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

Our school's numbers mirror the number of pupils on FSM who have achieved L5 in the area

Well there's a thought. Grammar school tests are supposed to identify intelligence and be independent of how well the children have been taught at primary, so that it's not about what they have learned.

Do grammar schools get many middle attainers? Bright kids who have been failed by their non-selective primary, who can be rescued from mediocrity by a grammar education? Or are grammars selecting the same kids that do well at primary on the curriculum tests (involved parents, good teachers etc).

goodbyestranger Perhaps your head now recognizes the CEM tests as being fairer and is more prepared to give it a go?

That's not the reason they gave when they sent the letter out to parents informing them of the preperation sessions and the reason they had made the decision to break the contractual agreement with the selective secondary schools.

noblegiraffe my local selectives certainly seem to allocate places to a fair number of private prep. kids.

Or are grammars selecting the same kids that do well at primary on the curriculum tests (involved parents, good teachers etc).

From my DCs class, the top 5 scores came from the top 5 academic performers in the class.

I think the more unexpected scores were from those children where were middle to lower top group. None scored much higher than expected but certainly a few scored much lower than expected.

So what grammars do is take kids who do well at primary school (non selective, lot of mixed ability teaching) and turn them into kids who do well at GCSE? And people say it's down to the type of education they get at secondary?

Thank you Bertrand ! .

The FSM measure is correct in using a 6 year term for statistics .

You could be a family for instance who gets a £30 a week pay rise and that takes you out of eligibility for FSM. This is one of the dangers of only using a £15000 family income as the deciding criteria in who is prosperous or disadvantaged.

This is why we cannot truly determine the socio- economic mix of a grammar school . We do not know the median income of a said grammar school nor the no of families who are only marginally above the £15000 threshold . One full time working parent on the minimum wage = £15000.

Doctor. I was only diagnosed with Dyslexia/Dyspraxia 6 years ago when i decided that if i was to attempt a degree with the OU i would need 'serious' help via Disabled Students Allowance.

Clearly having issues such as not being to hold a pen correctly, suffering Dyslexia, Irlens syndrome and other issues greater influenced my education at school.

My 'Modern' school did not diagnose anything, though thirty years i doubt anything could have been done to help me anyway.

I would absolutely support the return of grammar schools.

I have 1 DD who is G&T, she is currently left pretty much to her own devices at the local comprehensive.

The stats for this school show that high achieving students don't improve during their time there. The mid level (on entry) students improve a great deal and the low level (on entry) students improve the most. There is little incentive for teachers to push the high achievers because they have little bearing on the percentage of passes at GCSE/A Level. The teachers know they will get those C grades (5/6 in new money I think) without much work so they concentrate on the mid and low level achievers to bring up the grade average.

I would have liked her to have had the choice to sit the exam to go for Grammar School entry but we don't have any nearby. My other DC would benefit more from the comprehensive school as they are mid level achievers and this is what the local school is best at improving.

We live in a deprived area of the country. We have 1 high school (now an academy) which is deemed as 'requires improvement' and has been for years. It has never achieved more than 50% pass rate at GCSE grade A-C. Last year only 4 students, yes that is just 4 students, went to university (none were RG universities) from my DD's school. Only 37 students left that school last year with A Levels. Only 7 of those managed to get Apprenticeships. Is the current comprehensive school system helping these other students? I think not.

Our next closest high school (outstanding) is 8 miles away but currently there's no public transport during school open/close times to that school. The school bus does not pick up from our town. That school is in some ways selective itself. Its in an affluent area and it only takes the most affluent students from the deprived town who can afford to drive their children to school. Those students do considerably better than those students who attend the local high school.

I would love to see some investment in our town and I would love to see a grammar school open. The current school is failing a huge portion of students. Opening grammar schools mainly in deprived areas will definitely improve social mobility. I don't see why it wouldn't.

Deprived towns have low investment, poor housing stock, poor education standards, poor work opportunities. If you open a grammar school and bring up the educational standards then people/businesses will move to the area. They will demand more investment and improved work opportunities and the towns will improve. It wont happen straight away but it will eventually.

I don't think opening a new grammar school in an affluent MC area will be of much benefit but there's dozens of towns cross the UK that are deprived and underinvested and these areas are most in need of better education as they are more likely to have failing schools and low levels of attainment.

I hate to say it but on this subject I agree with Teresa May,

Odins
Would you still like to see a grammar school in your town if
a) the current comprehensive then turned into a secondary modern and your mid-achieving DCs were written off in terms of any academic achievements - no hope of university, no academic qualifications because they are expected to do something technical or handy, not something mid-level in an office? and
b) if the actual children that got in were from surrounding villages and better off areas where the parents had pushed their children through tutoring, but were really also mid-achieving children? So in fact not under it all better achievers than your other DCs, just better tutored?

That just about sums it up, giraffe.

The sad thing is that you can tell in the first week of Reception who's going to pass the 11+ even as a parent helper. I was only wrong a few times. And two of those times were my own children!

(The fact that you have just one high school suggests to me that it would be a secondary modern. They wouldn't open a new grammar school. The school in the other town would be the grammar school and would - I assume - be allowed to have some form of catchment? Unless all the new grammars will take any child from anywhere?)

The sad thing is that you can tell in the first week of Reception who's going to pass the 11+

This. Exactly this.

I think grammar schools should be scrapped. They should all be comprehensives.

The children I know who have got grammar places round here are all:

child of teacher/teachers
or
privately educated
or
privately educated child of teacher and tutored as well.

Opening grammar schools mainly in deprived areas will definitely improve social mobility. I don't see why it wouldn't.

Hear, hear. Particularly deprived seaside towns that have been largely ignored by the money being pumped into regenerating rundown cities.

