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

[sandyholme]

Part 3 ... Let the sparring continue..

The system would be two fold the top 25% would be selected via exam for the grammar schools. This would leave another 15% of spaces available for parents who believe their child worth of a grammar school education by appealing 5% would be admitted this way. The remaining 10% of grammar spaces would be available to parents via a £3000 a year surcharge !

The remaining 60% would be selected to technical or trade schools via their aptitude in understanding electronics , retail, and other vocational skills such as wearing the correct clothes to a job interview.

This radical new approach to education would obviously prove controversial with the teaching unions. However i am sure they could be won over and persuaded to teach in the grammar schools I.E drop their doubts with a £100K a year tax free salary !

I don’t deny that in a small sense I used my small privilege position to secure places for my dcs in a good comp (not a top comp). The alternatives are to baptise my kids and drag the whole family to church every week or pay a fortune to tutoring specifically for 11+. My dcs know many children have to live in an area and go to a school with lower reputation not by choice but family circumstances. We know we are more fortunate than many. I agree it shouldn't be like that.
Whatever we (parents) didn’t set up the state Ed system we only play along with it and try to get the best out of the system in our power. I don’t wish to gamble my children’s education on 11+ if I can avoid it as no way I can afford private education.
Those who are pro 11+ what would you do if your super bright dc didn’t pass the test on the actual day? Just accept to go to a forever RI school? Like all exams we predict our grades prior to exams but we cannot really know the outcomes until the result day. There are always some people did unexpectedly better or worse.

If it happened to me I would spend every evening trying to overcome that obstacle. But what about us as a country, why do gifted children get ignored as a matter of course?

Sandholm, your views are getting more and more selective and divisive.
You really do want to have decisions made about children re vocational vs academic far too young.
The remaining 60% would be selected to technical or trade schools via their aptitude in understanding electronics , retail, and other vocational skills such as wearing the correct clothes to a job interview.
I would have failed the 11 plus due to my maths yet was academic in other areas. Your system would steer children like me away from their interests just because you need to label and segregate.

That is precisely why any parent plays the system littlelate. My friend had a poor comprehensive as the local school, she asked around, found that there were some children who did well but it was hard for them. She then looked further away, got her into a different one and her DD is now a vet without it being a struggle to learn because of bad behaviour.

We don't choose the education system so we have to look at the options and make sure we get the best. 11+ is like gambling because if the child fails on the day (against all expectations) what are they going to do?

I know so many who failed when they shouldn't have done - moved schools a lot, mother just died, good at one subject but not another, missed a lot through being in hospital a lot etc etc - or just a child who goes to pieces in an exam.

Gifted children get ignored for the same reason that a lot of other needs get ignored - lack of money and resources.

I think that education has to be the best for everyone. You can't take 10/11yr olds and say 'you 20% are our best and we must put all our money into your bright futures*. Basically you are taking the ones with the best start in terms of parents who care, love and nurture them and carrying on from the parent. The child of the drug addict, who has a chaotic home life and is unlikely to have the routine of a meal every night, let alone a bedtime story, is going to be way behind by 4 yrs - I don't think this should be compounded by the state thinking them not worth spending the money on or that they can then glow in the fact that the child who had clean clothes, regular meals, books etc has done extremely well and had a positive effect on the country. It is the luck of birth (although I was told on the last thread that some children are doomed and if you swapped at birth the genes would out!)
I can't even bring myself to reply to your idea sandyholme - basically you are choosing a child at 10yrs depending on home life and/or attitude of parents.

No one seems able to come out and mention the real reason we need grammar schools (except BertrandRussell- and just touched on by Lurked)
BEHAVIOUR.
I think it would be easier to draw teeth than have someone come out and say that my sons can't be educated in the same school because the top sets must have the good behaviour, and taken away from children with poor behaviour. If you are in a lower set it is just a hazard that you have to put up with.

Behaviour in schools is the big issue that needs to be addressed. Teachers leave mainly because of workload, but the second reason is poor behaviour.

It is getting worse. Children are coming into school when they are not toilet trained and they can't follow instructions or hold conversations because no one has talked to them, read to them etc. They can't listen.
If children fall behind they do what children do, and that is not think I must consentrate harder in class! They hide the fact they can't do the work by being the class clown, disrupting others, having a tantrum- they get further behind and the situation gets worse.
By teenage years they are really not coping and don't want to be there and yet the system moves on relentlessly with a disengaged 15 yr old supposed to be sitting in a geography lesson when he doesn't have a good enough reading level to support the vocabulary.

This is why people want the top 20% removed. This is why we play the system to find a comprehensive school without behavioural problems.
Those in grammar schools and good comprehensives know that you can absorb a few poorly behaved children and they will be pulled up by the majority. If you have a school with the majority having behavioural problems the staff's main job is social work and not teaching. Just supplying breakfast can make a difference to a morning lesson.

There are 2 ways out

1. A grammar school
2. Living in an area with a good comprehensive.

1 Can be done without money, but is skewed in favour of those with it, and so is seen as fairer than 2.

On the whole, if you wanted Sandy's method if selection, you need not wait until 10/11yrs - you could do it at 3 yrs.

