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

[BertrandRussell]

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

Away from London there are plenty of towns with one good Comprehensive, which all children go to and achieve well at. Where Grammar schools are a dead issue from a generation ago. But no one on MN wants to believe that.

For me, the argument against grammars is that passing the 11+ will be easier for those whose parents can afford to move to the catchment areas of a good primary. Those who cannot afford to move and have a rubbish primary nearby won't have the support or stretch that will be needed to cope with the selection aspect, regardless of how clever they are. Good or outstanding primaries will prepare their pupils for the 11+ and expect them to do well, whereas a Requires Improvement or Special Measures school will focus on making sure the kids attend and scrape through their SATs. My own son changed primaries in year 6 from a SM school to an Outstanding and the difference in focus and achievemental was stark. Not everyone will be able to afford to do that and so social mobility won't be improved as the children who would benefit most from the idea of grammars probably won't get past the 11+.

*achievement not achievemental!

grikes not sure why you think anyone is striking your ego

There is an 'immigrant' effect, but Chinese pupils way outperform those of other nationalities.

Lots of discussion as to why here:
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/439861/RR439A-Ethnic_minorities_and_attainment_the_effects_of_poverty.pdf

The most interesting thing from the above blog post by the ex grammar head was this graph.

Absolutely zero correlation between who did best at the 11+ (within their cohort) and who did best at their GCSE. Using this to stick kids in an entirely different school is clearly nonsense.

so really they just aim for the Middle.

And you know this because? You have knowledge of 3000+ comprehensives?

Our outstandings require a hefty price tag to live there which still makes tgem selective.

Striped you have completely misunderstood the graph. It is not relating to a school with high EAL, it is relating to a superselective grammar school with very low EAL. The kids do not leave halfway through and their language scores do not improve. It shows that the 11+ is not a good predictor of future attainment.

I already posted previously that the best tests are only about 0.7 predictive of future attainment and that this means 1 in 5 students would end up in the wrong school. It's interesting to see actual live data that confirms this.

Don't confuse 'ethnic minority' with EAL. The school might have a high number of ethnic minority pupils (I don't know, that doesn't tend to be recorded) but it only has 3.4% of EAL kids compared to a national average of 15%.

For me the issue is very simple: if there are comprehensives where very high ability children excel in their learning, then the premise that comprehensives cannot meet the needs of these children because they are non-selective (rather than because of the quality of teaching and management) is false.

I also don't get the argument that comprehensives which are able to meet the needs of high achieving children are only able to do so because they have large numbers of bright children with a strong work ethic to start with, and so the way to address the underachievement of very able children in other less successful comprehensives is to reduce their numbers in such schools.

How does that work?

2StripedSocks Sun 18-Sep-16 11:31:43 Comps with a very wealthy intake will surely also have the same advantages as the grammars ie are comps in only name.

So you're in favour of more Grammars, which select on wealth, but not more comps. which select on wealth?

I think there's also a danger with the whole 'good comps select on wealth' thing of assuming that wealth is evenly distributed across the country. My comp has a relatively low number of FSM pupils, but that's not because (as some might assume) it has a tight catchment of £500k houses and you can only get in if you live on the doorstep. Actually we take in pupils from as far as 3 miles away (we're non-selective, non faith and have actually been undersubscribed), but clearly the area we are in doesn't have many disadvantaged kids. If they aren't there, we can't take them.

"2StripedSocks Sun 18-Sep-16 11:31:43 Comps with a very wealthy intake will surely also have the same advantages as the grammars ie are comps in only name."

All comprehensives take in a representative range of children from their catchment area.

If there are many poor and low achieving children in the catchment then the school will have lots of poor and low achieving children.

If the catchment area is wealthy the school intake will reflect this although there is no comprehensive, no matter how 'leafy', which is not accessible to poor and low ability children in the catchment.