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

[BertrandRussell]

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

Totallyspies17 Thu 08-Sep-16 23:27:01 3 very good state options but not where his friends are going!!

You're in a win, win situation.

Take him to see all options and sell all of them to him. Tell him the exam isn't a case of pass or fail but is purely a way to give him more options to choose from. Also tell him that the exam is not a precise measure of ability as anyone can have an off day.

ilovemygsd, I wouldn't assume grammars would get more funding. Schools get funded per pupil. While this varies across the country, in any particular area it is fixed (I'm pretty sure on this, but not absolutely certain). Pupils who are from homes with low incomes, those who have a parent in the armed forces, children who have spent time in care and those with some types of SEN attract top-up funding. For grammars to get more money (and therefore for teachers to get paid more) the government would have to introduce a new, additional top-up specifically for that.

All that said, teaching posts in grammars are often more competitive because they are perceived to be easier - largely due to having fewer behavioural problems.

The grammar system was not abolished in Northern Ireland. As a result we have very few private schools. Around 40% of children here attend grammars. Pupils here regularly outperform pupils in the rest of the UK, even those not attending grammar schools.

So here, children who don't get into grammar schools attend non grammar secondaries and still do fine. As they do in England & Wales.

Just because the PM is introducing more grammars doesn't mean that children who fail to get places at them are condemned to failure.

Please excuse my excessive use of the word "here" in my last post.

DioneTheDiabolist Out of interest why are primary schools in NI now being allowed to prepare children for the Grammar entrance tests?

My friend failed the 11+ in NI. It was a surprise but when her parents challenged it they were told her paper had gone missing. She had a year in "non-grammar" school and said in order not to get hassle from other kids she had to play down being smart while also doing other people's homework to keep in with them. She sat the exam a year later and was moved to a grammar.

OleannasWimple- a good comp has a top stream equivalent to a grammar stream, anyway. That stretches the most able.

Graveney compared with two other popular local S London comps at A level:

Charter 34% of A level passes are at A*/A
Graveney 33% of A level passes are at A*/A
Dunraven 32% of A level passes are at A*/A

Neither Charter nor Dunraven have selective streams. Dunraven has a much higher FSM %.

Graveney is a good school, but surely it's exam performance simply demonstrates that it has a high overall %of high ability children. There are loads of other good comps in Wandsworth (and Lambeth and Southwark), all with well functioning top sets and cohorts of high ability children. I could see the point of a Graveney-type admission in an area where overall the high ability children are spread geographically thin, so bringing them together makes sense, but not so much in busy S London.

mum, possibly if you allow primaries to do the grammar test preparation less parents pay for tutors so the children get the same prep and are on a level playing field. We all had 11+ prep in my state primary and nobody tutored in those days. Unlike now where of 50% of the kids at my nephew's school (my old primary) are tutored.

AmeliaLeopard Fri 09-Sep-16 00:19:15 mum, possibly if you allow primaries to do the grammar test preparation less parents pay for tutors so the children get the same prep and are on a level playing field.

I think it highly likely that many parents will still use a 1-2-1 tutor on top of the support given at school. I know a number of parents with DCs in preps. who also use tutors, despite the fact the preps. are also providing 11 plus prep.

In yr 5 approx. 95% of DCs were being tutored for the 11 plus.

The 11+ was abolished in 2008 and primary schools were prohibitted from teaching for the transfer tests. A rule that was ignored by most schools. We have a new education minister who has done a U turn on this policy.

Dd has just started at a grammar, her choice to sit the test, no tutoring, she's delighted to go apart from the fact that she's been ripped apart from a lot off her friends. She has already had flack for going to the "posh" school, and that works both ways. They are divisive and I think the grammars can be complacent. Good inclusive schools throughout the country is what's needed. Where you have grammar schools you have a 2 tier system which lets some children down. I would much prefer a decent comp but we just don't have them round here.

Horrified by these proposals....Brings back many uncomfortable feelings from my past. I failed the 11+ and sent to the Sec. school. Can't tell you how unhappy I was that I 'failed' and how it damaged my confidence. Two years later they decided I'd done so well that I was offered a transfer to the grammar school which I declined as they could only offer me one more subject at 0'level (I was already doing 8). Got 8 0-levels went on to get 3 A-levels, a good degree and a post grad qualification. I'm a prime example that children mature academically at different ages and what this country needs is fantastic inclusive schools that can help every child reach their full potential.

Fast forward 30 years and DS1 is in Y6 and we live in an area where selection is an option. He is bright and able and I have every expectation that if he wants it and works he will be able to take his education as far as he wants. He won't be doing the 11+ though and he will be going to a local secondary - I don't want any child of mine having the experience I had.

Lumpy
I think the grammars can be complacent.. What makes you think that? Schools are judged on their progress with all students. It can be a lot harder ensuring progress with very able students who are already at a very high level.

You could have told her that you didn't want her to take the test as for ideological reasons you feel they are divisive.

Bert thank you for you response- I'm also aware it's the only time you and I have ever agreed on a post

I think because his school is private in some ways it's worse as hardly anyone fails and he knows in school he's essentially the brightest across the board so it's frustrating and upsetting for him that he's struggling. Equally, however, the mums and kids are pretty much all very nice and encouraging and it's not competitive in the way you'd imagine- think more montessori style school than super academic school.

