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 because, Laura, I think comprehensive schools would be even better if there wasn't a get-out clause for some parents. Take my children's primary school as an example. It's a good school, but not outstanding, and in a relatively affluent area. A relatively high percentage of parents choose to take their children out of the school, usually in years 4 or 5 and send them to private school (mainly in order to improve their chances of getting into a private secondary school).

I've seen first hand, as a parent and a governor, the effect that has on the school. It continues to be a good school, because it has strong, committed teachers and a largely supportive parent base. But, despite this, the removal of those children has a negative effect. By definition, they are all children from families that value education, that are prepared to support their children's education financially and, because the privates round here are nearly all highly selective, they're usually high achieving children. Taking those children out makes it more difficult for the teachers to provide high level work for the high attainers left behind, because, as so many people on this thread have argued, critical mass is important there. It also deprives the school of some of the type of parents who are most likely to be able to, say, come in and inspire the kids about aspiring to a successful career, or to contribute generously to the PTA and help fund improved facilities.

So my view is that, if people are genuinely interested in improving education for all, as so many people claim to be on this thread, the best way to do that is to support a system that is truly comprehensive.

I fully agree with you duchesse. I think it's a disgrace that as a wealthy nation, which we still are, a majority accept that we have food banks, instead of being ashamed that such things exist in our country.

At one time looking for goods 'made in the UK' would have been a selling point. M&S used to be one firm which always made goods here. Now you would probably go naked if you depended on UK made clothes, (says she, hastily reading the labels on the clothes she is wearing and finding that they are made in China and Sri Lanka).

I've thought of another setting criterion- motivation. Pop all kids in together who want to work (because as a teacher I can tell you that differentiation is a helluva lot easier if you're not also combatting constant discipline issues) whatever their IQ, then set according to motivation on a sliding scale. The most motivated groups could be much larger than the least motivated ones. Because achievement and motivation often but not always go hand in hand, but not always, and there are few things more heart-breaking than a low ability motivated children stuck in a class of unruly little sods who are only there because they're toe-rags, not because they are actually low ability.

I did this once in my classes (I was teaching most of that year group in that language so I could) - I put two lovely little hard-working but very low-ability boys into my set 2 where they could work in peace and quiet, but I could differentiate for them and know they would get on and work and ask for help when they needed it. It really worked for them. They didn't really realise or care how far behind the rest of the group they were.

In the very smallest groups you could focus a lot on getting individual children up to speed.

The only problem is that that would give yet more teacher time to children who are actually not low-ability but mostly just badly behaved and I wonder what signals that sends out.

Everybody would be doing their children and the rest of society a big favour by teaching their children that they can't always come first and that they have to get used to being part of a group at school. So many parents expect their child to come first all the time, which is obviously impossible and just puts strain on the school.

I've just google one of those dear little boys whose name I could remember. He must be in his 20s now and he appears to be in employment, which does not surprise me at all as despite his problems he was very hard-working.

"As far as what is offered to the non-selected child in a selective system"

Okay if we pro - selectives are being asked the above question... first of all I have said our primary duty is to our child, to advantage it over others as a moral good. Leaving that aside...
Let us look at non academically selective private schools. In most urban areas there are brilliant academically selective private schools where those parents choosing the private system will look to. Uusually there will be 4 - 6 private schools with number 6 taking just about anyone who applies to can pay the fees and will be good with the less bright child and the ones at the top accepting about 1 in 5 applicants. Thus the local non selective private will have a lot of not to bright children. It is like the secondary modern in a grammar school area. So how does that school benefit and do well by the children? Small classes. Special help for dyslexia. High standards and aspirations. Good career suggestions. Lots of individual help. hose children in those kinds of comprehensive privates do very well indeed. Indeed if you are short of money it may be money better spend on your less bright child in a private school than sending its brilliant sibling to one.

Now you will say that okay those are private comps but they are selective still because the parents can afford to pay... well yes but not in the sense I think the thread means.

"Okay if we pro - selectives are being asked the above question... first of all I have said our primary duty is to our child, to advantage it over others as a moral good."

Wow. As I said earlier, it comes down to people who believe there is such a thing as society, and people who don't. I know which side I'm on.

Has Vanilla come back with the figures for "bad, dysfunctional schools" yet? Thought not.

