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.

Plenty of your first category in any non-selective area in the UK, NIt. I used to work with colleagues who'd taught in international all over the world children who had to walk 5 miles to school or wade through flood water and always turned out neatly and on time. The colleagues were beyond amazed at the attitude of many of our pupils in that school. Very difficult to alter as it comes at children from many different directions in their life.

As regards b) I'd be amazed if many children of their own accord developed a hang-up about not passing some stupid exam at age 10, unless they have negative influences at home to fuel it and a LOT of emotional investment had been made in the exam beforehand (which imv is unhealthy anyway). So parental attitude is very important in preventing that. Also, learning how to fail at things sometimes is part of growing up.

You seem to have amazing faith in the restorative powers of a few motivated and bright pupils on a year group and school. I don't think it's the job of a few children to redress social ills around them at age 10, do you?

And I remain unconvinced that selection harms those not selected in ways that would be redressed if selection were removed. As MI said, maybe the meta effect if one of the only tangible benefits.

But I also believe that not every child would thrive in a fast-paced academic environment. If it were that easy, that's what every school in the country would be doing.

TOSN,

In the past, a selective system perhaps had a benefit because it 'mirrored' the employment opportunities available in the relatively fixed society it catered for:

• 'Public' schools educated the aristocracy, and the elite, to run the country and the empire.
• 'Grammar' schools educated the middle class, and the very bright lower middle and working class, to take white collar jobs and enter some professions e.g. school teaching, medicine.
• 'Secondary moderns' educated those children destined for blue collar or manual work, of which there was a large supply.

I remain unconvinced that maintaining thios type of structure for our modern and very different economy and social landscape is of benefit!

Yes, I absolutely believe that one or two children who are clever should be responsible for redressing social ills. That's why I keep saying that, obviously.

I think one confusion people also make with the post-1945 grammar/secondary system is that yes, it benefited a lot of kids who'd otherwise not be getting a decent education...but that is not necessarily because of the actual selection, but because state education per se was being rolled out on such a scale.

teacherwith2kids
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

Have a look here
www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=NAT&superview=sec&view=ofsted&set=1&tab=36&no=999&sort=o.inspoutcome&ord=desc
on the ofsted tab
and then filter by admission type
there are 3153 "comprehensive schools"
of which 134 got 4 in their most recent Ofsted
646 got 3
544 got 1 and the rest got 2
but some of those schools are sponsored Academies : the hardest schools in the country
and some of the inspections were as far back as 2006

changing the filters would throw up more interesting stuff

The benefit of a selective system is that it works at least for the ones selected. A non selective system will subject bright pupils to the post code lottery of poor schools.

Selective system is better for those selected and it is supposed to get more attention and resources to the ones be good for those not selected by tailoring education to their needs in dedicated schools.

Those in the middle benefit greatly by being on top in 'secondary moderns'. These students would not get the same attention and resources if crowded out by the grammar lot. There is nothing worse than being stuck in the middle where nobody pays attention.

Look at Chalfont Community College and Amersham school. They are much better than most comprehensives in the country. That shows that good schools work for the 'non selected' as well. It is bad school that don't work for any of the ability range.

In theory the 'secondary moderns' should have all the right resources and strategies to best meet the needs of their pupils. It does not happen in reality. Those at the lower end of ability spectrum are just left behind because of deeply rooted heritage attitude to social class.
Secondary moderns are not 'bad' inherently, but only because political classes left them behind. Just adding in bright students will not help a bit and will not solve any problem.

You need to confront the fundamental issue of designing good education for those on the lower ability range and those with social disadvantage.
There is no way around this elephant in room, [that a few on this thread are trying so hard to ignore...]

Can you describe the elephant, and then we can have a think about it?

I believe, btw, that there may be benefits of selective education for those at the ends of the abilitty spectrum (statistically the least numerous groups). Those at the very highest end of the spectrum - say 145+ IQ - can find it difficult to access a suitable education in non-selective schools, due to their rarity and lack of a peer group. Equally, those who have very low academic ability may benefit from a school that specialises in e.g. opractical subjects, life skills, routes into employment for this group.

It is the middle group - particularly those just below the 11+ pass mark on the day, who suffer, because they are denied e.g. access to 3 separate sciences because there is not enough call for it in the SM school, or who are very able in 1 subject but less able in others and so totally lack the correct peer group for their better subjects.

like the fact that there are 318 selective schools
and only one of them got a 4 in its ofsted
and 125 got 1s

therefore 39% of selective schools are deemed unsatisfactory by Ofsted
but only 17% of comprehensive schools are poor

oh dear

"And I remain unconvinced that selection harms those not selected in ways that would be redressed if selection were removed."

Selection would be very harmful to my DS who although very clever would definitely fail 11+. If selection was based on an individual IQ test then he would pass easily. CATS, 11+ or SATs and he would fail.

Just like everyone else on here, I want him to be educated with a "critical mass" of peers of equal intelligence and for him, this can only happen at a comp. He is now thriving there, has worked his way up from bottom to top set English and although his spelling may be the worst in the class, his ability to analyse and give insight will be second to none. How awful to deprive him of these top group peers. It would be cruel.

Those in the middle benefit greatly by being on top in 'secondary moderns'.

Yes, tell that to my SIL and then duck before she thumps you.

Talking piece,

You don't need to confuse and hide behind convoluted statistics designed to side step the issue.

