Fiona Millar on grammar schools in the Grauniad

[samsonagonistes]

This article here is doing my head in on a number of levels, not because I necessarily disagree with it, but mainly because I don't know what I think and I don't know enough about some of the research/thinking behind it to come to a conclusion on my own. So I'd be really grateful for any thoughts and/or pointers.

She's working from the premise that grammar schools are inherently bad, and that this is a clear thing for all right thinking left wing people. Now, when I read MN, I can see that plenty of parents want grammar schools and are fighting to get into them. So I end up feeling about this pretty much as I do about UKIP, that the point is not only/necessarily to condemn them outright, but what would be more useful would be to find out why people feel this way and what is actually going on for them right now. So what's the gap between theory and experience here and why?

Also, she seems to think that the main argument against grammar schools is that they are not engines of social equality. Now, this may be one argument against them, but surely the point of school is to deliver education, with equality of opportunity in achieving that. Lots of other things do not deliver social equality - like private schools, expensive clothes and London house prices to name but a few - but that's never part of the argument against them.

Also - and I am aware that this is going to be controversial - but an argument against their social mobility is that they take reduced numbers on FSM. Now, for this argument to be valid, we would have to assume that IQ is spread absolutely evenly throughout the population.* I would like this to be the case, but has this theory ever been tested/proven?

• and yes I am aware about the cultural relativity of testing, etc etc, but then schools are also culturally relative in that they privilege theater and art over other activities and there are so many knots in this problem that it's hard to disentangle.

Hang on- are we now talking about 6th forms?

By likeminded I mean of similar aptitude and with similar interests. I enjoyed this oportunity from 16, would have been better from 14 or even 12, I spent an awful lot of my GCSE courses in my choosen subjects bored out of my mind in the top set of a comp.

Molio
I can't see any benefit to going to university very young which outweighs the benefit of having a normal and healthy social life with peers one's own age.

I instinctively agree with this. I know it would be true for me or my children. But we aren't as intelligent as my cousin is.

I know school was not nice for her. I don't believe that anyone picked on her. She didn't look "geeky" she wasn't an awkward "nerd" like we see portrayed in the movies. In fact she was tall, blond and pretty. She just felt very alone. She really didn't relate well with the others or fit in. She was lonesome. I remember her being so happy once she went off to college. She was animated about the subjects and chuffed to have the chance to learn ancient Greek for fun alongside her STEM subjects. I am not saying that all children with an IQ above 150, or whatever we've settled on in this discussion, should go Uni early. I can see that there are times, when it is right for particular children, and I would be cautious about applying my own experiences to these children.

CamelHump - this isn't a grammar school area and the nearest faith secondary is so far away you would genuinely have to be seriously Catholic to want to make the journey... The local private schools are not renowned for being academic hothouses. Would there be that many children avoiding the local comprehensives where I live? As for other areas - maybe faith schools and grammar schools, therefore, are part of the problem, not a solution?

Apparently, it's good for people with an IQ of 150+ to mix with the 125+ comparative dunces...

Really? Why? (Not trying to provoke here, just genuinely curious and haven't noticed it articulated on the thread yet.)

a critical mass of people with an IQ of, say, 120+

Is the 30 point difference between 120 and 150 less profound than the difference between 90 and 120? My gut reaction is that kids of 120 and 90 probably wouldn't work at the same pace. As you move out of the central bulge of the bell curve, do the points matter less?

Sorry hak but I think that' a terrible piece of extension work for the outlier!

See I would be very cross if either of my DC got palmed off with crap like that.

Your cousin sounds properly exceptional HayFever and it obviously worked out well for her but there's a real risk of children having important decisions made for them where they're pushed up early, on the grounds that they are still children. Quite apart from the social thing, the decision about where to go to university and what to do there should be exclusively the young person's decision, not its parents' and that may well not happen aged 15/ 16.

No idea why this 2% thing is still being latched onto. No superselective that I'm aware of takes only the top 2% of the ability range. All the students there will be pretty/ very bright and some will be exceptional but one shouldn't over egg it. On the old definition of gifted almost every child would be gifted of course but not now that gifted is the top 10% of any particular school.

Hakluyt that's simply an example of a teacher encouraging a youngish child to do his best with a task; at that moment she wasn't actively teaching so it's not an example of challenge in the sense I'm referring to, where the teacher is leading a discussion and asking and answering questions. And as someone else said and as I've previously said, KS3 is different from the KSs which follow, especially KS5.

"Apparently, it's good for people with an IQ of 150+ to mix with the 125+ comparative dunces...

Really? Why? (Not trying to provoke here, just genuinely curious and haven't noticed it articulated on the thread yet.)"

I guess so you get used to being with all sorts of people in your life? I know that here on mumsnet no one ever has an average child, but they do exist and they are rather nice.

Cross post with Word. Exactly!

