Theresa May to end ban on grammar schools part 2

[noblegiraffe]

Continuation of the first thread from here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/education/2702565-Theresa-May-to-end-ban-on-grammar-schools

peregrina I still think that could be got round with the right management and access to resources. I don't know for certain what stem quals the staff at Dd's primary had, but from what I do know about their maths ability, combined with random knowledge of their areas of expertise, it would be highly unlikely that more than one was that way inclined. Ok nobody was teaching dd science at her level, but that didn't matter because they were still finding enough areas to interest the whole class, and differentiating it across what was a huge ability spectrum.

It is quite revealing that for so many people the 'corn flour gloop on a speaker like in Big Bang' has been a new, and fun aspect of science.

Somewhat off the topic of stem, I think on a broader scale we are also over complicating some jobs and careers. Whilst over simplyfying others. Being a maths whizz isn't required for simple bookkeeping, and yet for someone who might otherwise spend their life doing nmw admin/ call centre jobs, even at the most basic level is a more viable option. Neither do you actually need to be capable of the academic side of food tech to have a secure job as a pub chef or similar. And I think some children wrongly give up hope because jobs they could do appear to need skills they don't have.

Ditto for schools that give the impression some vocations are suitable for almost anyone, when in reality struggling with academic subjects doesn't remotely go with 'be a hairdresser or plumber'. I think for the least able, when it becomes apparent they will never pass any gcse, I'd rather see the curriculum narrowed so more time can go into basic, practical, maths and literacy, and a range of options like flt, hgv, basic driving licence, security certs (whatever they're called), actual cooking, diy, food and hygiene certs etc. Anything that might give them the chance of an actual long term job if a career is off the cards. Rather than some technical or academic education that leaves them qualified for nothing but signing on and zero hour nmw jobs.

bad you support grammar schools. You say your DS likes the tech equipment at his grammar school. How pissed off would he/you have been if he was told he couldn't go to that school with the tech equipment because he wasn't good enough at non-verbal reasoning? Grammar schools do not increase parental choice, they restrict it.

"I'm not saying or implying anything"
No, course not.

No suggestion at all that the grammar kids are splitting the atom while the comprehensive is putting on their take on Britain's Got Talent.........

Incidentally, even if you didn't mean to imply that, that is certainly how it came across. And it is constant little digs that perpetuates the comprehensives are crap narrative.

Parental choice is a total lie though isn't it? If you can't afford a school in the catchment area, you can't choose to go to a school. At least there's a chance with the grammar.
A larger reform is needed than bringing in more, or closing, grammar schools.

But some comprehensives are crap, and either no different, or actually worse than sm's. And until something is really done about it, other than generously offering up other people's able dc to also share that inadequate comprehensive education, then people will see grammars as a solution for at least some. Which is better than none.

Well yes, scrapping faith schools would be the first step. Seems like most people who send their kids to them lie about their faith anyway!

Some comprehensives are crap - so let's concentrate on fixing them instead of wasting a huge amount of time and effort to bring back a failed system.

Yes. Some schools are crap. Of all types and sectors. I know a well regarded prep school that I wouldn't leave a dog I liked at. There is a boy's grammar I know where bullying is practically institutional- think Tom Brown's School Days type of thing. There is a secondary modern I know which could make you weep to think of 11 year olds spending a day in.

And admissions policies are crap too- the government should be looking at proper unfiddleable fair banding or a lottery rather than this ridiculous sop to the middle classes.

I think the current generation of public schoolers are very different.

I agree with this. The school I have experience of in no way thinks of those taking STEM subjects as "grubby" or "déclassé" . Those taking Maths and Sciences are usually in the majority or it's pretty balanced and a fair number of those taking a couple of humanities also take Maths. I think there are misconceptions all ways round. Equally, whilst they don't all have "Cameron's background" History etc is seen as a perfectly good subject and might even lead to a job

I've said before that instead of a lottery, I'd like funding allocated on rough income banding. It would work in all areas, unlike a lottery which would be hard in v rural areas. And probably still leave the comprehensives in eg Skegness inferior to one serving Kensington. Whereas funding allocated on parental income banding would mean the schools that need the most money got it, whilst those with the easier pupils got less. Obviously that is generalising a lot, because not every low income home produces low achievers with social issues and high sn, and not every higher income home produces able, nt, easy to teach dc. But as the funding would be overall, and related to the critical mass, those that don't fit the generalisation would still have their needs met. Leaving pp as individual funding.