Duchese. How would you have dealt with my DD. A statement for ADHD/AS and other disabilities but with an IQ of 138.

A very difficult child to teach one minute, the next minute a "Lovely" child who is upset with her own behaviour.

My DDs work and behaviour improved massively when asked to do work ( That was beyond her). The Senco first tried this approach , last March when DD had been sent to isolation , DD was given by the Senco some A2 Texts and asked to Analyse and write her understanding and what the meaning of the prose was (FAR BEYOND ME) . The work DD did was plausible A2 quality , this from a child who in theory was (E Grade GCSE English standard)

The Senco was able to try this approach because of her experience in selective schools , and the ability and knowledge to see a "Spark" in DD that no other one could . The Senco was also able to see though "DDs "Crap".

Would you have seen this "Spark" or would you have been like the other Senco's/ Teachers who had washed their hands of her and wanted rid as soon as possible.

The benefits of selective education are that private schools which don't select by ability can be quite good?
Phew - that's laid that to rest then!

Laura. I ended up at one of the Private schools you have mentioned, and ended up having to repeat 3rd year , this was because I received an appalling education at my Middle Class Comprehensive.

The Comprehensive left me Unable to hold a pen correctly , never mind actually learning anything (lets Start to hold a pen correctly) How About the Primary School teaching you that.

It was actually a miracle I ended up with 4 E Grades and 1 D Gcse in 1989. after the Education the state had Endowed on me.

Whereas comprehensives that do well by the very non-able, in the sense that such children make very good progress there, AREN'T good because they don't get 100% 5 A*-C GCSEs?

I think I am failing to follow this now....

I don't think private education is the most significant and most morally questionable aspect of selective education. Overt and covert selection in the STATE system IS a problem by which I mean grammar schools, faith schools and free schools. This is public money spent on public institutions that actively exclude ordinary kids.

Whendidyou - I agree, although perhaps the charitable status of private schiools at the expense of the taxpayer is not WHOLLY morally justifiable....

I haven't read all of this, but I come from a family with high IQs, and low achievement (sometimes we go to University, but it is always later than average, and almost all of us struggle to keep a job) This is because we all have AS. I therefore struggle to equate high IQ with business success, I believe that good social skills and being lower in empathy (ie not afraid to convince others you are brilliant (when you are not) and not being afraid to rip people off is the key to financial success in our society.

Well, should we analyse your arguments a little further?

OK so we are only talking about urban areas and we will forget that quite large parts of the country are rural, so if you passed the 11+ you had a choice of GS/Sec Mod if you pass the 11+, and zilch if you didn't pass.

Non academically selective private schools can't really be called 'comprehensive' if they are number six in the list and the five above have creamed off the other children, so for the sake of argument we will call it a Sec Mod but probably 'a nice little private school' is a better description. I don't doubt that such a school could do well for its children. I live in Oxfordshire, and there are quite a few of these around (for girls especially) as well as some very academic independent schools.

But, the Secondary Moderns had to take the rest, who didn't get into the selective schools. I would seriously question how ready they were to take children with SEN. Mild dyslexia maybe - serious SEN, forget it. I would seriously question how much they were prepared to take the child who was bright but completely unmotivated and messed around in class - I would be surprised if they weren't shown the door PDQ. OK, what about the girl who gets pregnant - the local comprehensive has to arrange home tuition in such cases, the private school just suggests that your daughter is better off elsewhere and washes its hands of her. These last two are real cases of pregnant 15 year olds which happened in my daughter's year at school. Now maybe they are not all like that. Your private school does not have to take the rest, however much it likes the colour of the parents' money.

Yep, a lot of schools could improve if they could just boot out the children they found undesirable.

(Before someone pulls me up on it - I know that Local Authorities and state schools can try to wriggle out of coping with SEN too, and that parents of children with SEN often have a battle on their hands, but in theory the LEAs are supposed to deal with those children.)

When I failed my A levels, I went to a crammer.

There were people there retaking who had been at
Eton, Harrow, Haileybury, Oundle, Charterhouse, St Pauls Girls, Westminster, Hampton, City of London, Clifton, Dulwich, St Dunstans, Millfield, Wycombe Abbey, Roedean, Winchester, Cheltenham Ladies
( and that is just the ones I can remember 30 years later from the group I went to the pub with )
expensive selective schools can drop the ball with the rest of them

but why are taxpayers funds being used to discriminate among children on arbitrary grounds as to the standard of education they will receive.

