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.

This has been a bloody good debate, with very little of the often found venom permeating it. I actually think there's been a really good exchange of information and most importantly, everybody's kept their temper.

I'm about to ban myself from MN again for the rest of the day, but it's been good, thank you! I look forward to reading the last few posts tomorrow.

Talkinpeace - it doesn't matter who bought in parental choice. The issue is people exercising that choice and then arguing that others who exercise a different choice are damaging the system. It's just double standards.

You cannot argue that parents who choose academically selective or fee paying schools for their children are damaging the local state schools when you yourself have engaged in some form of selection which impacts on one of your local schools which you delightfully dub 'yob central'. Whether you admit to being a coward or not you have no right to be negative about other people's choices when your own choices don't fit with your ideas of moral ideal standards.

I have not argued about where other children should go

So, what are you arguing for when you argue that everybody should go in comprehensive schools?

In much of Europe children do simply go to the one local school. There is only one and there is no choice. By the way in many rural parts of the UK that is often the case too still. The Telegraph quote above shows that more and ore comprehensives are alert to the issue that parents seek to choose often by moving house the best school for their child and that comprehensive are seeking to ensure there is a mix.

Well, you seem to be arguing that 77% of children should go into a secondary modern............just, as I am sure you would put it, so your "precious darlings" don't catch thick from the chavs..........

Parental choice is a misnomer: an order of preference is all it is.
If you grew up in very rural areas as I did, then there is often only one secondary school available. So the choice is to get on with it and make the best of what you have, or move elsewhere.

Cities: well, seeing the angst on MN, choice doesn't seem to come into it where the schools are oversubscribed.

So, what are you arguing for when you argue that everybody should go in comprehensive schools?

I haven't argued that. I have tried to tell you that not all comprehensives are, in your words 'dysfunctional', but you don't want to know that and nothing I say will make you change your mind.

impatient
when Yob central was YC 1 and YC2, I, and most of our neighbours would have sent our kids to YC 2 : it was a 55% school IySWIM
but
it got forcibly merged with YC1 and then the pair of them were handed to a chain with absolutely no local / parental support
I therefore have no qualms in continuing to not support what should not be.

yeah, my kids are not at the local school : 45 % of kids in the catchment are not and yet according experian I live in a low ability low mobility postcode

maybe its because interference with previously working comp system has backfired?

Talkinpeace
You are quite entitled to not support your local school based on whatever opinions or experience you have, but please afford other people the same entitlement without arguing that their decisions are somehow immoral or selfish.

impatient
but you are sidetracking massively.

In much of Europe schools are expected to achieve 100% of secondary qualifications for all children and they do achieve them.

In much of Europe schools are expected to achieve 100% of secondary qualifications for all children and they do achieve them.

Evidence?

impatient
this thread is about selective education
by god, gonads, dosh, or synapses

my situation is irrelevant to that as there are no selective schools in my area : its all on distance

the thread has largely been about grammar schools

which is funny because the dodgy rules the Catholics get away with in their long standing schools (pay into the collection each week , get a place) would be illegal for secular schools

and the curriculum in Jewish, sikh, moslem and hindu schools is just perfect for keeping women illiterate and downtrodden

without ANY requirement to lean about other "faiths" in the way cof E schools do ..

disaster waioing to happen ....

Really, Vanilla? Let's have some evidence from posters from other European countries who have been there, and I'll go first.

I went through the Dutch system. Not everyone passes their final exams there.

The difference is that 1) pupils can repeat a year if they do not meet the required standards that year. However, if they fail a second year running, they must then leave their school and find another. 2) the same applies to final exam years - they can be repeated and at no cost to the pupil beyond the small annual contribution that everyone pays. Again, if they fail two years running they must leave. In the case of final exams, this usually means going to a crammer, which parents pay fees for. This situation does not exist in the UK.

So it isn't quite as simple as you would like us to think.

Who's next?

LaVolcan, it's not the evidence you want,which is plentiful, you just want to change the subject and avoidanswering the question.

What is your business to order all children to go to comprehensives?

You call it sidetracking, but I call it challenging somebody's opinions.
If we want to return to the original question and just stick to that then there wouldn't be much of a debate; it probably would have ended before it got past the first page.
FWIW (and to return to the original topic); most schools are selective, whether by academia, wealth or postcode (which is usually by wealth anyway), so I feel the argument about selective education is always a bit simplistic.
Schools in deprived areas statistically get worse results than those in more affluent areas (not including schools in London which get different funding) and not having selective (grammar or fee paying) schools will not change that by much because you cannot change parental attitudes towards education, you cannot change genetics and you cannot force all the middle class more affluent families to go and live in the catchments of badly performing schools.
So we will always have some form of selection.

