Grammar Schools (given green light by Theresa May part 3)

[sandyholme]

Part 3 ... Let the sparring continue..

Who are these posters who approve of selection by income?

I have not heard anyone give a solution to how a size limited city comprehensive, that just doesn't have many high ability pupils, can run classes for them that gives an education equal to their level?.

Well, I and some others have suggested that schools could band together to offer advanced classes in certain subjects. Obviously more of a model for urban areas. Why can't video conferencing be used?

It will be five years before I know if we have made the right choice for my son. As parents it was our choice though he seems mainly fine with it.
However, if things go very wrong [which we have no reason to believe should happen] we will take action and reassess his position/ look to spaces at other comprehensive schools.
We are in an area where there are a number of secondaries a bike ride/ public bus ride away. Things don't have to be set in stone...

Hi Pondering you may be encouraged to know that a school in Oxford which used to be one to avoid has just got its first Oxbridge students and doubled its percentage of As and A* at a A-Level. 3 Year 11s gained A-stars in A-Level creative writing

www.oxfordspiresacademy.org/

I expect seven years ago these pupils' parents were told they were mad to send them to this school.....

"Why do so many posters passively accept selection by income but selection by ability is morally repugnant"

Name and shame!

Just got back !

There is nothing wrong with 'Mascalls school, it is a perfectly adequate Comprehensive school with 51% GCSE and 5% AAB A level !

Anyway i thought the pro comprehensive lobby who want to 'draw ' lots for which schools children go to and every single school to achieve 51% GCSE ( in a North Korean way).

Want every single school to achieve 51% GCSE !

pondering I don't think results alone make a bad school. It's so much more than that. The stats for Dd's primary make it appear 'bad' but in reality it was great for all pupils. Unlike one of the outstanding, high achieving leafy ones, where any dc not in the majority group don't benefit.

Clavinova that's the plan at the moment but I'll be honest and say we've a lot of discussions to still have. I've just checked last year's results and I see the school was in the bottom ten across Scotland (that's 10 by number, not 10th percentile) but I still have a good feeling about the school and the recent measures that have been put in place. The school in the catchment neighbouring our isn't oversubscribed but usually has above average results so our catchment school has to compete against this as it's an easy option in our area for kids (of all incomes) to go there.

Why do so many posters passively accept selection by income but selection by ability is morally repugnant. Isn't that rich privilege asserting itself?

My issue is that the grammar system isn't selecting by ability nowadays, it's further enhancing selection by income overall to the detriment of those already advantaged. That's why grammar kids are far more likely to have been at private school previously (like my friend's neighbour in Kent who is fretting about whether she has made the right school choice as it's not just a prep school and doesn't really want to lose the fees when kids head to grammar) and are far less likely to be on FSM.

Selecting by ability is proper setting in schools where children can be moved between appropriately taught groups as their progress dictates. Plus without the further blows to confidence from a sense of "failure" that is often the root of underperformance. Placing the latter at the heart of a modem school system is not going to help the UK's global educational ranking.

In rolling out more grammars, what do you call the other schools in the area? They may not be "secondary modern" by name but if a section of children have been stripped out then they aren't "comprehensive". As 75% or so of children will be going to them (and it's the kids who end up with no qualifications at all that represent the real problem in the system) this is where the majority of the attention should be focused I think - not "should we roll out more grammars" but "should we roll out more secondary moderns" because they are the schools that most of the children will be attending.

Want every single school to achieve 51% GCSE

It's currently 53.8% 5 inc English and maths, so that would be a reduction.

Why do so many posters passively accept selection by income but selection by ability is morally repugnant?

I guess paying £400 - £800 per year to bus one child to a better performing school out of catchment is selection by income - how does a family on a low income pay for one child let alone two or three?

Mascall's does look like a decent school. Middle achieving children get an average GCSE score of 305.4, comfortably above the Kent average of 282.

At first glance though I'm not sure whether it is a true comprehensive High Achievers (18% of the cohort) gain an average of 362 where the Kent average is 382 (Kent grammar average for HAs is 400 and for those in the other Kent schools 334, the 382 takes into account 75% of HAs being in the grammars. This is from memory by the way, I haven't got my spreadsheet with me here) so either the school is achieving poorly for those High Achievers or it only takes the lower end of that range in which case it is surely a secondary modern.

I don't know Paddock Wood at all, if it is a middle-class area 18% is quite a low percentage , normally you'd expect about 30%.

Want every school to achieve 53.8% GCSE then !

Surely proponents of the 'Comprehensive' system should have no problem in moving area to a genuine non selective school .

Therefore school's such as the 'Oasis Academy ' which educate the full ability range of children on the Isle of Sheppey should be applauded for their non selective approach

Don't talk rubbish, sandyholme.