Well they have gifted magnet classes in the US, so it must work somehow. There they select by IQ testing rather than achievement. And the class is part of a normal school, so I don't see why they can't do drama and art with the others, or take part in other lessons if that works better for them.

HayFever - no you are right, and some people argue that the further to the right of the bell curve you go, the greater the difference is. But personality and drive also play a huge part - I know a girl with an almost uncountable IQ, but she is very anxious and so won't ever perform to anything like her ability within school.

However one argument as to why it works is that children like this are often able to do self-directed work at an early age, so the teacher can set projects and then children can work at their own level, but still as part of the class. Every answer is a bodge of some kind or other, though.

Add message | Report | Message poster TheWordFactory Mon 18-May-15 18:15:31
Sorry hak but I think that' a terrible piece of extension work for the outlier!

See I would be very cross if either of my DC got palmed off with crap like that.

And that, I think is the difference. I live in Kent, and don't pay top dollar to educate my children. I think that extension idea, for a secondary modern which is not set up in ANY way for top set pupils, is a good one.

I guess so you get used to being with all sorts of people in your life? I know that here on mumsnet no one ever has an average child, but they do exist and they are rather nice.

Yes, obviously. Being cloistered from the rest of humanity would be obscene. By definition, average people are all around us. Most of us are average people. So presumably, even if you go to a highly selective school, you are still going to meet and mix with "normal" people just by living in this world.

I was just wondering from a pedagogical perspective.

Samson I'd like my kids to learn through teaching and discussion, not sit in a corner doing lonely projects.

SarfEast - I completely agree with you, it is much better if you can mix with all sorts of people, and I agree for all sorts of reasons that would be an essay if I wrote them all down.

But this isn't just about academic outcomes. DD, especially in the early years of primary, was really really different. Her concentration span was huge, and she'd be forever disappointed as when she was just getting into an imaginative game, her friends would wander off and do something different. She read Harry Potter in the summer after Reception, she would have loved to play that in the playground. No one knew what she was on about. She minded, she really did and she would have loved to have someone like her at school.

And the funny thing is, when she meets up with children who are similar to her at all, they always both regress to being really infantile. It's as though they can't fully relax among their age peers, only when they meet another child like them.

She's now skipped a year. She's one of the more mature children in the class, the teacher tells me. She still doesn't fit in. I want her to go to a selective school not for academic reasons, but simply so that she can meet someone like her.

I didn't really manage that until uni, and quite a lot of my school life was a bit crappy as a result, I'd rather she got happier earlier.

It's extremely unimaginative and lazy in my opinion Theoretical on any level - really bad.

I think having an IQ of 90-110 probably makes you arguably nicer and happier than the outliers.None of the very clever people I have known have been particularly well adjusted.

Samson I'd like my kids to learn through teaching and discussion, not sit in a corner doing lonely projects.

^^Agree with this!

The best bits of my education were when the Socratic method was employed by the "teacher." I think it would probably be good for any student at any level of intelligence, but I don't think it would necessarily be good in a group of students learning at different speeds. In that context I think it would go from being the best of the best to an absolute flop. For me, this is the whole argument that classes need to be set. And you need teachers sharp enough to keep up with the kids, if not keep in front of them.

samson there are all sorts of DC in selective schools too - this thread makes it sound as if they're all clones of each other, which they're not. They're as rich a mix of DC as in any other school, and for precisely that reason don't need the other 75% or 95% or whatever it is to learn to socialize properly. They benefit from faster paced teaching though, but the 'need to mix with all sorts' is a pretty weak argument trotted out to justify abolition.

Strongly disagree with the fact that an IQ of 90-110 makes you nicer!!!!

Yy Hayfever. But there needs to be enough smart scientists or able musicians. Dumping everyone together in a "gifted magnet" class (or top set) of 30 dcs who happen to be brighter than average just won't do it. I mentioned I didn't find my peer group until I was in a cohort of 2,500

samson I know exactly what you mean. Both my girls were like that, and didn't find people that they could 'be themselves with' until they got to secondary school.

Being averagely clever is not correlated with being a more agreeable human being.

More emphatic then maybe ? I always think of the analogy "who is better placed to help you? the person one step up the mountain or the guy who reached the summit first ?"

Surprisingly enough, very high IQ people can be very nice, fairly nice, occasionally nice, rarely nice and not nice at all ever. Just like medium IQ people and low IQ people.

The cleverest people I have ever met are also two of the nicest peoplpe I have ever met. The very nicest person I have ever met isn't the cleverest person I have ever met. But neither is the vilest person I've ever met, either.

Some very clever people are possibly not the most well adjusted because they had a grim time at school. As are some less clever people. IQ and degree of niceness really aren't related in any definable way. But happy people are generally nicer (or at least easier) than less happy people.

DD has been fundraising this evening. The higher the flyer, the more help was forthcoming...