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

Did anyone watch the programme about the state secondary system in Birmngham? The difference between the top grammars and some of the secondary moderns was vast. The King Edwards schools full of prep pupils and genteel, the worst of the latter was like a prison yard and even had its own police officer. Felt very sad for the kids who didn't get in, they seemed as bright and sparky as the 'hothoused for grammar' kids and their parents obviously loved them but parental lack of academic aspiration or knowing how to work the system was so obvious.

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?

I don't know what the effect will be, I think it will depend on what the grade boundaries turn out to be. They still haven't confirmed what % of students will even be getting a 9.

hay I don't know a great deal about the admin previous assisted places, so I'm quite prepared to accept it may have been easy to manipulate.

Modern bursaries don't work that way. They are on a sliding scale, based on income and assets and to an extent outgoings, but outgoings that meet criteria. You can't simply say 'but I have chosen to take on a hefty mortgage for a large and valuable home and pay off two top end cars, therefore have little disposable income'. But from what I know they are reasonable about the fact that eg selling your 4 bed detached with little equity and renting a 2 bed down the road from it wouldn't necessarily free up any money. Unless you are below cut off, they expect you to utilise that income for fees. So the mc able dc does have the same chance as the low income dc, i.e a low income lifestyle and school fees paid. Except for the mc child, they are more likely to have had the good primary and the parental support to rank high enough to get a bursary, and that drop in lifestyle is only temporary. It's just that many mc parents don't want to sacrifice the lifestyle, or use that money to buy into a better catchment so they are left with a tangible asset.

From everything I've heard they are very strictly monitored, full evidence of everything is required, and while they don't expect you to live in rags, your lifestyle and home is meant to be in line with your declared income and assets. Which is incredibly easy with the Internet. It isn't like tax evasion, where the se parent can simply hope ir don't notice their lifestyle isn't in line with income. The schools would.

Again though, that applies to the decent schools, I couldn't speak for Hicksville select seminary and say they wouldn't turn a blind eye to a few porkies. However generally speaking it is only the better schools that offer bursaries, and certainly in the case of large multiple bursaries, it's generally only the larger well known ones.

BertrandRussell Sat 13-Aug-16 09:33:32
Would some of the pro grammar people be prepared to answer some questions?
Would more grammar schools make things better or worse for a) disadvantaged children of high ability?

If disadvantaged children of high ability got a chance of getting in in the first place without tutoring by means of:
a. a different sort of test;
or
b. the primary school teaching to an adequate level;
or
c. no test but aptitude and willingness;
and,
d. if there were further chances to go to a grammar school - for late developers -

If this were the case, I do believe, Bertrand, that disadvantaged children of high ability would gain and they would get the chance to go to top Universities. It is like poor children getting the chance to go to a good university, but this is one for children. They get into an atmosphere where there are high expectations, which they believe they can meet, and they get some sort of social permission to work hard, aim high and so on.

A lot of people after the war became upwardly mobile because of grammar schools.

But, what was wrong seemed to be that the secondary moderns were too bad; there were very few of the skilled technical schools there were supposed to be as an alternative; worst of all children felt a failure if they did not get in. It is that last which is just so awful. (I read of a tragic case in a historic child sexual abuse case, of a little boy who never said anything about what had happened to him because he assumed he was being punished for having failed his 11 Plus! That just shows how awful the effect of failure can be.)

Also, in some areas there were not enough places even for those who did pass the exam.

No second chances; and the tests missing out creatives whose ability is extremely high but through different mental approaches were also shortcomings.

In the private sector though children seem to be steered more to entrance exams for schools that will suit them, they seem to take them more in their stride, and they do well in the less academic schools too.

None the less if the exam gives a sense of failure to eleven year olds that is a very heavy price to pay.

In the Times today it there is an article saying Teresa May wants the schools to be in deprived areas with the majority of children having free school meals. The safe guard in my opinion should be just as many resources being put into the schools in those areas which the remaining children go to and second chances for people to transfer into the grammar school.

In some rich areas the comprehensives have parents pouring their money into high quality housing instead of school fees, while some parents with less money and a higher mortgage for a worse house, scrimp to pay school fees for private day schools which are like grammar schools were. Where I am, these schools have some bursaries generally with a cut off point of a family income of 50,000 and pay all fees for a family income of 26,000. This is in a top school charging about 12,000 per annum.

A lot of these city schools used to be direct grant schools and able children from poorer incomes did used to get to them somehow. Sadly the bursaries cannot cover what the direct grants used to and they have many more able applicants than they have means for the bursaries.

Social disadvantage starts from birth, even from lack of food, books language, settled homes and sometimes lack of aspirations or social confidence. There is a O Plus hidden exam happening. I can't pretend to know the answer.

Modern bursaries don't work that way.

Yes, but it is very time consuming for private schools to analyse and the criteria used by different private schools vary considerably. Each case is looked at individually and schools deal with a relatively small number of applications.

