Peter Hain and Grammar Schools

[Joolstoo]

He has/is successfully doing away with the 11+ in Northern Ireland.

He is a contender for Deputy PM (if and when Blair finally goes).

Would it worry you that he wants to scrap the 11+ in England too?

Think the NI thing is also going ahead because it has the backing of Sinn Fein (who hold the education brief for NI).

Hmmmm
My ds is in a grammar school, he really needed the extra curriculum extensions that the school offers
For us it would be a disaster
But I cna also see the point about selective education.
What I really wish is that the standards of teaching were equal (ish) nationwide and that parents would not have to face the trauma they currently do of getting kids away from sink schools

Until I discovered mumsnet I thought the 11+ had already been scrapped in England! They didn't have it where I went to secondary school (30 years ago) and they don't have it here where my children go to school. So I presume it's just up to the individual LEA whether they kept it or not?

Anyway, it least it means that round here the brightest children aren't all creamed off (except to private schools, but that's another story!) and the schools are truly comprehensive.

There is already no 11plus in my area.
Its all comprehensive.
I have one gifted and talented and one regular high achiever who would both be 100% better off in grammar school

Education is exceedingly unfair already

We moved from Norfolk (no grammar schools) to Kent (still has grammar schools) a year ago, due to work relocation.

As DS is only 2.6 I am under no illusions that the school system will be the same by the time he is 11.

The thing I fear most is if it changes, will DS be a victim of a muddled changeover system when no-one knows what's what.

If the chnage has been made and the dust settled by then, I won;t be too worried - if we had stayed in Norfolk it wouldn;t have been an option.

i think they should scrap it. it's not fair that some places have it and some don't

The sooner they get rid of them the better IMO

All schools should be good enough to deal with the extra bright pupils and whatever extra curricular activites a pupil may need

Would be very nervous about living in an 11+ area - would hate my bright but lazy daughter to be branded an 11+ failure.

But they aren't though are they Tommy. And for some of us living in the crappest performing boroughs in the country, those schools have been failing children at all levels, but especially children who are capable of high academic achievement, for over 20 years.
There is one decent comp in terms of GCSE results and value-added in my borough and it has 25 places for the most academically able children. I like my local authority in many ways but it has really failed to provide a decent secondary education choice for a very long time now.

Tommy as Marina says it should be like that but honest answer is it is not.

The opportunites afforded to my ds are massive compared to the comp he would have gone to ahd we not moved.
No brainer for us
I'm not sure that it's right/fair/kind but on a preuly selfish level I'm damned glad it was there

Comprehensives were in place where I grew up in the 1960s. IN essence in most of the UK what we now have is if you can pay you can get the grammar school education your parents obtained free. I see no evidence the comprehensives are doing a lot better at teaching those bright children as well as the grammar schools did and you don't get the lifting of very clever chidlren from very poor homees into a world they would never have had the chance to enter which you got with the grammar schools which of course were therefore unfair on those who didn't get that benefit. But surely it's better to be unfair to 85% than 100%.

Where is it that's just giving every parent a voucher to spend at any school they choose and allows parents to set up their own state schools too? Somewhere in Europe I think and it works quite well.

I used to work in a secondary modern school and it put me off the whole system I'm afraid

Yes, I do find that discussion about selective education does focus rather heavily on the grammar schools and not secondary moderns. Of course, they are called comprehensices now. The twon where I grew up has four single sex grammar schools. The rest are called comprehensives. They're not.

Terrible typing. Apologies!

What part of the country has the best overall levels of achievement?

Northern Ireland.

Hain is a buffoon.

we have no 11+ here and tbh, until I had kids myself, I thought everywhere had done away with it

(Peter Hain was at the same school as my dad although my dad is much older!)

ditto wordgirl

I thought it had already been scrapped

good thing IMO

Until I joined MN I didn't even realise that the 11+ still existed. There are no grammar schools here.

Our town also has girls and boys grammar, very good co ed secondary - they share 6th form as it is a small town in the scheme of things
The grmamars have astonishingly fantastic results, close to 100% A-C GCSE's this year and the co ed also has way above average attainment, plus superb IT facilities.

