Theresa May to end ban on grammar schools

[noblegiraffe]

Theresa May to end ban on grammar schools, reports the Telegraph.

This is not a policy announcement, rather a testing of the waters, I suspect.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/06/theresa-may-to-end-ban-on-new-grammar-schools/

As mentioned, as this is an MN thread, it just turns into a thread about high achievers in the main, and a rosy tinted view of the grammar system ( ie stuff the 75% secondary modern kids, let's just focus on Jonty TopTable).

We need a lot more articulate people with recent experience of the secondary modern system, able to talk about its impact, if there is to be any kind of meaningful discussion about the " grammar system".

which school, grammar or secondary modern, would you prefer to get the qualified maths teacher?

I would find it completely ridiculous to have to choose which school gets a maths teacher who is qualified. This is why I am emphasising using resources to solve the current existing problems, rather than reorganise schools into selective and non-selective.

I'm interested that nobody has yet come up with a few more details about this "vocational" education for 11+ failures.

HPFA - you have chosen selective education for your child though - your dd travels some distance away to attend a girls' only school. Everybody knows that boys who don't want to learn are more disruptive/more likely to warrant exclusion/have SEN etc. I have two lovely, well behaved, academic sons - they don't want to be in a classroom with disruptive boys any more than your dd.

ErgonimicallyUnsound you also get a good number of people with DC not in state super selectives and no experience of that system making comments about it which are very wide of the mark, on a lot of fronts.

Bertrand you haven't addressed the question about the impact of the new reformed public exams. Do you think they're going to fail the less able, as a group? If so, what would you do to tackle the problem?

I'm also shocked that your DS's school is led by people who get rid of valuable exams because they don't count in the tables. Good leadership requires doing what's best for the children at a particular school without regard to tables and then justifying the decision at a higher level if you
have to. Please don't call me naive: that's what well led schools actually do.

So if Justine Greening had been at a grammar she would have succeeded because of her school? And because she was at a comp she succeeded DESPITE her school?

This double standard is rampant across the media, not just in the Daily Mail and it drives me completely insane. It's why no matter how well comps achieve they never get the credit for it.

Sometimes I wonder if we get too obsessed about education

But that's the world we live in. Education can't live in it's own bubble. Employers and further education establishments use qualifications as a yard-stick. When faced with selecting a relatively small number of places from hundreds of applicants, they're bound to give precedence to those with the best qualifications. Grade inflation has made this worse! That's how we've got to the stage where some employers require degrees for relatively low skilled work!

Previous generations could get decent jobs with few/no formal qualifications. I remember the time when 5 O levels grade C or above opened doors for decent office jobs. Those with no qualifications could readily get trainee or apprentice positions.

Schools continue to use the C or above GCSE yardstick as a measure of success (especially comps who love to say that x% of their GCSEs are C or above. But a C grade isn't the yardstick in the real world. So many get C or above that even sixth form colleges want As and Bs, and, quite frankly, an employer isn't going to get excited about someone with a string of Cs when they have a list of other applicants with As and Bs. That's why the new grading system sets a higher yardstick, and rightly so, as the current C grade is devalued as it's so common.

My niece and nephew both got a string of C grades, so the comp cheerleaders regard that as a success for their comp. But in reality, they had a horrid time, were both bullied, both basically ignored by teachers as they were always forecast C grades. But they were both around the top of their classes at primary school, and realistically, could have achieved a lot better grades if they'd been encouraged and nurtured. They've both really struggled - they were both rejected from the FE college courses they wanted to take despite meeting the "minimum entry requirements" (obviously C grades not good enough!), they've been rejected from a string of job applicants (again despite meeting the C grade entry requirements), neither could get into the sixth forms they wanted because they didn't have A/B grades, so both ended up staying in the sixth form at the same comp, continuing to be bullied and ignored, and both were unceremoniously chucked out half way through after not achieving the required results in their end of year 1 tests. Yes, that's a great comp success story isn't it!!!!

Justine Greening was actually educated in a Rotherham Comprehensive. Rotherham had previously implemented a full tri-partite system with the missing technical schools which most areas didn't bother with.

Her school was an ex technical school. My SIL went to such a school, and the feeling of failing the 11+ was not so acute because the technical schools were most definitely better than the Secondary Moderns. How much this ethos still lingered in Justine Greening's day, I don't know, but it would have had a head start over a school which was a Sec Mod serving a sink estate.

That was a cross post to Bertrand. Well, you should be in a very good position to model a suitable system for the less academically able Bertrand, but you've told us that you went along with the abolition of the very valuable vocational qualification at your school!

Noblegiraffe, your point about Bristol is interesting and the contrast is what I believe you can see in the towns I used to, and now, live in.

Town 1, E Yorks: previously, grammar and secondary modern, grammar went private. Comprehensive very poor.
Obviously not ALL the local bright kids go to the private, but enough do (the whole top table in dd's primary class) to make a big difference.
If I only had 1 dc we would have done too, we just can't afford 3 sets of school fees. Many who do aren't that posh, it's far cheaper than comparable schools in the south.

Town 2, N Yorks: (which we moved to mainly for the schools). Previously grammar and secondary modern, both went comprehensive. Town now has 2 good schools, one more academic, though actually it's the former secondary modern that gets outstanding OFSTEDs - it does rural vocational stuff extremely well with a school farm.
DD is going to the former grammar and I was a bit taken aback by the relative poshness of the parents at the induction evening - I think a very large number of the parents, had they been in the other town, would have been sending their dcs private.