(BTW it is clear that most bursaries do support low income rather than middle income families. Cutoffs for bursaries are around 60k gross income for private day schools outside London, i.e. a net income of 40k. People could pay one set of fees out of 40k, but paying two would surely be virtually impossible.)

For assisted places, a national scheme, one would need a fairly simple set of rules and one have to be able to deal with far more applications. Simple rules can typically be manipulated more easily.

Private schools here were very fair with bursaries when I last knew about them because they also took into account equity in housing when assessing income. I do not know if that is always the case.

The schools I know are very fair also (because they do look in detail at the family circumstances) but the bursary pots are limited and they are targeted at the lowest income/equity families. I'm sure there would be a big group of families around where I live on incomes of 50-70k, with equities in modest houses, who simply would not be offered enough money to send more than one child to private school. (I'm not complaining about this: with limited resources one should target it where it will do the most good and I think private schools do try to do this.)

hay private schools have loads of applications now, far far more in number than they have bursaries for, so they are not a small number to look through at present, and many are actively trying to increase their bursary pots anyway so I can't think of any reason why they would object to administering what would essentially be a larger bursary pot.

I'm not aware that any school would expect you to pay two sets of fees from 40k. The first child would be entitled to a bursary, and the parents contribution to the fees would be classed as an acceptable outgoing when considering the second child.

They aren't skewed towards low income though. Bursaries simply aim to provide assistance when the parents can't afford the fees no matter how much of a priority it is. Rather than assistance when parents can afford all or some of the fees, but have other priorities. If family one can live on a low income with one child at private, it is entirely fair to expect family two to do the same, regardless of the starting incomes before what is essentially charity funding.

I'm not aware that any school would expect you to pay two sets of fees from 40k. The first child would be entitled to a bursary, and the parents contribution to the fees would be classed as an acceptable outgoing when considering the second child.

This is not the way the schools around me (and my DC's school) do it. Families with incomes over a certain threshold do not get assistance for DC1 or for subsequent DC.

I also asked this question at a top private school (with a more generous bursary policy) and was told that DC1 fees would be taken into account if asking for a bursary for DC2 but that it would not be a full subtraction (i.e. they don't take net income minus DC1 fees).

I dropped out of this thread as I realised I was just repeating myself but KindDog's excellent post set me thinking. What if in 1945 the govt had announced that they were setting up a secondary education system where all children would follow a core curriculum of academic and vocational subjects (much like today) in Standard schools BUT some of these schools would be designated "School Plus" where lessons would generally be at a faster pace and some extra subjects would be taught. They could have had an exam at 11 but made clear that pupils could switch between standard school and Plus school as their talents developed. Where schools were close together you might even have had a situation where Standard students with a talent in one subject attended extra classes in that subject at a Plus school.

Instead the government treated children as if they were separate species, the "able" grammar school child who got all Oxbridge and the mortar boards and caps and all the other public school bollocks and the "less able" who got scruffy buildings, completely different curriculum and told they were destined for the production line. And it's only a very small step from here to seeing the former as the better and more deserving one.

I think that legacy's still with us, there's a sort of magic around the idea of "Grammar School" which seems to be quite separate from it simply being a school where lessons can go at a faster pace. And that's a direct result of them being set up as some sort of pseudo public school for the lucky few.

hay yes, there is a cut off here too. None as low as 40k though. And I did a fair bit of looking into them at various schools that aren't remotely local, to get more idea of how they work in general. The cut off varied depending on the fees, and to an extent the area.

I didn't investigate much into siblings, only what I came across in passing. So I have no idea what the standard is for siblings at different independents. But at Dd's I know they make allowances for the older siblings fees at the same school, and as hers operates the rest of the bursary policy in line with others who are well known and wealthy enough to have large pots, I assumed they all did.

Only the very rich think you can move to get into the catchment of a better school.
Those who are renting or in jobs as against careers do not have the option.
I bought my house for under £100k ~ its currently "worth" several times that.
To buy a house over the catchment boundary would cost me double again - which is utterly impossible
That is why 500 kids a day cross the catchment boundary to the two schools up the road.

Spend the money making all schools better, not setting them against each other

Spend the money making all schools better, not setting them against each other

Hard to think how this could be said better.

Spend the money making all schools better, not setting them against each other

Duh! I bet nobody ever thought of that! Just make them ALL better!

Obviously it's not that easy. All the money in the world probably wouldn't turn the beautifully monikered 'Yob Central' into a 'good' school. It would be well resourced but still be full of disenfranchised DC with parents disinterested in education, and possibly work for that matter.

James Naughtie presented a programme a couple of years ago looking into schools that had turned around and it appeared that glossy new buildings and science labs weren't enough. The driving factor was a 'superhead'. A charismatic and driven leader that could shake up the culture of the school and drag everyone else, staff and students up with them. But when they moved on things slid again. They were a short term solution. It's a very rare school that can overcome the home environment.

Let's make all schools 'better' is a platitude in line with let's fight for world peace.

You can't make real inroads without a consensus of what 'better' looks like.

