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.

[HavantGuard]

There are schools where English lit isn't compulsory

As for media studies

[TalkinPeace]

Corus
DCs school has 300 per year, split into two bands and for maths 6 sets per band
the whole of the top sets are expected to get A/A* in both maths and further maths
they are not working on AS level stuff because there is no 6th form

kids who transferred from the selective fee payer are in the middle / lower part of the top set.

if you only have 100 per year group then yes, the bands are wider
but in a good sized school, banding is as tight as any selective (fee paying or state)

my school only had three sets of 20 and the range in the middle set was massive

[TalkinPeace]

Havantguard
In most comps and all sec mods the lower sets do single English GCSE which is 2/3 Eng Lang and 1/3 Eng Lit
on the entirely sound basis that literacy is more important than Shakespeare

[HavantGuard]

If they haven't managed to achieve literacy by year 10 what the hell have they been doing for 3 years!

[morethanpotatoprints]

Talkin

I think I may have the wrong end of the stick as my posts don't seem to tie in with what you are talking about.
The answer to your post above if, it doesn't
Apologies, I have obviously read these posts in the wrong context.

[HavantGuard]

And don't they warrant a GCSE each?

[duchesse]

Shakespeare is still and will always be more important than media studies or any other noddy GCSE.

[TalkinPeace]

Havantguard
its a comp or a Sec mod.
They are the left hand tail of the IQ curve.
Those whose kids are in selective schools like to pretend they do not exist.

[HavantGuard]

Just because they might not be able to get an A* to C grade doesn't mean they shouldn't study it! If you can follow soaps you can follow the core plot of a Shakespeare play if it's taught the right way.

[morethanpotatoprints]

So would I be right in assuming that people think there are fewer opportunities for dc who don't attend selective/ super selective schools?

I only have experience of schools in the north and know nothing of Kent and other areas mentioned.

I am trying to understand this and other threads on the subject as it interests me.

[duchesse]

I agree Havant! I also agree that every child should be able to study Latin- on a basic level it explains very many apparent oddities in English spelling. Al lot more use long term even to an academic struggler than a Btec in leisure and tourism.

[motherinferior]

You would be right in assuming some people think so.

[duchesse]

Which imo is just a way of "parking" the strugglers for a couple of years whilst giving them the idea they are doing something useful.

They're not taken in, by the way. Children, even ones on the lower end of the IQ curve, are not stupid. They can see how the world works and tend to make sensible choices for their circumstances, even if they are not always the best long-term ones.

[duchesse]

I'm thinking for example of the children who refused to turn up for their French exams at my school even though I hunted the little fuckers down one by one because they knew damned well that they would not get more than a D and they were clever enough to realise that a D, an E or F is useless in our world. It was heartbreaking.

[morethanpotatoprints]

duchese
I think that would depend on whether you wanted to study leisure and tourism. There are usually opportunities for work in these subjects.

Some ordinary state schools offer Latin, my ds2 school did if you were top set for language at y8, you could study it through the rest of the school. Unless I'm mistaken it was only offered to top set as those not as good at language would have struggled. His school was an ordinary CofE High School.

[soul2000]

duchese . What was the point of those students doing Gcse French.

They are never going to speak French in their lives and have just wasted vital time ,that could have been spent on other relevant subjects. I say that with a niece who is Studying French /Business at an RG University and has A Grades at A level in Spanish and Italian as well.

I really do value Foreign Languages ( Though I am E Grade Gcse French Standard). But why make students take Foreign Languages unless they are at least B grade standard in English Gcse.

[duchesse]

Sadly, the range of tenses needed for GCSE grows ever smaller, Kate.

But even in shit underperforming schools, higher achievers would still be expected to master the present tense, the passé composé, to have some notions of imparfait (as distinct from P C) and to be able to apply it appropriately, the futur simple, and to memorise some conditional expressions to sprinkle in for effect ("si j'avais", "si j'étais" etc). Obviously the holy grail is for pupils to be to construct these themselves from their grammatical knowledge, which is what many can do in the selectives I've taught in.

With the present tense only even very well mastered, you wouldn't get more than a D.

[duchesse]

Soul- they were doing French because they had to. It was back in 2003. But they had unhooked from languages by the end of year 7, usually because they wondered why on earth they needed to speak French/German/Spanish when the whole world spoke English.

As I pointed out to one especially annoying sparky little lad I taught, who wanted to be a mechanic, you never know where your life will take you, and if he ended up working for Mercedes in Germany one day, he might be kicking himself that he didn't take languages more seriously at school.

[soul2000]

Duchese. Leisure and Tourism may help the student to find employment, Latin is a irrelevance to 95% of the population , certainly to anyone below A level standard.

[duchesse]

soul- round here all L & T will prepare you for is a lifetime of dull, low-paid, often seasonal and precarious employment. Those pupils would be better off spending time improving their literacay and numeracy.

Our local school had practically 50% of the year group involved in some form of parking course for years 10 and 11, with the promise that they were "worth" 4 GCSEs. They are not.

My point about Latin is restricting it to the top 20 ability in a year group makes it out to be something it's not- an elitist, fantastically difficult subject, when actually it's a skillset more than a level of ability. The HE college here runs in aircraft maintenance course in conjunction with the local airline. This tends to attract the less academic, who clearly have a very good skillset. I wouldn't be able to do it on any level just becuase I'm reasonably academic.

My point is it's horses for courses, or rather courses for horses, and we are deciding way too early that some courses are not for some types of horse.