Benefits of selective education?

[AmberTheCat]

I'm aware that I've been cluttering up the 11+ tutoring thread with discussions the OP said she didn't want, on the merits or otherwise of grammar schools in principle, so I'll stop doing that and start my own thread!

So, I genuinely don't get why so many people think separating children by ability (or potential, or however you try to do it) at 11 or even younger is a good thing. Why will they benefit more from that than from properly differentiated teaching in a comprehensive school? And what about the children who aren't selected? How does a selective system benefit them?

Genuine questions. I'm strongly in favour of comprehensive education, but would really like to better understand the arguments against.

Have to say, DD1 has done both the IB and one A level, and is halfway through another A level. She says the A level courses for both subjects she's done them in (Maths and Biology) is way more boring and uninspiring and easier than the IB equivalent. Her IB score would get her into pretty much any Ivy League university, but she is struggling to get a place in the UK (she's applying for medicine, which is a particular case...).

Her plan B for next academic year is to go in through clearing for a science course. She has the equivalent of 5 grade A A levels and will have another A level, hopefully also at a good grade, by August, and she is struggling to get a place. I'm not sure what to make of a system that does this to hopeful young people.

Northern Ireland is the UK

Yes - yes it is. - Martorana .

Is that a problem - or is aiming for excellence at 18 also not politically correct?

Bristol is lovely - but really not in the same league internationally.

martorana I would say that the most competitive courses at the most selective universities are nearly all looking for students who go way beyond the curriculum of their A levels.

A lot of students who are successful in these courses will have completed the Extended Project and their personal statements will show knowledge and interest in their course beyond A level.

Highly selective schools include this as par for the course. It's inbuilt in the timetable because they have both the space for it and a critical mass of students who will benefit.

Good point about the Value Added scores being less meaningful for measuring high attainers.

So many things have changed since 'our day'. The discipline in all schools seems much stricter, and behaviour less extreme. There are no schools in our borough like they used to be when my DP attended -it was practically a no-go area!

Having had a selective education myself, I am now used to contemporary comps where our neighbour's children, and my nieces and nephews in a different area of the country, do get A*s, and the education is exciting, varied, challenging, and offers variety including BTECS etc.

So it can be done - if and where it isn't being done, then the push for higher standards needs to be kept up. For kids of all abilities.

Sorry- missed out "the rest of"

or rather it's in the UK.

That's not a political statement, I'm not wanting to get into ehether it should be or not, I jyst mean we're not talking about a totally alien education system, it's still GCSEs and A levels

ok, sorry! I jumped the gun there!

"Is that a problem - or is aiming for excellence at 18 also not politically correct?"

No. Aiming for excellence is fantastic. Thinking it only exists in a Oxbridge and Harvard isn't.

I agree with Martorana , plenty of very academic high achievers don't actually want to go there.

Oxbridge gives you

• A strong cohort and accompanying fast pace
• Tutorials individually and in pairs
• Nice subsidised accommodation and book grants in the older colleges.

You don't need to say that excellence only exists in Oxbridge to see that that is a better proposition. Kids in private schools are certainly crystal clear on how the system works. I begrudge offering them a free pass through being wishy-washy about any RG being as good as each other.

treacle I agree and I teach there .

Howver, if you want to study Economics at LSE, Engineering at Imperial, English at York, Medicine at...anyhwere...you'd better be bringing more to the table than good grades.

These courses are drowning in fabulous applicants.

An exam result ought to be the symptom, not the goal.

treacle - again - that's just obfuscating the issue : if you out the same child through state and private schooling, the state educated child is substantially disadvantaged if they wanted to apply to Oxbridge.

They are also disadvantaged if they want to become Olympic Standard rowers - but that maybe has less impact on the country's GDP.

I think part of the original idea behind grammar schools was to find academically able pupils from backgrounds where they would not otherwise have got a great education or a chance of going to a top university, and give them those things.

