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

The 'gorilla in the room' for this sort of debate is that MC 'well supported' Caucasian DCs are in an increasing minority of some well known urban superselectives. Are they 'disadvantaged'?

Opening the odd grammar school in areas of crappy comps is the Willy Wonka Golden Ticket of school systems for the odd disadvantaged pupil, when we should be focusing on good schools for all.

I think you'll find that Rehman went to the independent King Edward's for sixth form, hence the reference to funding places. Although the outreach initiatives are Birmingham wide so I suppose it's not wildly relevant.

People on this thread are doggedly dismissing the aspects of the outreach initiatives which go beyond prioritizing pupil premium children and even the latter has been faintly derided by one poster who said you couldn't tell if those kids 'were still disadvantaged'!!!!

The evidence shows that disadvantaged children do disproportionately well in selective schools but less well in non selective schools, so yes, I do think disadvantaged but able children will benefit from an expansion of places coupled with strong access initiatives.

I certainly don't buy the 'outliers' argument at all. It's far too narrow. Incidentally I for one am talking about grammars when I say super selectives. Super selectives are just that.

There is huge support for grammar schools in the country!

And is there similarly huge support for secondary moderns? Do you think the strong support would persist once people realise their own children will be attending secondary moderns?

The other way and of course the most simple and logical way would be to reintroduce the assisted places scheme but on a larger scale.

I wondered whether somebody would raise this idea, since assisted places were removed at the same time that the ban on grammar schools was introduced. Assisted places helped mostly middle class children on middle incomes and helped prop up relatively poor state schools. Many of the children on assisted places were also not particularly high ability (although in my own selective private school the very top "Oxbridge" sets were full of assisted place pupils.)

I wonder how much support there would be for re-introducing this scheme. Also, financially, I'm not sure how it could even work now that private schools are so much higher in real terms than they were pre 1998. My DC's school costs £15k per year and a place in the local state secondaries is funded at around £5k per year. It would be utterly unfair for the assisted place to contribute more than £5k for a child to attend the private school, but this leaves a shortfall of £10k per year to be paid by parents/school bursaries.

People on this thread are doggedly dismissing the aspects of the outreach initiatives

Because the FSM figures show them to be inadequate?

noble it's far too early to produce figures. You can't use historical figures to judge current initiatives.

Good schools for all is not possible !.

It maybe a 'golden ticket' or a chance like buying a lottery ticket, however even a 1 in 5 chance is better odds than many children have now.

Presumably allowing existing grammars to expand, and new ones to open, will be a vote winner, both with the traditional tory voting older demographic and young families.

noble do you think the new 9 grade will make any difference to able dc who aren't at schools that currently try to stretch the most able?

Not that I have done any research into it, but I have a suspicion that schools who aren't bothered will just make the excuse none/ only one of the cohort were able enough, and get away with it due to the fact that in some schools, despite providing well for able dc, it will be true. I could see it being positive at schools that currently have teachers who personally try, but without the support of the slt, having some more leeway to offer more.

Very few if any middle classes can afford private now. By affluent you must mean stinking rich.

I don't think is a very helpful characterisation of those who attend private schools: about 7% of children, rising to a higher percentage of sixth formers.

If you have one child and low accommodation costs, private school can still be affordable on relatively modest incomes e.g. 2 x teacher salaries. One of my DC's friends is in this situation: parents had one child in their late 30s, had paid off mortgage on small 2 bed house by the time she started secondary. Most people would not call an income of 2 x teacher salaries "stinking rich".

I have a student who attended a private school for sixth form because the local school did not offer further maths. He had a bursary and his parents remortgaged their 100k house to pay their part of the fees. Again not "stinking rich".

I would think that the majority of parents of private school children are in the top 20% of incomes nationally, but there are a significant number of children from backgrounds such as my two examples above: modest incomes, family makes sacrifices to pay fees because of issues with local schools. There are also many families who have good incomes but are not "stinking rich" and who don't take any holidays, drive old cars etc to pay the fees.

haybott the earlier direct grant scheme was a bit more interesting than the assisted places scheme and most certainly didn't, in my experience in a London school, mostly go to middle class DC. You were awarded a place if you came in the very top tranche of the education authority's 11+ tests. So you didn't have to be entered for an independent school's entrance tests in the same way, it was part of the 11+ package.

"MN used to be rabidly pro grammar schools, too (Old Gimmer Emoticon)"

It still is.

You were awarded a place if you came in the very top tranche of the education authority's 11+ tests.

But this was in the days pre-tutoring, and when all children (presumably) took the test. So we would be back to the question of whether one could set up an untutorable test.

This still leaves the issue of private school fees (particularly in London) being much higher than state school fees. Would it ever be acceptable for the state to pay much more for a pupil to attend a private school than it would pay for them in the state sector? And if not how is the gap between 5k and 15k to be paid?

