People who are in favour of grammar schools....

[BertrandRussell]

....what is your proposal for the majority who are not selected?

I am all for (good) comprehensives, but near us, they are officially rated inadequate or requiring improvement. When DS started at our local comp, in Y9, it was deemed outstanding, but re-inspected when he had been there four months. After two years, during which he was not taught anything, he passed his GSCEs with very mediocre grades. His older friends' A level results have been poor. He would not get a place at the grammar school as it is over-subscribed.

We have one child, so we are paying for an independent for sixth form. But if we had more than one child, this would not be an option.

I think lots of MC families a couple of decades ago could just stretch to private day schools, but those days are long gone.

No Nicky Morgan is a mate of Cameron and Osborne and is just a 'spoilt Cry Baby ex public school girl' !.

She can't believe that her mates are no longer in charge and that the Education job that was just a stop gap to grander things is no longer hers !

If she was offered a place in the cabinet, Nicky Morgan would be the strongest advocate for expanding the number of grammar schools !

Two things Teresa May said that made me laugh and no doubt will be picked up by posters (who are anti grammar)

1. All Schools can be Grammar schools , well if that's the case in the words of Harold Wilson 'Grammar Schools' are Comprehensive schools for all !

1. She suggested that pupils from the 'non selective' should be able to undertake Maths at the grammar.!

Therefore does that mean a grammar school pupil should be able to undertake Food Tech at the non selective !

Finally will the school Canteen/ Bistro (depending on whether it is grammar/high) be informed to make more Luncheon/Grub available for their visitors.

HPFA I am reading the link you sent and the original Sutton Trust Report, and the math at the moment doesn't add up. I will spend more time on it.

"I'm in favour of Grammar schools in that it does allow the brighter children a chance to be stretched"

Comprehensives can and do do this.

HPFA - "maths you rather seem to be suggesting that all good comps have house price selection

No I am saying in areas where their is house price selection, the schools are comprehensive in name only and that is an elitist closed door to social mobility. In those areas academic selection would be preferable.

Bloody waste of time, segregation.

A bit of light setting in school isn't too damaging, if classes are big, but sticking different kids in entirely different schools is extremely harmful to overall educational standards, and not even very useful for the kids in selective schools.

This is a completely, utterly, bizarrely, bonkers idea that flies in the face of international research over decades. It's a kind of educational gerrymandering.

How can N.I. not know if they changing to the new English 9-1 system, because the curriculum is actually different and they would need to have started teaching it already?

This is the Newsom report 1963, that exposed the scandal of tripartite education and the underfunding of many pupils, where they were crammed into second-rate schools with unwilling teachers.

www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/newsom/newsom1963.html

"No I am saying in areas where their is house price selection, the schools are comprehensive in name only"

Sorry, but you're wrong.

My dc's very popular and high achieving comp is surrounded by multi million pound houses. It still takes higher than the national average number of children on free school meals.

It uses a lottery system combined with a sort of fair banding process. More and more popular schools are doing this.

The answer to 'selection by postcode ' in any case isn't 'more selection by ability and faith', it's 'address the problem of selection by postcode'.

Theresa May is a colossal twat.

If bright but poor kids are to have a full choice of schools,
WHO WILL PAY THE BUS FARE?

If kids live in London they get free bus travel. Outside London, they do not.

The Kent pass is £270 per pupil per year (fully Grammar county, clearly heavily subsidised)

DS's bus pass is £645 per year

so only those with the means to pay the bus fare have a true choice of schools
or will May & Greening find a way around that ?
Or have they forgotten that buses are deregulated outside London

Why do they need to actually be in a whole separate establishment? What do grammar schools actually offer that a comprehensive school top set doesn't

Grammar schools offer a concentration of high ability gifted academically inclined children. In a grammar an expanded broader curriculum can be offered at an even higher level because there will be so many more at the A* level.

A top set in a comprehensive will have a small number of gifted academics and can offer enough to get an A*, but that's all because the school also has to provide for middle and low achievers.

Grammar schools offer a concentration of high ability gifted academically inclined children
A few super selectives in London might do that, but the vast majority are nothing of the sort
and the more Grammars there are, the more like comps they will become

So the LSN said

"Sutton Trust reporting 0.8% of comprehensive students and 3.4% of grammar school students get to Oxbridge."

Which was from the Sutton report. Ok. Then it applies it,

"This was applied to the latest Year 11 figures of 536,000 students at comprehensives and 23,000 at selective schools."

Now I am not sure the % quoted in Sutton report is referring to Year 11 numbers at all. (Please correct me if it is) I would imagine it refers to sixth form numbers. The data can therefore be totally skewed.

I know comprehensive schools that cater for the full range, from offering A Level Maths in Year 9 or 10 to top set kids, right through to special courses as an alternative to GCSEs for those that need something more vocational. That's the whole point of a comprehensive school, to be comprehensive. Comprehensive is not supposed to indicate a lacklustre regression to some sort of mean in the manner that happened in some Local Authorities. We need to agitate for inclusion and proper resourcing, rather than taking note of this distraction at a time when the Government wants us to ignore the massive school budget cuts about to take place and the fact something like half the teacher training places for this academic year remain unfilled.

Quite frankly education policy since 2010 is a car crash and it's about to get worse.

Well, said BoffinMum.

"Grammar schools offer a concentration of high ability gifted academically inclined childreN"

Well, I suppose supers electives do. Old style grammars offer the top 25%, which includes lots of level 5s and a few level 4s at year 7...........

alwayssurprised
The Sutton Trust will have, rightly, based their percentages on the number of pupils taking compulsory GCSEs
because lots of State school pupils do not enter what is traditionally known as "6th form"

If I was in power I would

1. Have a bonfire of the nylon blazers and put children in proper modern, sensible clothes with no more logos.
2. Convert all schools to mixed ability and reduce class sizes to about 26.
3. Apologise to teachers and give them all an extra week's holiday next academic year in recognition of recent workload issues.
4. Make school transport free.
5. Do the Ruth Kelly after-school club initiative.

Actually can't we have Ruth Kelly back as SoS? She was immensely sensible.

But your school selects by music and sport ability Mini.
So all the pupils are musical athletes?
Wow !

Utterly ironically my parents sent me to an independent school rather than choosing a local grammar school, as they felt this would broaden my horizons more. My independent school was non-selective, mixed ability, lots of oil and army brats, with a dual track A Level and Vocational sixth form depending on what people wanted to do afterwards. Very good Home Economics department as well. I had a scholarship, as did lots of other pupils, and I am very glad I was not confined to the grammar school.

minifingerz

I am not talking about all schools near expensive areas, I am talking about areas where rich parents are deliberately buying houses within 500m of a school to get into, it causing house prices to soar and blocking anyone less wealthy getting into the school.

Yes solving the answer of house price selection is the golden grail. But using a lottery system combined with a sort of fair banding process is not the answer. There is a school like that in my area and it is impossible to get into because the admissions is just as problematic.

I thought Ruth Kelly came unstuck during her stint in Education, although I can't now remember why. It does rather seem to be the fate of Education Secs of State.

(In other words, academically comprehensive independent education used to be a lot more prevalent in the days of lower fees. Indeed, Britain has a long history of this, and also working class independent schools. Sadly long gone).