.

Many of these parents may well be motivated to help their children and improve their lives but they are often motivated to do that because they came from having nothing. They are only second and third generation immigrants, but they have arrived here with next nothing except that work ethic and motivation to do well.

That seems to prove that it isn't about money. It's about parental attitudes, which aren't something that the pupil premium can fix.

It is true that the children have no choice in this, we don't choose the family we are born into, but that is why it's vital that parents take more responsibility for their children's education.

If all parents were equally engaged with education regardless of how much money they have, there would not be such a huge gap between achievement of children on FSMs and those not.