Of course, I'd also ban religious criteria from admissions, far simpler than the intricacies of church owned property.

To allow for the fact that some schools still wouldn't have a critical mass at either end of the spectrum, I'd want inter school or college based options. So eg with a school like my local one, where realistically there wouldn't be enough pupils to provide eg classics, a group could be gathered from several local schools. Ditto for able provision when there isn't enough pupils to provide teaching beyond the curriculum consistently.

And consequences and questions asked when able kids don't achieve potential, or lack sufficient stimulation. At present the only way they would be viewed to have failed is if a l6 child didn't get a/a*. Which misses the fact not all primaries even offer l6, and even when they do it is a capped achievement.

I'd also ditch almost all of the stupid demands, and current means of judging schools.

Haybott
The vast majority of outreach work is not done by University professionals.
The hard work of getting teachers to enjoy teaching primary science
and getting kids to realise that science is fun
is done by independent professionals up and down the country.
Unless kids are turned on to STEM by the age of 7 its almost too late.

Which also feeds into the selective education and careers advice problems .....
kids without high achieving role models will never aim high.
Those role models need to be provided early
and the rug must not be pulled away from kids by nasty selection at 11.

noble going back to your comment about academically less able children, I'm not clear what you mean? The new specifications look to me to be designed very much for the above average ability range. Wouldn't you say they were more like O Levels than anything we've seen in the recent past?

Our grammar has fantastic art facilities in a separate building with proper light, as well as a newly refurbished drama studio and all the smart D&T stuff too. It also has a new physics building and maths classrooms. Those things have been acquired ahead of providing new and improved space for the staff because the staff insisted they should come after these things, even though improvement for them is badly needed. Each school will have its own priorities and how good facilities are are a mark of good financial management as much as anything else. At our grammar subjects such as art are highly valued in their own right but as Donna said, many scientists do opt for a fourth subject in the sixth form which is entirely different, such as drama or art. Comps certainly don't have a monopoly of talent and facilities in the creative arts, nor are grammars better funded, both suggestions are false.

I can only talk for the new maths GCSE, I've not seen anything else. The stuff is harder, goodbye but the grade 1 is going to be set at the proportion of students who currently get a G. That means if a student would have got a grade on the old GCSE, they should get a grade on the new GCSE. Looking at the papers, this might mean that you only need a few percent to get a grade 1, but it does mean that that lower ability students are no worse off than they were at the old GCSE, which also didn't cater for them.

The grade 4 is being pegged at the proportion who get a C grade, the 5 (which will be the new 'good pass') will be set at the top end of a C, bottom end of a B, so some good C grade students should still pass the new GCSE. The A*-C pass rate for maths will drop from its current 63% to maybe 45%.

It's still a suitable qualification for those who get a 4+, so that's at least 63% who it's reasonable for - leaving up to 37% less academically able. If grammar schools take the top 25%, that's calling 75% of the population less academically able. That's what I mean, the difference what a grammar school test denotes as less academically able, and the really not academically able as denoted by not being served well by the new GCSE

"Comps certainly don't have a monopoly of talent and facilities in the creative arts"

Good lord- did someone say they did?

No Bertrand, no-one did, but while I was scaling the best part of a (modest sized) mountain in the mist this afternoon there seemed to be a quarrel about which types of school had better facilities in which subjects. As you rightly said, it's a false division and has nothing to do with school type.

DoctorDonnaNoble Fri 12-Aug-16 16:32:51 If you can't afford a school in the catchment area, you can't choose to go to a school. At least there's a chance with the grammar.

In Bucks it is qualifying score then distance. Have a look at the house prices around Sir William Borlase's Grammar School.

