If you're anti grammar schools, then please answer me this:

[Proseccocino]

If your child had a gift for music, then you might send her to a school which excels musically.

If your child had a talent for sport, you might send him to an academy which excels at sport, one where he can really focus and develop in the area in which he is better than his peers.

And so on....!

So, if your child is intelligent, academically gifted... Why is it bad to say you would send her to a selective school where she can study along with other bright students?

If it's OK to separate children according to ability in sport or music or drama or technology, and send them to specialist schools which excel in these areas - why is it a different story if their talent with their academic ability?

Problem with grammar schools

1. No evidence that they provide a better education system - people at top do slightly better, people at bottom do much worse.

2. In the UK, there isn't actually a shortage of A* pupils and many (most?) of those pupils go to comprehensives. However, from an economic point of view there are masses of people at the bottom and in the middle who lack relevant qualifications and training. There is no evidence that they would be helped by more grammar schools (or, to be more accurate, more secondary moderns).

Obviously individual parents have a responsibility to do what they can for their own children, but from a government policy point of view, there isn't much evidence to support grammar schools.

Quite right. Although I think the growth mindset is very problematic. The idea that any child can achieve any level of achievement if they try hard enough is just not true.

No you are quite right.

But the belief that's it's true yields much better results for everyone than the belief that it's not.

It might sound like a cat poster - but it's true

I think in my town numbers could support two schools, one for the creative, free thinkers wanting to develop leadership skills in school time and another really dull sort of place with hard stuff being taught and lots of time consuming homework. Then all the parents will be happy! ( Half of the kids may be miserable for a few years..)

Bakewell, I think you've cracked it!

My main thing that makes me scream though, is the championing of academia as the holy grail that we should be investing in for the sake of the children

And then in the next breath academics who have done extensive research into this subject are rubbished for being out of touch 'experts' who don't know what they're talking about.

This is tangential to the main debate, but came as a bit of a surprise to me. Ds tells me that there are v few children in his GS class who went to private schools. He says around 90% were ex-state primary school pupils (there is quite a large catchment area rurally, outside the city boundary), including him. Obviously I can't say whether this can be extrapolated throughout the school, but I thought it was interesting, as I had assumed a larger proportion of privately educated children. Maybe they just carry on at their private schools.

I'm genuinely baffled and a little offended by the idea that children who don't "make it" to grammar school are failures, and doomed to a life in mediocre schools.

It's not just an idea - in grammar school areas there is less social mobility and children who don't go to grammar schools don't do as well than a comparable cohort in comprehensive areas.

As well as

"think most of us feel we are "experts" on our own children's needs. I'm genuinely baffled and a little offended by the idea that children who do"make it" to grammar school are failures, and doomed to a life in mediocre schools"

I think it's very strange that we all feel that we know as much as teachers and educationalists just because we went to school!

As for the "failures" thing- how else do you think a child who didn't pass an exam that everybody makes a big deal about is going to feel?

Grammar schools do not select on intelligence. They select on socioeconomic status. Any child could go to a grammar school if they had the right background. The reintroduction of grammar schools will be a massive retrograde step for education. It will only ingrain inequality more and no one will benefit from this. Much research has shown that the quality of education in all schools is key. It's a tough job but a good teacher will ensure that the brightest are pushed and the lowest attaining are supported.

"I'm genuinely baffled and a little offended by the idea that children who don't "make it" to grammar school are failures, and doomed to a life in mediocre schools."

The 11+ is a public judgement of a child's potential, shapes the whole character of their secondary schooling and decides their peer group for the time in their life where peer groups start to have a huge influence on values and behaviour.

A child who fails the 11+ receives the message: "you're not very clever"

A child who passes the 11+ receives the message: "you're very clever".

"Ds tells me that there are v few children in his GS class who went to private schools."

It varies hugely by area.

And grammars which do 13+ entry take a higher proportion of dc's from private schools at this point.

A child who was entered at all must know they are cleverer than the majority or surely their parents wouldn't enter them?"

They think they are, their parents think they are, but then the results of a test show them they're not, or at least not as smart as they thought they were.

zzz Sorry, but this makes me annoyed. Why shouldn't all the "extras" in a grammar be available to all children? I could just about handle the idea of a grammar if it was purely about lessons going at a faster pace. But I loathe this idea of there being some extra magic ingredient that certain children are "entitled" to. Someone on Twitter today when asked what a grammar would offer that a non-grammar couldn't answered

Tradition, Confidence, Sense of belonging to something to be proud of....students look forward to bright future

How can anyone suggest that only grammar pupils are entitled to these things? How can they?

And as for this about children not being aware that they have failed how can children receive cultural messages like the one above and not feel they have failed? If you have people saying that grammars are so wonderful then its IMPLICIT that other schools are not so wonderful. I don't know what's so difficult about this concept.

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Any child could go to a grammar school if they had the right background

No, no they can't. That's why grammar schools were scrapped in the first place! Deeply unpopular with middle class parents who realised that their DC might actually end up at the secondary modern. Just because grammar schools contain overwhelmingly non-disadvantaged kids, it doesn't mean that your middle class kid will get a free ticket.

And remember that the 11+ only has a predictive ability of about 0.7. 1 in 5 kids end up in the wrong school if you're selecting 25%.

So, if your child is intelligent, academically gifted... Why is it bad to say you would send her to a selective school where she can study along with other bright students?

If the local grammars are single sex your dd will have to have a higher score than your ds to get in, is that fair?

If the school is mixed and they have a 50/50 quota of boys and girls you dd will still have to score higher than her brother.

Grammars were fine for 1950s Britain, when the 'elite' needed to weed out a few people who could become management, but not for a modern country.

"Nobody seems weighed down with sadness or to think about it much more than to discuss "where you are going next" in Y6."

In some areas 1 in 4 children is 'selected out' for grammar. In these areas an additional 1 in 10 will be selected out for private school.

I've just noticed another of those "3 impossible things before breakfast" that grammar school supporters have to believe.

1. They have to send their child to a grammar school because the other schools are all crap.

1. But it doesn't mean that everyone else is disadvantaged because the other schools are all fabulous.

Why is it bad to say you would send her to a selective school where she can study along with other bright students?

Because this is what happens in almost all comps. There may be a very few in disadvantaged areas where it is more difficult to cope with the outliers. But there are many ways this could be overcome. You could have schools federating to offer extra more advanced classes for instance. Why not use technology so a teacher delivers an advance Maths lesson through videoconferencing? Or you could insist that some of the PP money was given to enable a smaller top set as well as a smaller one at the other end. I say Maths because I think that is one subject where you do need setting.

I no longer believe people when they say its about academics. I think whether they admit it or (even to themselves) its about giving their child an extra advantage which is related to the cultural meanings that have accrued to the words "grammar school". No-one has yet come up with a reason why the top set in a comp has to be in a separate building other than they want their child to be away from the other children.

But if your child is bright and academically gifted, why not send her to a comprehensive where she can study along with other bright students? And other students who are good at music and sport and art and drama and public speaking and kindness and cooking and making things and friendship and imagination and other stuff? And along with children who are not so good at these things, too? I don't want my clever child to lose the rich diversity of her primary school class when she goes to scondary school.