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.

And LauraBridges, I fundamentally disagree with you. Of course I want to do the best I can for my children. Of course I read to them, feed them decent food (most of the time...), show them how much I love them. But don't believe my responsibility ends there. Like it or not, there will always be children who aren't lucky enough to have parents like you and me, and I refuse to accept that we should just wash our hands of them. Given the choice (and I realise that choice doesn't always exist), I'd prefer to do something that benefits more than just one child, even if that child is mine.

Everything Amber said. It is not a moral good only to care about your own.

Indeed CorusKate but a) in most areas the tripartite system never got off the ground, and b) there was no way of testing for anything other than the most basic academic skills. I remember my primary school head delivering a spiel about it not being a question of passing or failing, but they never asked anyone to hand in a piece of craft work or art to test their practical skills, or run a race/do a display of gymnastics to display physical prowess.

If we had had a proper tripartite system, it might well have worked better. My SIL didn't pass for the grammar school, but went to one of the few technical schools available (called a Central School.) She was perfectly happy there. They moved house when she was 14 to an area with only grammar or Sec Mods, so she ended up in the Sec Mod. She left school asap, and didn't achieve her academic potential. I don't doubt that she would have done better if there had still been an option of a technical school. (It didn't help that DH, passed the 11+ and went to quite an academic Grammar School, where his results were in his headmaster's words 'not as good as we expected.') The old system failed them both, I feel.

The testing system also discriminated against the sort of child who wasn't quick, so the sort of child who was thorough and painstaking could find that they had failed simply because they didn't answer enough questions.

Has anyone answered Amber's question ?

It was answered many times over, some in here just don't want to take the answer.

We are not talking about a theoretical comprehensive school supposed to be good.

We are talking about real school choices available to real parents at real addresses.

Many, actually most of those schools achieve poor results and part of the cohort spoils education for everybody else. Until you fix this, you can't expect parents to act against the best interests of their children.

Sorry, which posts have specifically answered the question of how a selective education system is beneficial to the child who is not selected? Apart from the last couple of Amber's posts a few moments ago, there seem to be a dearth of answers for this part of her post. I certainly don't see it being answered 'many times over'.

What, the ones that we know are good have vanished into some kind of alternate reality? Cool.

LaVolcan, this is because you read only what you want to see.

Vanilla, I am speaking from the experience of someone who did send her children to real comprehensive schools, and not ones which figure in league tables as high achieving either. Achieving Russell group universities is poor is it? Or getting into medical school, or the one who ended up as a professor at Harvard?

But my daughter's head was equally happy to sing the praises of a child with special needs who had managed success in BTecs and had gone on to hold down a job successfully:- in my school days they would just have been dumped as being ineducable.

Can you spell it out for us, Vanilla, because, apart from the two points I pulled out a few posts earlier, both of which I'm sceptical about, I can't find any other arguments for how selective education benefits non-selected children. Thanks.

I am also at a loss as to which posts have said how selective education benefits the people who've failed to be selected.

Can anyone who is good at mining the data find out the percentage of non-selective secondary schools (true comprehensives, not the 'other' schools in selective areas) that are rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted? Ofsted's headline results say that 78% of schools inspected recently are Good or Outstanding [which seems in itself to argue against the 'most of these schools achieve poor results' argument] but I can't get into the relevant raw data file to filter it by secondary, non-selective areas only.

(Bear in mind that Ofsted is now very interested in 'progress', not just results per se. In recent reports, they can be qwuite rude about those schools that rely on high ability intakes to produce high results - something that perhaps parents do not pick up on so much when they say 'X selective school has great reasults', while in fact those results are only 'as expected' - or often below expected - for its intake.)

Not proving a benefit does not prove harm.

Should there be a benefit to those not selected?

Vanilla,

I suppose it depends what you mean by 'poor results'.

If a school takes children who arrive with level 5s and 6s, and gets them to 10 As / A*s, and ALSO takes children who arrive at level 3 or below and gets them to BTECs, some key GCSEs at Cs, yes, the school will have 'poor average results' comnpared with the selective school that ONLY takes children who start at level 5s and 6s.

However, if you look at the PROGRESS that each child makes, then the first school gets excellent results FOR EACH CHILD given their starting pints, and that is what matters.

On the peer group front, what seems to matter more than the 'overall mix of students in the school' is 'micro peer group' - the small group of friends or peers that a child spends their time with. DS, at a comprehensive, has a micro peer group of boffins - he aspires to be as geeky and academic as they are, and they drag DS - already able- along like a train. On the other hand, a friend who sends their child to a selective grammar complains that their DS has fallen in with 'the rubgy gang', who care only for success on the sports field and mock academic achievement.

Yes, there should, surely? Or at the very least proof of lack of harm.

Duchesse, that's interesting.

ON AVERAGE, selective areas achieve slightly lower results than similar areas without selective education.

Thus either, through simple maths:

• selective education benefits no-one OR
• if it benefits those who are selected, then the disbenefit of not being selected must be greater than the benefit of being selected.

Should there be a benefit to those not selected?

I think there should. A system that benefits the 20% most able but not the other 80%, even it could be proven not to damage that 80%, seems flawed to me. Wouldn't a fair system benefit the majority over the minority, and the less advantaged over the more advantaged?

Should there be a benefit to those not selected?

Well, Amber was asking whether that was the case. Despite my being told that it had been argued over and over again but I hadn't seen it because I only read want I wanted to read, I don't think that anyone has been able to put the case.

It's not like every single child were forced to take the 11+ regardless of their parents' wishes or their own apparent ability or wishes then the selection system might well have a negative effect on the majority.

Even in Kent though, not all children take the 11+. In fact young relative's (who's now in the grammar stream) mother had to fight for him to be allowed to take it- the primary school wasn't pushing the issue and didn't think he had the calibre (which I think is a problem in itself re grammar schools as social enablers).

So really, only the children who want a crack at getting into grammar school are really the ones taking the 11+.

So really, what is the harm done to children who do not go to grammar school? Is it that they end up in schools that may underestimate their ability and fail to stretch them enough? Because really the blame for that can not be laid at the door of the grammar schools.

Over and over again?

I'd settle for once!

I think that one benefit was argued to be that well at least some kids were getting a decent education. In a macro sort of way. But I may be wrong.

Surely a school's job is to benefit the pupils it educates? Not the ones it doesn't?

As far as Bucks is concerned it doesn't look as though the 11+ is optional.

Duchesse, do you think it would have some kind of impact on the atmosphere, aims and ambitions of a school, if its function and purpose was to cater for
a) children who don't want to be academically stretched
b) children who do, but failed to make the grade
c) nobody else
?

But, Duchesse, we aren't discussing the benefits of selective schools. We are discussing the benefits of a selective system.

And since I've yet to see any attempt at an argument that a selective system benefits anyone but the minority it selects, I remain unconvinced by it.