My mum guilt is through the roof and I'm looking back and analysing/ regretting every decision. Should I have had tutoring for a year? Should I have sent him to state school instead of this school? Should we have moved twice because of our work? Etc etc!
He's a lovely, sensitive, bright but complex boy. I've always suspected he's high functioning ASD And added stress hasn't been great for him

Shit I'm rambling on again....... You can tell I'm stressed too and trying to hide it by obsessive munsnetting!!

SideEye we talk about it, we're talking about it now as it's on the news.

However, I'm not going to stop her going to the local school she wants to go to. You can have a child at grammar and still disagree with grammar schools. I'm not a fan of marriage as an institution but I am happily married, go figure!

I could cry at the prospect of grammars in our area. I am horrified. Our neighbouring area has them and I'd not live there because of it. All large comprehensives can differentiate to cater for all local children in a suitable, manner. All the ones near us do. I hate the idea of my DC having to chose to do an 11+ or not and the obsession with academics and tutoring setting in. All the yr5/6 near us who want to get into grammars in next LA are tutored heavily. That's expensive and excludes those who can it afford it.

And it was middle class parents with DCs didn't get into grammar school chewing the ears off Tory MPs that got them abolished in the first place.

Which was why Maggie Thatcher, as Sec of State for Education abolished more of them than any other education minister. Politically, she knew which side her bread was buttered.

As for now, it will play extremely well in the Tory shires, where parents are feeling the pinch at paying for private schooling.

As for the more deprived areas - I can see it being an expensive vanity project like Free Schools have been. If they really have an allocation of places for more disadvantaged children, who require lower results to get in, the parents of middle class children who don't make it, but have the same scores will start squealing about how unfair it is.

to answer the OP- my proposal is to give those who do not go to grammar school precisely what they get now minus the company of those in their class for whom lessons are far too slow. That is unless someone can devise a way of improving the education of the Comprehensive school students.

According to the Telegraph there could be hundreds of new grammar schools rather than 20 or so

twitter.com/LeadingLearner/status/773997019727818752

Hundreds of grammar schools means return to binary system and no comprehensives at all.

So will all those people who have been saying that this debate is only about "poor" comps now accept that we who have children in good comps have been absolutely right to defend them?

Mummydummy I think rounded, creative, spirited citizens is an excellent description of my grammar school educated DC and all of their grammar school educated friends. It's such complete and utter nonsense this idea of grammar school kids not having a life, being under pressure, having all creativity knocked out of them.

Bert in answer to your question, I'd try to fashion an education which suits those kids better than the one which looms with the new reforms. I pressed you on another grammar school thread to tell us what you thought of the new reformed public exams for lower ability children and you did a great job of avoiding it. So please, on this thread, which you started and which completely begs the question, and given that you've told us you're a governor at a school with a large number of lower ability kids, how do you see the new exams panning out for those kids? Do you genuinely believe they'll cope well with the new reformed exams and emerge with good grades and an education suitable to launch them well in the world? Or do you think the new reforms themselves are a reason for looking again at differentiated provision? Because to my mind the kids who are going to lose out big time with these new exams are the lower ability children and taking them on a somewhat different path seems to me to be very much in their interests, educationally, socially and emotionally. I'd really like to know what you think about that.

Good article in The Guardian

When governments choose bad policy it is usually because of some problem where demand for easy answers exceeds supply of good solutions. So it is with Theresa May’s intention to lift the ban on establishing new grammar schools.

Meanwhile, real issues of teacher shortages, lack of school places at primary level, and the total muddle that is vocational education go unanswered. Not even that - the questions don't get asked.

Mind you, it does take the spotlight away from the fact that May is having trouble explaining what she means when she says 'Brexit means Brexit'.

In part answer to goodbyestranger Why is it assumed that children who are not academic will be vocationally gifted? Is 10/11 the correct age to start testing for this? I think not - these sorts of aptitudes are more likely to develop in your teens.

Not many of us have problems with selection at 16 - because the child's aptitudes are likely to have begun to show and the tests to access the next step of education are based on the evidence the child can produce - like a A at GCSE for a Maths A level course, or an aptitute for practical subjects for access to a B Tec., and not on parental wishes.

Goodbyestanger- I though I had answered you on the new GCSE exams- I certainly answered somebody. I hope I am proved wrong- but I think that they will be disastrous for lower ability kids. Incidentally, I am not sure they will be good for higher ability ones either- I am sure that there will be a lot of top set kids stressing about getting 9s and feeling that they've failed by "only" getting 8s.

What makes me particularly furious about the changes is that they were prompted in no small measure by the completely artificial narrative that was created among the "chattering classes" about BTecs. All the bullshit that was spouted about "intellectual rigour" and proper academic subjects and the mockery and disparagement of schools offering Hair and Beauty or Construction- any school that did was automatically a school no mumsnetter (I use the word as a generic descriptor- you all know what I mean!) would send a child to, while the word Latin on page 23 of the prospectus has them clustering round like ants at a picnic.