1/2 of the new intake yr7 at ds's grammar qualify for free school meals - if that is a guide of income the in this area the system works IMO

The London Borough of Sutton still has grammar schools. A brochure outlining the schools in Sutton says stuff like "6th best in the Borough, 40th in the country". All the grammar schools comfortably fit in the top 50 state schools in England. Each of these schools has it's own selection policy and it's own 11+ exam. Kids end up sitting multiple tests. Even the comprehensives have a small element of selection. I can't help thinking that a single 11+ exam would be better than this.

Comprehensives are probably ideal for 95% of the population, but the remaining 2.5% at each of the spectrum need special measures/special schools for those children to achieve their potential.

A neigbouring borough still has grammar schools. We were advised to consider moving there for that reason. But, what if your child fails the 11+? Couldn't take the risk of that pressure/disappointment.

I agree with Tommy, we should concentrate on making comprehensives the answer for all our children.

I truly believe comprehensives can work brilliantly, certainly where I live I really don't think it could be better. My two elder children come into the gifted & talented bracket and their needs are being met very well indeed. But their school is also good for 'average' children and those we might see as being at the bottom of the pile. Their comprehensive is also strong on sports, music and other activities, and is ranked as one of the top 25 or so in the country, despite having no element of selection and having a pretty mixed intake in terms of income, social background etc. The sixth form is going from strength to strength and many many children from families which have never even thought of further or higher education are now doing just that.

I know children who wouldn't get into a grammar school but are very good at one or more subjects - in a comprehensive they can be in the top set for their strong subjects and lower sets for everything else, always with the possibility of moving up sets if necessary.

Many children aren't ready at age 11 - my own sister in law did very badly in her science SATs at age 11 (hers was the first year to do them I think), and in the first couple of years of secondary school didn't do much better. But she 'grew into herself' and ended up doing very well at science A level and is now doing a science-based degree. Under the old system, she would have been written off at age 11.

I can see absolutely nothing a grammar school system would offer my children that their comprehensive does not.

I'm in Kent and there is an organisation here which has as its aim the abolition of grammar schools. They regularly attempt to start the whole procedure to do this, but they require a certain percentage of eligible parents to back them. They never achieve it. That should tell you something about how the grammars are viewed here.

Quite apart from the extension of DS1 (at a grammar and DS2 about to take the 11+)) educationally, one of the things which attracts me to these schools is that you do not get the disaffected/disinterested in learning element which exist at comprehensives. Where it is uncool to want to learn. Where you are a nerd or worse for wanting to work and achieve. You simply don't get those students in grammars.

DS1 was bullied badly at primary school because he is bright and wanted to work. He gave up offering answers in class because he was bullied for it; he tried to dumb down his work so that he didn't stand out. I would hate for that to happen at secondary level and, as he is at a grammar, it doesn't.

I think the comprehensive system is good in principle, but in practice it doesn't work. They should go back to the old system of technical schools, grammar schools and high schools. Then each child would go to the school which best suits their aptitude, rather than going to one school which tries to be all things to all people - and can't.

But portonovo, you have already posted in glowing terms elsewhere about the fabness of the schools in your town - I'd certainly be more than happy with that kind of scenario for my children too
Freckle's second para about the culture of learning strikes a chord with me too. It's my main reason for wanting my children to go to grammar school provided they pass the exams. There is a really serious pervasive youth culture of hating secondary school and not working in my neighbourhood. Might explain why we are so near the bottom of the national league tables.

port...that seems to be working well. That is not typical of most comprehensives and certainly not in London. I think most comprehensives do have sets and even my children's academic private schools have sets in some subjects. Grammar schools did not always work well. Some towns had 3 or 4 none of which were up to much and not that hard to get in. It was a patchy system around the country.

Do more children get to Oxbridge from comprehensives than went from grammar schools I suppose is the question and the saddest statistic I found was that there was a huge difference between % getting to good universities in the 1960s in the grammar school era compared with now where many more whose parents have paid for their education get in . That illustrates the academic failure of the comprehenseives, surely for the brighter children (not the others of course).

It is however completely untenable to say just because a parent lives in an area where there are grammar schools they get to keep them but not elsewhere. It's a ridiculous argument which even Cameron supports too. You can't have it both ways - you either think they work and expand them or you think they don't and abolish them. Typical political fudge.