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.

Sorry meant to add link
blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2013/01/28/grammar-school-myths/

Some primary schools prepare pupils for the transfer test and tutoring is less rife. That's one difference I can think of.

thankgod can't see your link. Did he look at Northern Ireland?

Pickled - she says that the approach in schools is much more 'traditional' also that the attitude towards grammars, selection, testing etc is more supportive and the issue is less divisive. Of course, she lives in one place not everywhere in NI - but she works in education so she does see a fair spread...

Rabbit the top LEAs for sending DC to Russel Group universities are Reading, Trafford and Sutton.

The top LEAs for sending DC to Oxbridge are Reading, Sutton and Bucks.

thankgod - would very much like to see that link but it seems to be behind a paywall. Is it published elsewhere at all?

Is this it?

www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2015/03/eleven-grammar-school-myths-and-the-actual-facts/

"Myth 11: The eleven-plus test has no permanent effect on those failing it

One Kent primary headteacher told me that the hardest part of his year is when he has to tell his Year 6 pupils the results of their eleven-plus. “However you phrase it, it is heartbreaking to see the effect on those, the majority of my pupils, who have not passed.”

One writer describes taking the eleven-plus after two years of sitting “countless practice papers”. “I was only 10 years old but I was convinced that the duration of my life would evolve around my result in this test.” He failed and writes about how his friends taunted him and others: “They had got into Grammar school and I had not, I was a failure and they were a success. This was the attitude I took with me into secondary school, and this was the attitude I had for years after my eleven plus.”

A friend of mine told me how her mum, now over 60, still feels she is stupid as a result of failing her 11-plus. Research by Love to Learn, a website offering courses for those aged over 50, found that this effect is common. Of those who failed the eleven-plus, over one in three said they still “lacked the confidence” to undertake further education and training courses, while one in eight reported that it had “put them off learning for life”. Almost half reported that they still carried negative feelings with them into their fifties, sixties and beyond."

I think this is a copy of the FT article that thankgoditsover tried to link? (I couldn't access it via her link, either). blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2013/01/28/grammar-school-myths/

That article, at least, suggests that social mobility is harmed by grammar schools, by advantaging the better off in greater numbers and disadvantaging the less well off in greater numbers than the comprehensive system does.

TheWordFactory's list of top schools for sending DC to Oxbridge lists areas packed full of well paid London commuters. I wonder how much this has an effect? How many of the children from those areas are from less well off backgrounds and how many quite wealthy?

And here

socialistreview.org.uk/377/land-selectivia

"
The results were astonishing. As a poorer student in Selectivia, you would be better off studying anywhere in London, the south east, south west, north west and east of England - areas which actually all have much higher rates of deprivation.

It wasn't that grammar schools had little effect on social mobility - it was that they had a devastating effect on it. Far from propelling poorer children forwards, they hold them back"

This is exactly what I thought. I'm not interested in the top end, more the middle to lower end.

Don't Trafford and Sutton both have superselectives too as well as being well off?

Ooh - how annoying! If you look it up yourself, you can access it once, but if you link it, it hides behind a paywall!

And Reading, I think, samsonagonistes? The article referenced, though, indicates that it isn't really the schools making the difference in those areas so much as other pre-existing advantages.

There are lots of comp counties where 30+% of pupils don't get 5 good GCSEs. That has nothing to do with grammars. In NI the figure is closer to 25%. Looks to me like the outcomes for the disadvantaged aren't adversely affected - the opposite!

Reading and Sutton are surely tiny areas?

rabbit what those top three have in common is selective state schools.

There are far wealthier LEAs that don't make the cut!

Why use N. Ireland when you've got Kent? What's wrong with Kent, pickledsiblings? Seems bizarre to compare N. Ireland with England when you've got a county in England itself that retained the full grammar school system and has the whole gamut of different wealth and employment prospects within it - an excellent microcosm, I would have thought.

The socialist review sums it up wrell but I'd like to see all the data;

"When a new aggregate of the scores was created, one that linked final GCSE scores to poverty, ethnicity, special needs and primary school performance, the results were even worse. This is what has increasingly been known as a "value-added score" within the education system."

TheWordFactory - yes, but who is it who is getting into the good universities from those areas? The richer end of the spectrum or the poorer? And who is getting into the superselectives? Is it helping social mobility in those areas?

Because Kent has a lot of private schools and NI doesn't?

But Trafford, Sutton and Reading are tiny areas!

Maybe people are uncomfortable with the Kent example as its real.

And rarely have I ever seen an MN thread get to the nub of it, which we are nearing now. It so often veers off into superselective twaddle.

I haven't seen anyone defending Kent. Kent is clearly a horrible place to grow up and be educated. It's no more real than NI though. Kent's failures - which are legion - should be noted by everywhere else and avoided. But Kent's failures do not negate successes in othe rplaces. Because Kent is not the centre of the world.

Sorry about the link not working - but you can google it and get it as it is interesting reading.

The majority of people who have posted about superselectives have expressed the view that that is the model that works (although evidence from NI might contradict this). That's no more twaddle than anything the Kent obsessives have posted.

Everyone agress that the Kent system is useless. Everyone.

Wow.