Vanilla: Someone has just told us that yet another of your blunt statements doesn't stand up, so that is sufficient evidence for me.

I am not 'ordering' children to go anywhere. I live in a comprehensive area, I sent my kids to the local schools.

BTW still waiting for your stats to show that all comprehensives are dysfunctional.

So we will always have some form of selection.

Impatient, I agree with every word in your post.

We debated exhaustively various complex aspects, but for a quality debate you've got to engage with complexities and acknowledge vested interests, and focus on the real issue which is the poor attainment of part of the cohort and too many schools.

Selection or not will not improve results.

Selection by postcode in rural areas is usually by practical travelling distance I would say, rather than wealth.

impatient
only the very, very rich are able to consider moving house as a school catchment choice

its one of the amusing anomalies of MN that there are so many people rich enough to even consider such an option.

My mortgage is £100 a month : the difference between that and living in catchment with a house and garden this size is a LOT of bus fares

when catchments are - as round here- ten miles across, the London housing arguments are just piss in the wind
catchment prices range from £80k to £15m
and in my catchment £50k to £500k

but the cost of moving house is more than many people's annual incomes

There is a huge difference between choosing between two local schools because you happen for whatever reason to like one of them better, and not having a choice between to schools because one of them has an admissions criterion you haven't met- like passing the 11+.

I had a choice between two possible schools for my ds- he would have got in to either. I chose the one that was most convenient to travel to and which more of his friends were going to. I also preferred it, and felt that it would meet his needs better. Neither of them required that he jump through any hoops except proximity.

Talking piece, your argument also reflects your priorities in using your income. They are your choices and they absolutely right for you.

The key issue that would help this debate is to improve education for underachievers, which drives parents away from local schools.

"What is your business to order all children to go to comprehensives?"

That's a very odd way of putting it.

I do believe that all state funded schools should be comprehensive. I am not stopping people privately educating, or HE. I don't think tax money should be spent on a system that marginally, if at all benefits a minority, and disadvantages the vast majority. Simple, really.

only the very, very rich are able to consider moving house as a school catchment choice

Not in every area of the country.
I moved to a much better catchment area and only increased my mortgage by £10,000.
The area we used to live in regularly comes in the top 10% deprived areas in the country. The area we live in now comes in the top 20% areas for disposable income and the schools are much better by results. We also have a Bigger house and better access to open space and community facilities.
We are not very very rich by any standards. We are working class and have a below average income.
The purpose of our move was not for the catchment but for the lifestyle that more open space brings and for a bigger house, the school catchment was just an added element.

I went to school in France, where "redoublement" (staying down a year) meant that by year 11, there could be as much as a four year gap between the youngest and oldest in a year group (some people also got bumped up).

We never noticed who was a year or two older- everybody just rubbed along companionably. One girl in my upper high school year (year 12 afair) had taken a year out to have a baby then come back. Her year older than us was unremarkable, as there was also a boy who'd been asked to take a year out to sort out a drug problem, alongside several who stayed down along the way.

By year 13 (terminale), there is hardly a class in France that does not contain a wide range of ages. Maybe some of the more "select" Paris schools (where average age per class is probably below average expected age) , but that is it.

So much for differentiation. They don't do it much. If you're not up to the curriculum, you get longer to do it.

There is a very active vocational education, that used to start at age 13 and mostly was not optional- ie if a child was directed into that section, there was little choice but to seek another school. So vocational courses were filled by default and also contained quite a few children with special need who were nonetheless in mainstream. Not sure how it works now. However, the various vocational courses were very demanding academically. My mum taught English in a Lycee professionel for years and it was proper A level stuff. They did a wide range of academic subjects (yes including a compulsory second language, even the special needs young people- remember these were the ones deemed a little too dim to pursue general studies at 13, 14 or 15!)

Baccalaureat pass rate was about 75% back in the 80s. (but see proviso above re vocational courses, that hived off the lower achievers early in secondary school). But if you failed, you could retake (as many times as you wanted back then, not sure now). A friend of mine retook 6 times (he never passed , and gave up trying at 24 as his classmates were getting younger and younger.