The 'good' and 'outstanding' is not worth anything, except for salaries of management in those schools. That's fair enough.

As parent you are interested in results.

The basic measure of % of student achieving 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths provides all information that is necessary.

The national statistic, as we discussed extensively on another thread is that 53.6% of pupils get 5 good GCSEs. This means 46% don't have any usable / employable qualifications at 16. This is national average. This mean, (simplifying) that half of the schools are worse than that.

Failing nearly 50% of the pupils is not good, is not acceptable by any standard.

I want a school where 100% of student get good usable qualifications. A number of schools of different type offer that. Those are good schools,. Everything else is , sorry, crap.

Thanks, Talkin!

I dio think it is difficult to really unpick the difference between

• 'Good' raw results [this is what most parents like to see] and
• Results that show good progress for the intake

Almost all selective schools will have good raw results, and most 'league tables' are orderd by raw results [I always re-order them by value added, which creates some really fun lists... like the fact that the 'worst regarded comp' in my town has FAR better value add than several of the remaining grammars in the county].

It is sometimes hard to believe that schools with much, much lower raw results are doing a better job of education because their pupils make so much better progress from their starting points....including results for the brightest pupils which are as good as those from selective schools.

Just found this report, which has some interesting findings: www.suttontrust.com/public/documents/SuttonTrustFullReportFinal1.pdf. I won't claim to have read all 280-odd pages, but the key conclusions (with lots of caveats wrapped around them by the authors) seem to be:

• children who attend grammar schools achieve an average improvement of between zero and three-quarters of a GCSE grade per subject taken over children of similar ability in comprehensive schools

• no evidence was found of other schools being systematically harmed by the existence of grammar schools

• grammar schools may not be taking their fair share of poorer pupils

• the most socially selective schools are non actually grammar schools, but faith schools

• these findings were based our the current situation in England and Wales, i.e. one with only small numbers of selective schools, and may not hold if a more widespread selective system was reintroduced

So, to me this suggests that the existence of a small number of grammar schools is not systematically harming non-selected children (although the report doesn't rule out this happening in the case of some individual schools), but it is boosting the achievement of selected children. So if you take the view that it's ok as long as no one is harmed, and that we need to help our brightest children to do as well as they possibly can, then it's probably not worth attempting to abolish the existing grammars. If you take the view that it's wrong to perpetuate a system where already advantaged children are given further advantage over their peers, then you should favour a fully comprehensive system. Interesting!

Vanilla
I demolished your narrow minded little stats on the other thread. Do not drag them over here.
I do not give a flying &&& what you "want" because your blinkers are on so tight you cannot see beyond the spoon feeding hothouse you subject your children to.

"The basic measure of % of student achieving 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths provides all information that is necessary."

You see, I cross posted with someone caught in exactly this fallacy....

From Talkin's stats, I noticed that 2373 comprehensives were rated as either 1 or 2. A quick computation showed this to be 75%. This doesn't seem to bear out the assertion that most comprehensives are poor. So is OFSTED telling a pack of lies (maybe!! but a different question) or is my understanding deficient?

But Ofsted also say in their 'The Most Able Students' survey that:

65% of pupils who achieved Level 5 or above in both English and mathematics at the end of Year 6 failed to attain A or A grades in both these subjects at GCSE in 2012 in non-selective schools*

Which would suggest that there are an awful lot of children failing to reach their potential in comprehensive schools.

Bold fail! That should be A* or A grades obviously

wrong way round ....
4 is the best, 1 is the worst
BUT
some of those inspection reports are seven years old and I did not carry on digging to see how many apply to schools that have closed / been renamed.

eg
there are 484 sponsored academies, of whom 48 got a 1 (bottom mark) in their last ofsted
my local yob central got a 3
despite failing its pupils on every single exam measure

personally I agree with teacherwith2kids that value added is the best measure

"The basic measure of % of student achieving 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths provides all information that is necessary."

OK, so school A has an intake of children who only get level 5s and above at year 6.

They get all of their children through 5 good GCSEs, but actuially these are a mixture of Bs and As ['expected' progress would mean they all got As / A*s in all their subjects], and all did 9 subjects.

School B has an intake of children from level 3 up to Level 6 at year 6.

All children with Level 5s or 6s get 10 As / A*s, but these only make up 25% of the cohort. 25% of the cohort got below L4 in year 6, and only 20% opf this group got 5 good GCSEs ['expected' progress would mean that NONE of these children should achieve this benchmark]. The middle group all got their 'expected' levels.

By your measure, school A is the better school, because it got 100& of its pupils through 5 A* to C, despite the fact that able pupils in fact did better at school B, and all pupils made better progress at school B...

sorry, brain ache, yes 4 is dire, 1 is good
yob central is "requires improvement"
but as its already in an academy chain there's not much more Gove can do

Talkin,

You didn't demolish my argument, you made a fool of yourself and dropped out of thread with your cynical double standard and misleading statistics when people didn't want to take any more nonsense from you.

Your crap just congratulates itself on failing 50% of population. Self serving and perpetuating the Victorian attitudes to the "bottom 20%' as you put it in the other thread.

You are so happy with your school for your DS, so well, you have it. Don't push your crap down the throat of those parents who want to do better by their children.

teaching, in your example school B looks better for able and middle ability students. It failed the weaker students and finds it acceptable by explaining this with social Darwinism of Victorian era.

All students need to get good GCSEs at 16.