I do think the situation in town 2 is far better for everyone than it would be if one was grammar and one comprehensive. Town 1, not so clear. I don't know why the former secondary modern has proved so resistant to improvement.

However, where I grew up in Essex, the comprehensive I didn't go to because I went to a superselective 10 miles away, was really pretty good - it was huge so a good range of subjects, they got a couple of kids into Oxbridge and many into other good universities every year - it wasn't the 'secondary modern' described by other posters as inevitable once you have grammars, and there weren't that many private schools around, none within reasonable commuting distance.

Clavinova - you have no idea why I chose the school I did for my daughter. If people don't like all-girls that's fair enough but that doesn't make it a selective school and is irrelevant to a debate about academic selection.
There are two single sex schools in the town and that means they have a good socio-economic balance - you don't have the situation where all the middle class are in one school and all the poor kids in another.

It's depressing that what has actually been a good reasoned debate on both sides has now descended into the personal.

The old style grammar school system did work wonders to improve social mobility. I come from very MC background, as do most of long-term friends (think doctors, lawyers, army officers, engineers etc...). But if you scratch the very MC surface of many of these families (often with DCs in private education etc...), you will find that only two generations ago some of (great) grandparents were from very WC backgrounds. Yet they made that social leap thro' education, courtesy of the 11+ and grammar school education.

As someone with one DC in a super-selective, but worrying about DC2 getting in (in competition with DCs tutored all thro' KS2 primary school years when she hasn't been), a return to the 'old style' system that encompassed the top 20-25% would be most welcome. Sadly it won't come soon enough for DC2 to benefit.

Sorry for saying Doncaster rather than Rotherham !

The posters on here would all jump on the bandwagon to say it was the school that enabled 'CAMERON and OSBORNE' to get in to Government.

So yes Justine Greening did succeed despite her school, not because of it.

Dontyoulovecalpol there are superselectives in Kent too.

HPFA - I am not against single sex schools at all - most grammar schools are single sex. Presumably you chose the school for your dd because it achieves better results than the mixed comprehensive schools in your own area - many parents would do the same if they are able. There is a dilemma though if parents cannot afford the bus fare or if the catchment area for the boys' school doesn't extend as far as your town.

So yes Justine Greening did succeed despite her school, not because of it.

Perhaps I could remind you of another person succeeding despite his school, namely John Major. But in his case, his was a grammar school.

But if you scratch the very MC surface of many of these families (often with DCs in private education etc...), you will find that only two generations ago some of (great) grandparents were from very WC backgrounds.

You could scratch the surface of a lot of MC people and find that two generations ago, clearly intelligent people had by force of circumstances to leave school and start working as soon as possible. They bettered themselves by hard work backed up by night school study. It was their own efforts which pulled them up, aided post war by an expanding economy. Nothing to do with a grammar school. But people don't often go and ask this group of people how they managed to get on, because they don't fit the narrative.

Yet they made that social leap thro' education, courtesy of the 11+ and grammar school education.

My family has seen a similar social leap from dirt-poor backgrounds that was nothing to do with the 11+ or grammar schools.

bertram I have no idea what’s on the curriculum of schools at the moment, but my finger in air thoughts for vocational courses would be:

Woodwork

Art

Ceramics

Print making

Design and technology

Metal work

Horticulture

Electronics

Computer programming

Food science/catering?

Music

Drama

All stuff my not academic nephew would love.

If I was saying everyone should go to their nearest school regardless then my personal choices would be relevant. Choosing one particular comprehensive from those available to us is not relevant to a debate about academic selection.

Sarf that's on the curriculum at most schools (except maybe horticulture and ceramics). Some of the most academic pupils at my school take stuff like computer science, product design, music, drama.

That's good to know noble, cos they are all really useful life skills no matter whether you are 'academic' or not.

Sarf most of those are on the curriculum at my son's grammar school too, alongside Latin, Greek, Mandarin, 3d printing, cad/cam design, laser cutting, etc.

In fact, it was the design/tech that my son was most interested in as the tech block consisted more of computer suites than workshops, whereas at the comps we viewed, the tech rooms were all about wooden fish, metal trowels, etc, i.e. mostly manual skills rather than modern techniques - the grammar was showing off a chess piece being made by a 3d printer and a lego robot solving a rubik cube!

Certainly in the first 3 years, they concentrated more on non-academic stuff, like the cookery, drama, art, music, tech, etc. - the reasoning being that they didn't need to spend as much time on the academic subjects as the kids tended to pick stuff up quicker. One day per week in year 9, for example, my son didn't need to take any school books as all the lessons were tech/arts/sports - just the way the timetable worked!

The academic side starts in earnest in year 10 once the GCSE options have been chosen, but even then, there are still plenty of lunchtime and after school clubs for non-academic pursuits.

Sarf

www.royallatin.org/index.php/rlscurr

Link to the curriculum at the Royal Latin School (grammar). Seems to have most of what's on your list so I assume these are standard subjects at all types of school.

"In fact, it was the design/tech that my son was most interested in as the tech block consisted more of computer suites than workshops, whereas at the comps we viewed, the tech rooms were all about wooden fish, metal trowels, etc, i.e. mostly manual skills rather than modern techniques - the grammar was showing off a chess piece being made by a 3d printer and a lego robot solving a rubik cube!"

Again, school-specific - local comp (wins lots of DT / Engineering competitions, has people winning Arkwright awards etc) has all the technology one might dream of in this area.