As we see from this thread when it comes to the most able there is a huge gap between what parents and pupils want and what schools and teachers think is important.

Whilst that gap yawns you will see an increasing push for grammar schools.

And whilst money might bridge some of that gap, it really is not the whole picture. Much of this is about ideology and priority.

Spend the money making all schools better, not setting them against each other

Hard to think how anyone could write anything so naive. Except possibly late on a Saturday night.

Wellywife yes absolutely. I said that the leadership was the key way up the first thread, it's blindingly obvious. Also that there is a massive death of really talented heads prepared to take on headship. Of course what would also help would be all those vociferous anti grammar school campaigners actually going to their local school instead of driving past it, and not being allowed to say no.

dearth not death....

Research shows that parachuting in a superhead to turn around a school is not good for failing schools. Superheads tend to use similar quick fix methods like kicking out a bunch of disruptive kids (where to, and what impact on society/other schools?) and changing qualifications taken to those which game the league tables.

The research shows that it is possible to make steady improvements which over time are better than the quick fix and subsequent slide of a superhead. They involve devolving leadership, empowering teachers, changing school culture and positive behaviour management.

I think mixing the cohort is also a good way to improve. One good school on the other side of the nearest town was apparently known for being awful during the 90's. The cohort was mainly comprised of kids from an estate where the traditional source of employment had gone, but without a car no means of working elsewhere, and overflow from an estate in another town, which according to locals was v rough. And always having spaces got the majority of kids who were expelled from elsewhere in the LA.

However, due to new housing and therefore increased public transport, property prices making old farm worker cottages mc homes, rather than a village with f.a, increased mixed population, the fact heads can no longer dump problem dc elsewhere as easily etc, the cohort is now very mixed, and the school v good. It's not particularly amazing results wise, but for pupils it is.

I think this proves that it is not just Wellington schoo(non grammar schools)

Altrincham College of Arts
Type of school Academy Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 163 English 59% Maths 61% 5+ A-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 55% English Baccalaureate 14% A-C in English and maths GCSEs 55%

Altrincham Grammar School for Boys

Type of school Academy 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 172 	English 92% 	Maths 99% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 99% 	English Baccalaureate 58% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 99%

Altrincham Grammar School for Girls

Type of school Academy 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 174 	English 100% 	Maths 98% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 100% 	English Baccalaureate 97% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 100%

Ashton-on-Mersey School

Type of school Academy 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 256 	English 69% 	Maths 71% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 61% 	English Baccalaureate 24% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 62%

Blessed Thomas Holford Catholic College

Type of school Maintained School 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 178 	English 82% 	Maths 66% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 59% 	English Baccalaureate 15% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 59%

Flixton Girls School

Type of school Academy 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 169 	English 87% 	Maths 77% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 74% 	English Baccalaureate 12% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 75%

Sale Grammar School

Type of school Academy 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 178 	English 85% 	Maths 95% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 94% 	English Baccalaureate 74% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 94%

Sale High School

Type of school Maintained School 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 136 	English 64% 	Maths 64% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 52% 	English Baccalaureate 13% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 52%

Stretford High School

Type of school Maintained School 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 157 	English 57% 	Maths 39% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 34% 	English Baccalaureate 4% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 37%

Urmston Grammar Academy

Type of school Academy 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 128 	English 92% 	Maths 91% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 98% 	English Baccalaureate 61% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 98%

Wellacre Technology Academy

Type of school Academy 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 155 	English 74% 	Maths 56% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 54% 	English Baccalaureate 15% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 57%

Wellington School

Type of school Academy 	Number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 234 	English 83% 	Maths 74% 	5+ A<strong>-C GCSEs or equivalent inc English & maths GCSEs 76% 	English Baccalaureate 47% 	A</strong>-C in English and maths GCSEs 77%

With the exception of Stretford High School which probably takes pupils from some of the most deprived areas in the country , every other school in Trafford achieves over 50% at GCSE. This is despite being a grammar school area where (40%) are grammar school educated.

The grammar school (model) clearly works in Trafford .

With the exception of Stretford High School which probably takes pupils from some of the most deprived areas in the country ,

So the Grammar school model is not working for this particular group. If it was so wonderful, it should be providing a leg up for this group.

Theresa May's stated aim was to do something for those who are underachieving, particularly white working class boys. She didn't specify those working class boys who can be considered academic.

However, it's a soundbite said on the steps entering No 10, and can probably be safely ignored.

What will happen is that a proposal to re-introduce Grammar Schools will be made at the next Tory Conference. It will go down a storm with financially stretched voters in the south-east who are being priced out of their little independent schools. Some of the little independent schools may well ask to go into the state system as they become less viable.

And working class boys - conveniently forgotten.

Far from being only a right wing 'Conservative aimw.libdemvoice.org/schools-members-survey-38038.html'

www.libdemvoice.org/schools-members-survey-38038.html

So if 43% of Liberal Democrat members are either pro or ambivelent to grammar schools expanding/exisiting that is surely good news for Theresa May.