Only the very rich can afford to "move into catchment" all the time
so 90% stay where they are and go to either their catchment or the next one along
and if all schools get the same funding formula

Value added should be able to be smoothed - even if results cannot (as per the excellent reference to hospitals)

duchesse
Your idea of setting by motivation
I LIKE that and can see that it would have legs.
Kids who mess about consistently ( so the erratic ADHD would not be instantly penalised ) get moved down sets no matter how good their results are.
You mess about, you do Foundation paper - THAT is a threat that would work with bright but arsey
if the lower sets saw better behaviour in the upper sets it would make school management easier

TalkinPeace and duchesse - in theory I like the idea of setting by motivation, but when I did a teaching practice in one school we had just these sort of lads in the bottom maths set. Threatening them with the Foundation paper didn't work at all - good, one less set of exams to prepare for! It was so frustrating - you knew they had the ability - but it was definitely a case of you can take a horse to water but can't make it drink.

Morry, your DD sounds like a perfect example of why it's important to ask children to do work that they think is slightly beyond them. It's the only way any of us makes progress- by challenging ourselves and what we think we can achieve. The best teachers challenge intelligently.

More and more in schools however, teachers are being asked to make work "achievable". Any behaviour issues they may encounter in their classes are put down to poor teaching, which basically boils down to not making the work achievable enough. The net result is that most of the pupils feel that if they don't "get" (Oh god, how I hate that word) something immediately, then it's not worth knowing. They're also not unaware that teachers will get the blame for most misbehaviour.

And then some parents come in and bleat about "personality clashes" to excuse their child's apparent inability to get on and do what's asked of them. As if in a class of 30 every child is allowed to express their personality to the detriment of the 29 others in their class.

As an aside Morry, if your daughter is able to calm down when asked to do something challenging then I would like to venture that maybe she does not have ADHD...

Tbh, setting by motivation level is pretty much what happens in most schools anyway with a few rare cases. The children whose are so challenged that they can really only achieve an E at GCSE are pretty rare. Much less rare are the lazy toerags who don't want to achieve and would rather mess around instead.

I'm a bit and someone's stats below about those two girls' schools. No way should the highest achievers in a comprehensive only average a B. There should be a really good sprinkling of A*s and As in a mixed ability school. I suppose in each case the "high achievers" band was quite wide (30% afair).

The last thing I wanted to say about setting is that wherever setting is present, it should be mandatory for the school to ensure that it is possible through sensible timetabling for children to move between sets.

Too many children are stuck for an entire academic year in sets they can't move out of however much they work or fail to work because their entire timetable would be up the creek if they were moved.

Setting by motivation may be the most stupid idea I've ever heard.

In another thread which dealt with setting I pointed out that research indicates that bottom sets are already disproprortionately filled with kids who may be bright but badly behaved together with black kids, boys and summer borns.

There is a huge link already with motivation and attainment so you compound it if you don't let bright but demotivated make any progress.

Plus it fails to take into account the multitude of reasons why kids misbehave or are demotivated and does nothing to address them.

The poster who said the bright but arsey kid would stop messing about if they knew they would fall down a set knows nothing about kids or education or behaviour.

'You mess about, you do Foundation paper - THAT is a threat that would work with bright but arsey
if the lower sets saw better behaviour in the upper sets it would make school management easier'

This is the amongst the worst tosh I've ever read on Mumsnet.

Putting badly behaved children in together is for the schools a pragmatic response to an often insurmountable problem. If you spread those 15%-20% (by my reckoning 4 or 5 in every single unsetted class 30 arses around enough to affect the learning of the others) of kids through the other sets, you disrupt every class. Is that better?

And of course motivation and achievement go hand in hand often. But there is no reason, just because you are having a hard time accepting the directions of your teacher, for every single other soul in your class to suffer. The parents of the poor behavers are often divided up into two groups- disbelieving and not caring -and can often not be relied on to support the school. So, to affect the education of 100%, or 20%?

Probably.

It's what I've done in my department and the disruptive kids have by and large fallen into line. When they don't they are much easier to manage. But suddenly with no bottom set and when they're not put together with other clowns who give them an audience they feel like they might achieve after all. The expectations for their behaviour and attainment are suddenly completely different.