Obviously the main benefit was to those pupils. BUT it was also supposed to benefit wider society, because there would then be a broader pool of "talent" to draw from when choosing political leaders, captains of industry, etc. The talent pool would no longer be restricted to the upper classes who historically had been the only ones to get top educations and go to top universities.

Whether grammar schools still perform this function is questionable. But that was the original "wider society benefit" I think.

Ok, so I can believe that having superselectives that only take a tiny percentage of children probably don't significantly disadvantage the rest of the population, because there'll still be a critical mass of high achievers in comprehensive schools. And I can see that allowing students to take different routes, possibly in different institutions, could be a good thing at 14/15.

But I still can't see any arguments for how removing significant numbers of high achieving children at 11 can have anything but a detrimental effect on the children left behind. And, given that the lower achieving children are already at a disadvantage, how can that be justified?

minipie - when the country seems to be governed from the Common Room of Eton school - that's not a trite point.

"A lot of students who are successful in these courses will have completed the Extended Project and their personal statements will show knowledge and interest in their course beyond A level.

Highly selective schools include this as par for the course. It's inbuilt in the timetable because they have both the space for it and a critical mass of students who will benefit."

I am very aware that DS, by accident of his birth, gets loads more extended opportunities than many classmates.

An Oxford physics grad old me that the course at Oxford had been extended by a year because they had to spend the first year teaching things that used to be in the A level curriculum, but that undergraduates are just not at the same level they used to be at. From all sectors.

I wonder if the move from O levels and CSEs compressed the range of depth and breadth taught, and that the pass grades in GCSEs is too much of a middling. If this is the case it is a fault in the exam grade system and NC, not the segregation or otherwise of schools teaching to those exam standards.

I think people have got to stop looking at FSM at Grammar Schools and comparing them with surrounding schools. The obvious reason Grammar Schools have much lower FSM this would still be the case even if Tutoring did not exist is that statistically bright people are born from bright people, who are more likely to have decent jobs ( Sherlock Holmes Here).

What does need to happen though is get the ones however small the number from deprived homes who are bright as a matter of urgency in to selective education.

Those of you who can just about accept Super Selective's top 5% or so , this is worse than the Comprehensive system. MoreThan. has just talked about her friends DD who needs a Grammar School Education, with a 25-30% system she is almost certain to get in to a Grammar school . If a system only offered 5-10% a Grammar Education ,her chances would come down to Luck more than intelligence. To see this in action you only have to luck at how pot luck the allocation is in Essex , has to who goes to the Chelmsford/Colchester Grammar Schools and who goes to less favoured Southend grammar schools..

Morethan will know that the difference in grades that her friends DD could achieve between a poor Comprehensive and a Grammar School could be an average of two grades per Gcse.

I don't see that it's necessarily helpful to lower achieving children to share a class/school with high achieving children.

I could argue that it's better for teachers to be able to focus on just one ability level and teach at that level rather than trying to teach at several different levels at once.

I could also argue that lower achieving pupils might be demotivated by being compared to higher achieving classmates all the time, and start thinking of themselves as stupid/non academic.

I could also argue that if you separate off the more able pupils, they can be taught in larger classes (as they are more able to get on with work by themselves etc) - this in turn would mean there are more resources available to have smaller class sizes for the less able pupils.

Soul - I have no stats to hand, but back in the day, when my brother went to a grammar in a full grammar area (they all were, then) the entrance to the grammar school was absolutely not neatly aligned to parental economic success.

And if it had have been the Good Old Grammar System would never had developed and sustained it's one strong selling point: it's role in social mobility.

"Morethan will know that the difference in grades that her friends DD could achieve between a poor Comprehensive and a Grammar School could be an average of two grades per Gcse."

Two things. Why are you comparing a good grammar and a poor comprehensive? Why not a good comprehensive?

And the statistics don't bear this out- the results from non selective LEAs are almost indistinguishable from selective ones. Why aren't selective LEAs streets ahead?

Minipie - there are several comps near us that have smaller class sizes for the bottom sets and those needing support. Schools do have flexibility within them.

Procrasteation I agree - I think we could really do with something that performs that diversifying function again. I'm not sure what though.