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.

Golden

I know there are good schools in the state system and understand just because I haven't experienced them, they don't exist.
I also know that in some areas selective schools pose a problem to those who aren't selected.
But my own opinion is if they are abolished we lose what we set out to achieve with social mobility for the gifted children.
I know that this doesn't exist for a lot of people and the system is flawed but to deny even a small percentage the opportunity, to me seems wrong.

Posters up thread are posting stats showing that there is virtually no difference in overall attainment between grammar and non-grammar area.

The choice is in the detail: the grammar system is tough on people who are 'borderline'; the comp system is tough on those who are exceptionally academically talented.

If you go for the comp system, you need to put in county wide resources to support the top-of-the-top-set kids to achieve their potential (e.g. rounding them all off to math camp once a year, or similar).

If you go for the grammar option, you need to allow some permeability at the boundary, and need to ensure that the other schools retain their academic drive. (It's a red herring to say that the grammars are in any way better schools than the secondary moderns - but it might well feel like that if you had ambitions for the grammar).

(P.S. I think the 'my boys no good at English but is good at maths is a crock of shite. Grammars can set too to accommodate differences in their intake. The only question is whether the admissions are too blunt - although some of that can be approached through appeals).

amber I'm not sure if you'd call it an overall benefit to society, but at my primary school the selection system worked quite well because about 90% of the pupils hated the idea of going to a grammar school. So in that respect, academic selection suited them every bit as well as those who 'passed'. A comprehensive school might not actually have appealed to those kids as much as a high school did (although there are no comps here so it's just a guess on my part) because many of them welcomed the opportunity to escape from academic high achievers because seeing other people find stuff easy that they found difficult wasn't exactly encouraging for them.

I suspect that, as with almost everything in life, those who have the most scope to be affected, positively or negatively, by academic selection aren't the super bright or those who struggle with academic work, but those in the middle, those who might do well, or might not.

Morethan - but what exactly IS the 'good education' on offer in a selective school ? Many selective schools don't even have especially good 'value added' scores, suggesting that the high average scores are to do with the selective intake. Of course selective schools will lead the league tables because the pupils have been hand picked to do so!

But why wouldn't those children do as well in a comp, if the teachers they currently work with are in the comp? If the comp offers a challenging curriculum to the top set? A child in the top 25-30% at a grammar will still be in sets with the top 25-30% in the top set in a comp.

Are teachers in Grammars better teachers? I doubt it, somehow.

What is this better education made up of in selective state schools?

The obvious drawbacks of a selective state system are:

• the wrong children can be selected- children who will not benefit from the type of education offered. May be there because they had a very enriching primary education or were tutored get in.

• among those that are not selected, there may be children who would have benefited from the education offered by the selectives; whether through relative immaturity or not having the right opportunities to prove their mettle in the exam.

The suspicion is that many selective places go to children who've already been selected at an earlier age by having tutoring or being sent to a good school- mostly because their parents have the means.

And that conversely that those places are occupied to the detriment of children with fewer advantages who would have benefited from them more. And that the expectation on candidates that they will have had an enriching early life is pushing out disadvantaged bright children.

The other issue seems to be that in selective areas and in many comprehensives, children at either end of the IQ spectrum may not be being taught the subjects and at the depth that they need to flourish. And that secondary moderns and comprehensives do not teach their highest achievers as much as those pupils are capable of absorbing, whether because they lack the means or the will. The expectations on pupils in the comprehensives were low and were building of years of low expectations, making for a very lacklustre, unexciting experience for the children concerned. Only low-growing fruit offered.

I do think that in areas with super-selectives such as the one I live in, the alleged stripping out of the highest achievers is a complete red herring since most comprehensives in the catchment area will have lost 2 or 3 pupils at most. The comps are kidding themselves and their parents if they think that is going to make a difference. There are well-run schools and ones that are not so well-run.

Blu, ime the better teachers without a doubt are in comprehensives (I have no experience of 2ndary moderns so can't comment). However, they are often teaching outside their subject area, so their subject knowledge cannot really accommodate questions at a higher level (you can thank decades of "one page ahead of the kids" philosophy for that. Only works if the teacher has a good notion of the subject in the first place- not designed for teachers teaching outside their own subject area imo.

My children's fee-paying schools are a mixed bag- one has superlative teachers, the other has a wide range of shocking, "character", ones. Results are broadly similar. Both are selective, one very selective but it is a single sex school so a smaller candidate pool.

Blu - the child at the 75th centile will achieve broadly the same at both. The child on the 98th centile - IME - won't. They'll achieve an A grade - but not much more.

I grew up in a fully comp area. What happened there was that a significant fraction of the top 5% of children went private at some point in their secondary schooling, because them or their parents felt they were stagnating. This was effected by parents scrimping and saving in some cases, and by bursaries/scholarships in other cases. The net effect of creaming off is the same as though there had been a super-selective grammar available (in fact - it just advantaged the private schools - because they then showed stellar exam results).