They remortgaged a 100k house to extract the 6k or 8k they needed to pay the fees for two years. The point being that having a mortgaged 100k house is not stinky rich.

Remortgaging for fees is a risky loan which I doubt many banks would be queuing up to provide.

Why? If I have 60% equity in a house on a 15 year mortgage term, why would a bank refuse me taking out 10% equity in the house and extending my mortgage term to 18 or 20 years, provided that I have the income to do so? It's pretty much irrelevant to the bank what I want to do with that 10% equity, provided that I can pay back the loan.

I can see an argument for assisted places at independent, with the cost difference made up with bursaries.

If you take the example of the 15k private but 5k state, the assisted place would provide 5k towards the fees and the bursary the rest. Of course the child would still need to do well enough to obtain the bursary, however the odds would be better, as the bursary pot would go further.

It would only benefit the lower income dc, rather than the mc children, because they wouldn't qualify for the means tested bursary to top up the fees, or the assisted place 5k of funding, which would also need to be means tested on the same levels as bursaries are.

You'd just need to limit it to the decent privates where bursaries are administered correctly.

Yes haybott, absolutely: the fact that no-one tutored for the test was critical, although the same arguments put forward now about well supported middle class children would still hold good. The tests themselves weren't different, merely the lack of tutoring industry around them.

I suspect many would prefer to be able to afford the higher payments needed to live near an Outstanding comp.

But in my example above the parents would have needed 250k+ to get a 2 bed house to be in the catchment of a decent school. I'm sure they would have loved to do this but they couldn't afford anything like that, so they instead extended the term of their mortgage on a 100k house and got a bursary at the private school.

If you take the example of the 15k private but 5k state, the assisted place would provide 5k towards the fees and the bursary the rest.

But then, roughly speaking, this means that you offer about 50% more bursaries because of assisted places, which is not helping that many pupils. To offer more bursaries you would have to put up the fees but that is traded off against losing pupils whose families can no longer afford to pay or are not willing to pay. Certainly if the fees at my DC's school moved to 20k I would move them to state schools.

noble as pointed out, it's a bit too early to dismiss all the outreach.

But it any event I don't think you can use FSM as the only measure.

There is not children on FSM and then achingly middle class DC whose patents can afford tutoring etc. There are huge swathes of ordinary folk from traditional working class communities who are not poor enough to get FSM but are certainly far from comfortable. Families with no history of education past 16.

These families may not dance around waving rah-rah skirts for the stats but increasing their numbers in selective schools, in the top bracket of high grade achievers, on the most selective courses at university level is a huge deal.

hay I agree that 50% more isn't enough, and increasing the fee's to provide enough places wouldn't work either, and for the dc that get them are amazing. But it wouldn't do any harm either. Of course it would also need to go alongside other improvements, rather than being a full solution.

To be eligible for the 5k the school would also need to shew they are doing outreach to encourage applications for dc with parents who otherwise wouldn't apply.

No government would allow it though. You only need to look at a few threads on here to realise many of the middleclasses already resent the bursary scheme, because they don't see why they shouldn't be able to keep their current lifestyle ^and* have a free place at private. Allowing low income able dc to have a better education than nice mc dc can have, at least better than they can have without financial sacrifice, would lose votes. Cos essentially, the majority don't give a stuff about the unfairness of education unless their kids are no longer the favoured group.

Very able children come from all parts of society. If the main aim of assisted places is to support very able children better, why would it be reasonable to help low income very able dc to get a good education, while not helping middle income very able dc to do the same? Yet at the end of the assisted places scheme in the late 90s it was certainly already the case that many middle income families could not afford to pay full fees (but received no help from the scheme). I came from such a family and could not have attended the school I went to without a scholarship.

I remember as a child being aware of a lot of resentment amongst private school parents about the assisted place scheme. The main gripe was about self-employment: there were a number of children in my school whose parents were self-employed and declared a low enough income to get an assisted place. Some of these had holiday homes abroad, drove fancy (company) cars and generally seemed much better off than their declared income implied. My friends on assisted places for sure had far nicer homes/cars/holidays than I ever did.

So, while I wouldn't object to the type of direct grant support goodbyestanger describes, I would not be supportive of a revival of the assisted place scheme unless they design it to work better than it did in the 80s and 90s.

I just googled how Germany is getting on since its school system was condemned by the UN for perpetuating social inequality. This article suggests it has turned things around, improved its Pisa showing. How?

'Several measures were taken to relax the system. These reforms included delaying the age when children are assigned to different secondary schools, combining Realschulen and Hauptschule, and introducing more comprehensive schools. “These measures have broken down the segregation between children set on academic paths and those on a vocational path. It has allowed children more flexibility in their learning and taken away a lot of stigma'

www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/nov/25/what-can-we-learn-from-the-great-german-school-turnaround

I think hanging around waiting to see the results of outreach programmes is just seeing if a sticking plaster makes much difference to a gaping wound.