If you can't afford a school in the catchment area, you can't choose to go to a school. At least there's a chance with the grammar.
Bilge
I'm over a mile outside the catchment
4 miles from the school
both my kids got in
as did kids from a mile further out than me

a grammar would have rejected DDs best friend as he is utterly non academic, but was a real asset to the school.
Academic obsessives miss out on so much

There was an interesting discussion with someone knowledgeable about Grammar schools on Radio 4 today sometime this afternoon.

Unfortunately, it seems the children from poor families don't get in much.
(The way many get tutored must make it worst for those who cannot afford that. The programme did not mention that aspect though.)

One problem may be (my opinion) that primary schools are teaching to a lower level than the one required to pass the eleven plus. The programme said though that children from disadvantaged families were years behind those who get into Grammar schools starting almost from birth.

Able children from more advantaged backgrounds do better in grammar schools than they do in comprehensives. But disadvantaged children, who do not get into grammar schools, are worse off in the school they end up in (in a grammar school area) than they would have been in a comprehensive apparently.

In the private sector there are exams, but if someone is not academic enough to pass it for one sort of school they still go to a very good school catering for their ability and they will still be at an advantage.
That point was not in the programme, it is just what I have noticed..

It certainly is not bilge in my county (not all grammars are the same remember). Distance does not come into anything on our entrance exams. And while our catchment areas for our comprehensives are not quite at London levels yet there are certain areas of the town where it has become a huge issue.
The result of parental choice and catchment area? Our current house is significantly more expensive due to being on this side of town. The other side of town's prices are depressed due to the catchment school being the 'worst' school.
The Catholic secondary is now oversubscribed and various church attendance hoops are now in place to get a place there.
There is indeed a chance with the grammar.
This is just my area of course and different schools work in different ways.
This may change as one of the grammars in the county now has a catchment (although I believe it's enforced at the whether you can apply rather than at the post marking stage), this has had a knock on effect of us now having some students whose commutes are shockingly long. At open evening the parents are full of how they will move if their son gets a place. Some never do. Preferring their child to commute instead of themselves.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/08/12/government-to-introduce-20-grammar-schools-in-working-class-area/

This extract (although also from the Telegraph) from an outreach scheme in Birmingham illustrates how the eleven plus fails even the brightest whose parents lack the educational background to help them prepare for it.

^This broad approach persuaded Old Edwardian Wasim Rehman, now a successful financier, to back the outreach scheme.
“Just funding assisted places,” he explains, “is solving the wrong problem. The real challenge is levelling the playing field, for boys from the same background as me, in the 11-plus.” (Birmingham still runs a selective secondary system.)
Rehman’s Pakistani parents, who ran a corner shop in Aston, valued education highly, but didn’t know how to prepare him for the 11-plus, so he failed it and went to a local state school. His good fortune, he says, was to “sneak” into King Edward’s for the sixth form, which led to a maths degree at Cambridge.
“I come from a similar background to these children and know how much your life can be dictated by education,” he says. “If your parents are too busy to guide you, or unfamiliar with the system, there has to be something to ignite educational aspiration. That’s what outreach is about.”^

BTW he does n't say that selective education per se is bad.

Rehman's "state school" must have done at least all right by him for him to be able to get into a grammar school 6th form and to Cambridge.............

One thing that does concern me, more so as there's a shortage of teachers in general at the moment, is subject knowledge. Now my degree is just a 2:1 from Reading so nothing fancy. However, when trainees have done their A level observation with us, I've been repeatedly ask 'how do you know all this stuff?' (contextual information important to understanding the text). I want to reply, 'It's my job to, that's what I spend the holidays doing.'
This isn't a stealth boast. This is basic history necessary to teach a text like Paradise Lost. Some teachers (in all types of school) don't have the subject knowledge or the knowledge to advise on GCSE/ A Level options. In the current recruitment environment, I'm not sure how this is could be addressed. We see people 'pass' their training who probably shouldn't every year.

Well that would be a SM would n't it Bertrand .