Behaviour in schools is the problem - what to do about it is the difficulty.
I don't like the option of saying it is too difficult so we must just lift 20/25% out and then the whole country will benefit in the rosy glow of us doing better in international league tables.

Seriously my two previous posts were only half joking !

A comment made by Frank Field rather sums things up when he said most of his constituents did not want their children to be doctors, accountants or teachers but to have just a secure job.

This thread upsetting me.
I am going to try not to come back to it...
School my ds going to, high number of children on free school meals, has comments in ofsted about outstanding safeguarding, leadership and behaviour. Overall judgement good but with outstanding aspects.
I am so glad children at this school not being given up on or relegated to second best by school leadership.
Let's hope it becomes the go to school of its local community it wishes to be.
I am trying to have faith and have chosen school for its ethos and passion for every child....

Please don't try to be funny, sanndyholme- it does your cause no good.

"A comment made by Frank Field rather sums things up when he said most of his constituents did not want their children to be doctors, accountants or teachers but to have just a secure job."

He did not mean that they actively didn't want them to be doctors, accountants or teachers-but that their priority was a secure job of any sort

a child will have the same basic amount spent per bum on seat in any given county regardless of where they go

Nope. The government is pumping more money per pupil into Free Schools. 60% more.
www.theguardian.com/education/2015/aug/25/extra-funds-free-schools-warwick-mansell

No he meant to say they understood their children did not have the capability or background and that selling them a 'lie' was not needed .

Frank Field is a divisive figure in the Labour party , because he tells the truth and is a red 'Tory' i.e a central ground politician that does not use 'BULL' shit spin or dogma to tell a lie.

If you sort out the behaviour so that teachers can get on with the job, and you have no grammar schools, of course the best can be stretched.
It is utterly ridiculous to say that we will pick the top 30 of ability in year 7 and the teacher can only stretch them if they go to a separate establishment down the road and they can't be stretched if they just go into room 26!

And we get back to the basic premise that education policy should revolve around the most able. Which is so very wrong on so many levels.

sandy why don't we just decide at 10 which children will end up doing minimum wage zero hour contracts for the next 50 years, and send them straight out to it? It would save a fortune. Especially when you consider that some children have already lost out on life by 6/7, so we could remove some then. Perhaps instead of ks2 curriculum they could do apprenticeships in a mill or a coal mine.

Pp is very blunt, and doesn't cover all those dc who are just above cut off. But even for those on it, the pp for an able child doesn't always directly benefit them. Dd was on the run on through primary, so I'm more than happy with the fact that she only really got any spent on her when she needed individual maths lessons in the last few years, with a suitable teacher. I'd rather it was spent on dc who needed it more, than if they'd spent it on things my dd didn't need. Her equally able friend, at a different primary but not just on pp run on, got a rare bit of uniform help, and didn't even get taught l5 or l6, let alone the actual support her ability warranted.

I also think that with Sen, the disadvantaged lose out. It's hard enough to get a dx, in school support or a none mainstream place when the parents are in an advantaged position. Let alone for those parents who are disadvantaged to start with. Ditto for school appeals, they are nearly alway a a resource for educated parents alone.

Schools reflect their neighbourhood.

I will take a town that I don't know and haven't been to- Sheffield will do.
Imagine I am 22 yrs and got my first job I want to rent a flat in an area that I feel safe in at night and where my car won't be vandalised. I need do no more than look at the primary school league tables. I can look at the areas at the top and avoid viewing any flats at the area at the bottom. Maybe it will let me down, but it is a fairly reliable starting point.

That is what is wrong with education. The most deprived get the worst schools.

Why is "stretching the more able" a touchstone? In an ideal world, yes. But in the world we live in, there are much more significant and important priorities than that.

But we're not talking about free schools.

Yes we are. All new schools have to be free schools. These new grammars would be free schools.

Yy 2striped. The nc/ education policy itself doesn't even contain anything to support the case for able provision, given the glass ceiling of achievement. Which means able provision relies solely on having both a teacher and slt that of their own free will provide it.

I can't understand the obsession with the fact that the most able are not stretched and they are let down by the system when 90% of the population go to comprehensives. Private schools and grammar schools take up a lot of places- but so they jolly well should when they selected their pupils - but the vast majority are comprehensive educated.
My friend's DD who has just graduated from Cambridge did not have to fight to get 'stretched' ( or do it herself) My son's friend who got the highest A level mark in the country didn't do it himself - he had good teachers. How having to have a building a mile down the road for a teacher to be able to 'stretch' pupils beats me!
I don't think anyone is recommending mixed ability teaching- frustrating for all.

FreshHorizons to me has hit the nail on the head.
Grammars schools & elite comprehensives are a product of the education system that does not seem to know what to do about disruptive children (low & high level).

I remember watching the programme 'tough young teachers' and seeing a lesson were a disrupitve child had been placed next to an 'A' student in order for the student to model the others behaviour. It didn't work and I remember thinking at the time, if that had been my child I would not have been impressed.

Whilst the problem remains of what can you do to engage disruptive, uninterested teens, people will always look towards a way out for their child be it a faith, free, grammar, elite comprehensive or private school.