Done wisely, some new grammar schools planned properly for the right locations can make a massive difference.

Areas already well served by a variety of comps, faith schools, specialist schools, etc., should be left alone, especially in relatively affluent MC areas.

This is where academies can also make a massive difference as they aren't strangled by LEA geographic boundaries. In our case, an impoverished seaside town right on the county border never stood a chance with the LEA because they're more concerned about the city centres and central county schools. Exactly the same happens with other infrastructure as they simply refuse to work in joint ventures with the other county. As I've posted many times, literally a couple of miles across the county border, in a tiny village is a huge academy comp which sends at least 10 school buses from our seaside town across the border - it wouldn't even exist otherwise as the village can barely support a primary school, let alone a large comp!

I honestly don't know that the answer is for the current mess of an education system, but it's not just all about money either. If specific areas would benefit from a grammar, then they should get one. I don't advocate grammars everywhere, nor would I want to see compulsory 11+ testing for all, but a grammar alongside comps to give a better choice is fine by me.

*The children I know who have got grammar places round here are all:

child of teacher/teachers
or
privately educated
or
privately educated child of teacher and tutored as well.*

Just shows the difference between areas. Of the 9 kids who went to our nearest grammar from my son's primary school class, none of the above applies - none were privately educated (they were in a state primary), a couple had mothers who were teaching assistants but none were teachers.

*Opening grammar schools mainly in deprived areas will definitely improve social mobility. I don't see why it wouldn't.

Hear, hear. Particularly deprived seaside towns that have been largely ignored by the money being pumped into regenerating rundown cities.*

Torbay has grammars. What evidence is there that they aid rather than entrench social mobility? Have you looked at how badly the non-selective schools in the Torbay area perform?

badbad But that won't happen. The middle class areas with the active parents will get them, because it's all about "parent choice" for those that can afford to exercise choice.

The class divide between grammar and secondary modern is actually even more startling than I thought it would be. I wish I could share the lists of dd and ds's year 7 classes. The demarcation by first name would have been funny if it hadn't been so depressing..........

Opening grammar schools mainly in deprived areas will definitely improve social mobility. I don't see why it wouldn't.

How do you know that they won't just become failing grammar schools?

OK, I'm going to be brave here and put a proposal for

                                     <strong>HPFA Academy</strong> Yea!!

Rules:

a)Will only exist in areas with a high number of schools so that no-one existing school is adversely affected - catchment area to be set to ensure this. Can also exist in fully selective counties.
b) Admissions at Year 9 and Sixth Form so 14-18 School
3) Admission open to all on entrance test and previous achievement but there will be weighting based on the performance of your existing school, this will be significant. (This will prevent hijacking by children at the better schools and also give an incentive for people to send their child to a struggling school)
4) In addition there will be some discretionary places for children at low achieving schools only based on head's report and pupil's circumstances. These will be on 3-month trial basis to prevent dumping of unwanted pupils by unscrupulous heads.
5) No uniform so that parents don't have expense of two uniforms.
6) Free travel for qualifying low-income pupils.
7) Facilities of school to be deliberately set at average for catchment - shabby paint to be standard. There will be no attempt to look like a private school or have motivational messages everywhere (sorry, personal bugbear)

Now I'd obviously prefer us to stay comprehensive. But I wonder if HPFA Academy could possibly retain this but meet legitimate concerns from people in areas with not a lot of choice of good schools. Hopefully it would eventually make itself redundant. I'm a bit low on details of course but any views on the principle?

drspouse thank you for those ideas. We do already do some of them but a lot has to come from parents as you pointed out.

Sorry., meant Year 10 (DD in 3-year GCSE School so got year wrong)

drspouse

To get into the grammar school you should have to be from the deprived town and attend the local primary schools in that deprived town. So only take students from the primary schools within the towns boundaries(That's not a difficult thing to check)

The more affluent villages already go to the better outstanding schools in the more affluent town 8 miles away. The more affluent people already get a better education because they drive their children miles away to the better schools.

Are you saying my children should not have any hope of improvement in their education prospects because someone who already provides better things for their children may want to cheat the system? Surely the best option is to prevent that from happening in the first place and put in rules/admission criteria such as students will only be taken from xxx primary schools. Not to deny poorer more deprived children of any chance of improving their lives.

All I'm hearing is that middle children can pass the 11 + with tutoring -

That tells me these children are able if pushed

It also tells me that aren't vein gushed at junior school level - otherwise they'd be hitting these targets

So the answer should be to extend the literacy and maths elements and reduce the other subjects - seriously get the basic and the rest should follow

*Peregrina

How do you know that they won't just become failing grammar schools*

How do you know that any school (academies) wont fail?

You wont know anything without trying and for a huge number of parents living in deprived areas they are never given any option to go to outstanding schools their children just go to the nearest local school because its the only one on offer.

Parents who are well educated, earn good money often take it for granted that they can have some influence over their childrens future academically. If their child ends up in a failing school it doesn't matter so much because they are there to help boost their childrens learning and they can even move to a better school catchment if necessary.
I cant, I'm stuck here. I cant leave I have to make the most of what we have available to us and that's pitiful really. A grammar school would give my G&T DD a chance at improving her future educational outcome that she currently would never have. Why is that a bad thing?

Cody King I think you're missing the fact that the grammar pass mark (in fully selective areas) is set to be around 20% of those sitting. If standards rise then either you keep building more and more grammar schools or the pass standard goes higher and more likely to be achieved by those from preps/the tutored etc. There is nothing primary schools can do to stop some parents doing more.

BertrandRussell Wed 10-Aug-16 12:40:18 The sad thing is that you can tell in the first week of Reception who's going to pass the 11+ even as a parent helper.

Interesting, what did you base your predictions on?