So only just over half of our pupils manage 5 GCSEs at grades A* to C.

That is really quite shit.

No wonder we're only ranked 20th in the world.

Considering that the vast majority of our pupils are educated within the comptehensive system, WTF are our comprehensives playing at

My DC are in comp's so I am not arguing for grammars to benefit myself.

HPFA interesting article by the former St Paul's head but I see no politician proposing a radical revolution in teaching practice, £££ & strikes jump to mind when change is proposed!

Your suggestions are valid, have mentioned them to school in past but cost, timetabling, logistics, hassle, culture and more, all mean it never happens.

noblegiraffe the passive acceptance of selection is done by all those posters who say "lets just make comps so good grammars won't be needed". Nice idea but that means the status quo, and schools that you can only get into if you can afford a million pound house.

Genuine question: If the grammar system isn't selecting by ability anymore, is it not possible for experts to design a process that can test by ability that is almost tutor proof?

In rolling out more grammars, what do you call the other schools in the area? If you only allowed one grammar school per city/area (maybe criteria for above average FSM or PP) and banned private schooled children from getting in, the rest of the schools in the city would still be 99% comprehensive.

over half of our pupils manage 5 GCSEs at grades A* to C.

You know exam boards aren't allowed to increase that figure by any large amount when setting grade boundaries for exams, so GCSE results can't increase at the rate that KS2 results are increasing?
If results go up, people cry grade inflation, if they don't go up, people say that schools are shit.

Paddock Wood and that little part of Kent don't administer the 11+ !
This means that if any of the children want to enter the grammar schools of Tonbridge/Tunbridge they do so as out of catchment children.

The odds of attaining a place are therefore the same terms as children from Sussex, therefore Mascalls is a 'true' comprehensive school.

There are a few Isle of Sheppey children who cross the ' Bosphorus' each day to Highsted and Queen Elizabeth's but the logistics mean the vast majority stay on the island !.

The result is Sheppey is a ' Comprehensive' area !

is it not possible for experts to design a process that can test by ability that is almost tutor proof?

Ability in what?
Maybe we could have sports schools for elite athletes that selects its intake on the basis of a hundred yard dash?

is it not possible for experts to design a process that can test by ability that is almost tutor proof?

I rather think that's the Holy Grail. I don't think any amount of tutoring could work for a child who really is incapable of getting to that standard. I suspect it could make a lot of difference on the borderline though.

I do feel that there are some for whom only grammars would do. In Wallingford School near me last year High Achievers got a score of 422 in their GCSEs, which is slightly above the Bucks grammar average of 418. Yet I still hear of parents tutoring their kids from Year 4 to try and push them into Kendrick (super-selective GS) in Reading. If your child is really such an outlier that they need Kendrick over Wallingford why do they need years of tutoring to get in?

In rolling out more grammars, what do you call the other schools in the area? If you only allowed one grammar school per city/area (maybe criteria for above average FSM or PP) and banned private schooled children from getting in, the rest of the schools in the city would still be 99% comprehensive.

What would be the point in operating a school for such a tiny percentage of children?

Mathsmum do you think your DCs aren't being stretched at their school? If so, what do you think needs to change? Am curious because my DB and I went to a perfectly "ordinary" comp. He's a prof in a STEM subject at an RG university with an Oxbridge PhD but he seemed suitably stretched at school. Do you think there are a lot of children operating on what would have been his level who aren't being stretched?

This data from Education Datalab may be of interest

educationdatalab.org.uk/2016/08/grammar-schools-contaminate-comprehensive-schooling-areas/

Even I as a stalwart anti-selection believer rather blanched at the use of the word "contaminate" in the headline so apologies for this, their words not mine.

In answer to MaQueen at 11.42.
Comprehensives improving their scores is the only way to get up the rankings because it is the 75% not in the grammar schools that will make the difference. However the comprehensives in places with no grammar schools already have the equivalent in top sets doing just as well as the ones in grammar schools.

My children didn't go to one of the top 5 in the country. They went to the local one- their primary school was a feeder school. We were in the catchment area. It could never be at the top of the league table because it had a very mixed entry - mixed socially and mixed ability wise.

Eddie Re stretching of more able children: there aren't any current figures for the proportion of lessons that are set these days, but for 2008-2009 Ofsted says that only 4 in 10 of the lessons they observed in secondary schools were set. While I imagine those numbers have increased, the problem still exists. My daughter's comprehensive doesn't set for anything but maths, even in GCSE years. They are the only secondary school in our town, so have a captive audience. And there still seem to be a fair number of teachers who favour mixed ability teaching because they believe it's better for the less able.

Good link HPFA.