British state schools do not operate in a vacuum - their pupils have competitors at home and abroad. An A* grade at A level or GCSE just does not impress on the world stage - and I don't think comps are equipped to push anyone beyond that.

My school was "academic" (comprehensive, but oustanding at Ofsted etc). Lots of less academic people hated the focus on very traditional subjects. They would have been better somewhere with a more vocational focus; and indeed some of them who failed GCSEs at maths, physics etc went off at 16 to colleges to do GNVQs in art, photography, beauty, etc or got on-the-job work expereince (e.g. one loves animals and works at a vets) while the rest of us did A-Levels and Uni. They were much happier having left pure academic study, and did better. Also generally started earning much earlier (I was a student til 24!)

I do think selection is too early, and ruins things for late developers/on-the-boarder children, but benefits those who are and stay firmly on one side or the other. I do think ideally there should be an element of choice (parent and child together)- perhaps at 14/15 or so- whether you WANT to be tradiationally academic or whether you would thrive in a more vocational environment. Not a success/failure measure.

There is no difference between the results from wholly selective LEAs and wholly comprehensive ones.

Why do people continue to ignore this point?

"British state schools do not operate in a vacuum - their pupils have competitors at home and abroad. An A* grade at A level or GCSE just does not impress on the world stage - and I don't think comps are equipped to push anyone beyond that."

What do you mean?

Blu

Whether the good results are due to the selective intake or not, a child who is gifted should have the opportunity to reach their potential the same as any other child. This may be in a number of different schools. I'm not sure the type matters but the quality of provision does.
If a grammar is the best option for a child they should be able to attend, irrespective of background, imo.
Once again, I am not saying that grammar schools are better per se.
I only know my dh and a couple of others who attended/ are attending grammar schools. My dc didn't / won't be going either.
That doesn't mean they aren't beneficial to other dc.
Its a case of choice and/ or ability which ever school you choose.
All schools select on some basis, the system seems unfair for many.
There are children refused a place at the same school as their sibling because they are full at a higher point in the admission criteria.
There will always be those for whom the system seems unfair.

"Whether the good results are due to the selective intake or not, a child who is gifted should have the opportunity to reach their potential the same as any other child."

Of curse they should. But it doesn't have to be in a different building. And it doesn't have to be at the expense of other children.

And how do you define gifted?

morethan . I know where you are coming from, for instance it may come as a surprise to some people in the south , that the "Secondary Moderns" in Trafford are better than the surrounding Comprehensives in leafy Cheshire East. Trafford's "MODS" are 1 Million Times better than the best comps in North Manchester / Wigan Bolton E.T.C....

Martorana

1. Yes - there is no overall difference - so it depends on how you want to balance the proposition for children at various points in the attainment spectrum

2. If you were applying for a top university in the UK and in the USA, you would be expected to show achievement and aptitude well above the level of A level. Referring to my example, to secure a place at Cambridge I had to sit two additional STEP papers, and prepare for interview a couple of chapters from an undergraduate textbook (the maths of special relativity, iirc). In the interview, I was also given an unseen New Scientist article and asked to discuss it. And that process - I know for a fact - was already making allowance for my 'normal' educational background (e.g. I was required grades 1 and 3 in my STEPs - whereas kids from schools where they knew they were taught STEP were required to meet an offer of 1 and 1) .

You're seriously letting down the high achievers in the state system if you let them believe that an A* at A level is sufficient in order to be on a par with the top achievers from their peer group in the private sector and internationally. Criminally wasting talent of kids who deserve our support no less than our Olympics hopefuls deserve specialist training opportunities.

"If you were applying for a top university in the UK and in the USA, you would be expected to show achievement and aptitude well above the level of A level"

Really? That's certainly not the experience of my dd and her friends, all of whom are currently deciding on their final two.........

What do you mean by top universities? Oxbridge, obviously. And?

I had a quick look at the league tables for Northern Ireland schools and one thing stood out dramatically. The grammar schools had very few pupils on free school meals compared to the secondary schools. The system was doing very little for poor but clever children.

To be honest, I think that the single biggest change to improve our education system needs to happen outside schools. We need to work much harder at reducing social inequality as currently a lot of children are pretty much set on a course of underachievement before they finish reception.

Oxbridge in the UK and Harvard/MIT/Yale @ USA.

The kind of places where kids at the top 5% of the ability spectrum should be aspiring to.

Is no one else bothered by the stat upthread^ that private schools leverage 8% of the population into 40% of Oxbridge? Where they will then benefit from a better-funded education based on small group tutorials and nice subsidised college rooms and book grants and all the other perks that the Oxbridge endowments permit?

Ah. So it's Oxbridge, Harvard- and that's it?

therani would that not also be the case for comprehensive schools in very middle class catchment areas though?

"he system was doing very little for poor but clever children."

Same in the UK. Except replace "very little" for "nothing"

"Your DD's friends might be playing it cool but they'll have been stuffing their applications with details of their extracurriculars and planning for interviews for months."

Well, they'd have been wasting their time with the extra curriculars......