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?

But that's my point really, the comprehensive system can and does work well in many areas. I just think it's too easy to say let's have grammar schools everywhere, thus writing off a massive proportion of our children, rather than really working towards a system which works for them all.

My town isn't special. It's a very ordinary area with pockets of real deprivation, especially some of the rural parts nearby. Yet the 3 comprehensive schools in the town are all very good, there really isn't a 'worst option' or sink school or whatever. And I repeat, my children's school seems to do so well despite not having any sort of selection or being based just on a nice middle-class intake or whatever.

I have friends in other parts of England with similar experiences, so I know mine isn't an isolated case.

So really my question is how can some comprehensives work so very very well, and how can we all work to make sure that this is the norm for state schools. All our children deserve a good education, not just the few who go to a grammar school.

Does anyone understand why there are banded comprehensives, and ones that aren't banded? I imagine existing grammars would convert to banded comprehensives?

Round our way, banded comprehensives - ie ones who take a certain number of children from a number of ability bands - are the ones which do OK. Our very local ones are catastrophic.

I've never even heard of a banded comprehensive - I've obviously never lived!

It is the lack of consistency nationwide that lets the current system down so badly IMO
If only everyone no matter what their postcode had access to a resonable standard of secondary school education -

I don't understand that argument which maintains that, where grammars exist, the other schools are offering a lesser standard of education and children are being failed. Why is this? Surely each school should be offering an education suited to the ability of its pupils. If the top 25% go to the grammar, they will receive an education which stretches their abilities. The other 75% should be offered an education which fits their abilities. All schools are allocated the same amount of money per capita. How they spend it is down to them, so, if the comps are failing their pupils, is this down to financial mismanagement?

Tha banded thing is fascinating. You get children who if they know aren't in the upper band need to do particularly badly to get into the band that will get them a place. It sounds like something out of Soviet Russia. Someone could write a very amusing play about the complications of schools invented by Blair.

Banding must be what we have in at least some of our local comps then Fauve. It is well known that the "best" of them (57% of students get 5 or more GSCEs) has only 25 places for the entire borough for the most able children.
And then council staff have the brass neck to go into the primaries and harangue Year 6 parents about taking their children out of borough.

Fauve, my old grammar switched to a banded comp in 1977. It is still near the top of the league tables in its London borough and still doing a fabulous job educating girls of all abilities. BUT each banding is no more than, say 28 students. It's a small school, especially by today's standards. I would not want my child to be one of 28 higher-achieving intake in a total year intake of 180, tbh.
I think overall size of school has a major impact on the quality of educational experience for all children, and on the working environment of the staff too. Much easier for problematic behaviour to go unnoticed until it is too late in a very large school IME.

Banning grammar schools is analagous to banning Oxbridge. Take out the top tier because not everyone can fit in it. Then all undergraduates can go for a 2nd class degree in a middling university.

Freckle you raise a very interesting point regarding the 'other' schools being able to offeran appropriate education to the children inthe school. In principle I agree with you totaly. However, there is a funding issue.

n the 'top' schools all the places are full, so the school will get the maximum funding possible. They may well get extra money for being a 'specialist' school....a science collage ot whatever. The 'not so good' schools may have vacencies....this causes a short fall in income for the school. The school will then be torn, do they get 'bums on seats' at all cost, and risk taking in children who have been excluded from other schools (you get some extra cash for doing this btw). This is particularly true at A level when each bum on seat brings with it a considerable wodge of cash. OTOH, if you take on too many 'under performing' children, you risk the school slipping in the rating. and so the cycle continues.

The real wickedness of the old 11 plus system wasn't just that it stigmatised those who 'faile' but that there was a huge discrepency in the amount of funding between grammer and secondary modern schools.

I can see your point MB. However, not all grammars are full. I know for a fact that DS1's school did not fill all places when he went into Y7, where as the local good high school was oversubscribed. That may have had something to do with how children are allocated schools if they sit the 11+ and fail (local good high school operated a first preference only system which has now been banned). However, at the end of the day, if a child does not have the ability to pass the 11+, he/she will not be allocated a place at a grammar simply because there is a space.

With falling school rolls, I can see that all schools are likely to have problems with fill available vacancies.

I still feel more research should be done into providing vocational schools, where the emphasis is less on academic achievement (possibly beyond many pupils) and more on equipping them to cope in the work place later.

The school I work in is putting a great deal of work into providing children with appropriate courses. the so called 'level 2' qualifications include GCSEs but also include GNVQ and BTec courses and well as adult literacy courses. We have been increasingly sucessful in getting kids 5 'level 2' qualifications, but these are not always GCSEs. So we do a Btec construction course and also one in applied science. Some of these are all portfolio and practical and can ver very popular and sucessful with children who are switched off by straight academic stuff.

And it is alls within the same schoo so kids can do a mic depending on their interests and strenghts.

It is a very interesting development and , given the right courses, even the most disruptive kids can be brought round, and many leave with good qualifucations

mw14 - oh look trafford do rather well - 11+ and grammar schools here too

Yes, JT, it would worry me (as you know!)

Apparently Sutton has grammar schools too - that does well too (don't know which other LEAs have 11+)