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

[BertrandRussell]

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

I don't hear any one saying we should copy Kent

Theresa May wants to open lots more grammar schools. Kent is grammar school central. She's hardly copying a comprehensive area with that announcement is she?

Abject poverty doesn't create a good work ethic, btw. White working class boys are the worst performing group in the country. Setting up more grammar schools won't help them.

You can't say that comps disadvantage the poor on a wider scale because there are more comps. The graph (I can read it just fine ) shows that poor kids perform much worse in Kent than in the rest of England. If we rolled out grammars across the country like we have in Kent, then that would definitely disadvantage the poor on a wider scale, because that system disadvantages the poor more than comps do.

"White working class boys are the worst performing group in the country." But they are not in abject poverty are they, we have a very generous welfare system. Are you suggesting we bomb and starve them to death to improve their work ethic?

"Theresa May wants to open lots more grammar schools", Grammar school is a label for academically selective schools which we already have them. TM was very explicit that she is not referring to the binary system that Kent uses.

The graph of Kent is not a very good indicator of anything. It is a very small sample size and does not take into account the massive migration of wealthy families with think kids that have invaded the county.

think kids = thick kids

bomb and starve them to death

The highest performing ethnic group by far is Chinese, followed by Indian, I believe.

The graph of Kent is not a very good indicator of anything.

Ok, show me your graph that shows selective education is good for poor kids. I think you'll find international data also suggests not.

Mathsmum, do you have any stats to demonstrate that there had been 'massive migration of wealthy families with thick kids' into Kent? And why has this (allegedly ) happened?

striped Teach First aim to put the best graduates in the most challenging schools, but a) it's not a recruitment strategy for a whole country, b) experience is a really good thing to have in teaching and c) it might actually put people off teaching as a career choice.

mathsmum314 Fri 16-Sep-16 20:23:45 The graph of Kent is not a very good indicator of anything.

How about Bucks?

Striped the graph certainly suggest that it's better for poor kids than a selective system, and seeing as it's a selective system that is being proposed, that's all that's needed.

And some of the best teachers I ever taught with had decades of experience.

Any teacher knows you are better two years in than you were at the beginning. Any of them.

But the comprehensive system isn't working for them

What? Poor kids just persist in being disadvantaged so we should just wash our hands of the lot of them and focus on giving more advantages to the already well-off?

You know those poor kids will grow up and become poor adults because of lack of opportunity and then you'll be moaning about the burden they have become on the system!

None of the best teachers I've ever worked with have been while they've been NQTs. What does this exchange of anecdotes prove?

We know teachers get better with experience, so dumping a bunch of inexperienced teachers (who are often not amazing and need a lot of support from experienced teachers) into tough schools really isn't a wholesale solution.

2StripedSocks Fri 16-Sep-16 20:33:31 Some of the best teachers I've ever taught with are NQTs.

I wonder if this was in a comp. a sec.mod or a Grammar?

I didn't know you were involved in teacher training.

And actually the rest of the population from pp upwards count just as much.

Look at the graph. What proportion of the population are better off in Kent than the rest of England?

The highest performing ethnic group by far is Chinese, Noble your now proposing we teach Chinese style?

How can I produce graphs of education being good for poor children when we disagree on what good means. I could be wrong but you seem to say 'good' means everyone is average, I disagree. Then we don't even know what type of selective system is being proposed because its under consultation, so how can anyone prove that?