Parents won't discipline children, schools are not allowed to discipline children, so grammar chools are the way forward.

[Longlost10]

The whole comprehensive system is dragged down by the financial, spiritual, moral, educational and professional cost of the huge number of total wasters in the student body. Those who disrupt lessons, ignore teachers, distract students, talk back, waste time, make paper aeroplanes out of worksheets, dawdle in late, don't bother to do their homework, don't come equipped, chat and fidget and generally make no attempt to learn. They are utterly selfish and just tink of nothing but enjoying themselves.They are pandered to and spoilt, offered endless chances, suck the system dry of money, time, energy, and resources. Teachers are held responsible for their imbecilic behaviour, and grind themselves into dust trying to work to change behavior which is under someone elses control entirely.

This is why I support grammar schools. It gives the top 25% the opportunity to get away from these yobs, and and incentive to behave well, and keep behaving well, as a grammar school student needs to maintain certain levels of behavior and achievement to remain a grammar school student.

So overall, the poor behavior goes down. Because a grammar school place is an incentive to behave properly, and so some bad behaviour improves.

In a comp, badly behaved pupils have nothing to lose. That changes in a grammar system.

And a large number of students can get away from the poor behaviour too. Of course there is some bad behaviour in grammar schools, but it isn't comparable.

So less bad behaviour, more learning, and fewer students affected by bad behaviour in others. Whats not to like??

Of course it doesn't solve the problem of having to put up with bad behaviour in secondary modern classrooms, but it doesn't make it any worse either.

Those areas don't have better results over all, but have less social mobility.

How is that a good thing?

Might be popular with some parents, but from a government point of view you are helping children who would do well anyway, while increasing the gap in skills and education for the greater number of people at the bottom of the heap. It's not a brilliant way to run a county, never mind a country.

Pragmatically, grammar schools don't work.

And I don't see why not, unless you want inequality built into the system.

Because it's not possible. A lot of learning in the early years is done through play and informal communication - you cannot stop this (and why would you want to?).

Beyond that, you can't police people in their homes and prevent parents helping their children with reading and maths, or taking them to museums, libraries etc. etc.

That's what I mean mouse - not a requirement, an assumption.

No assumptions that a child will read at home, practice counting at home, timetables, nothing. Make education truly a path out of inequality.

'Children who do well anyway' but are they the best they can be when their learning has been disrupted by recalcitrant pupils?

Children at higher income levels don't perform significantly worse in comprehensive counties - the biggest predictor of performance is still income. Realistically, in comprehensive areas income enables more choice of schools (e.g. moving catchment area), in grammar areas income enables a better eleven plus result. However, division by income is greater in grammar school areas.

'Children who would do well anyway' definitely doesn't include bright children on low incomes, but the evidence suggests that they do worse in grammar school areas. The whole point of grammar schools is supposed to be to help these children, but they don't.

Again, from a government point of view, there is not a lack of children leaving school with very, very good exam results. There is however an excess of children leaving school with mediocre to very bad exam results, and all the evidence shows that grammar schools exacerbate that situation.

No assumptions that a child will read at home, practice counting at home, timetables, nothing. Make education truly a path out of inequality.

It's not really possible to do that and teach effectively. Are you going to assume that a child is just mysteriously more confident in reading and has no extra support? Or are you just going to pretend that they can't read? Are you going to ban children from doing maths at home - even the ones who love maths?

You can try to bridge the gap but you can't stop parents helping their children to learn.

Merrymouse - many of those bright, deprived children don't even enter the exam. We can only select from those who enter. Do we need to work on outreach more, yes?
I also find the concept of a third going to grammar interesting. That doesn't sound like a grammar to me (but then my experience is super selective)
We set for maths and languages, timetable constraints (small school, free GCSE options not blocks) mean that we can't set for everything.

I don't suggest trying to stop parents. I suggest stopping basing the curriculum on the assumption they will help.

Why ever not? It wasn't always the way it is now.

There is far too much focus on twiddling the school system to reduce inequality and far too little focus on supporting adults to be more effective parents. DC spend about 9/10ths of their lives at home.

Winchester You might be interested in this blog post:

heatherfblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/schools-shouldnt-be-relying-on-parents-to-teach-reading/

Yes because you directly target the children as opposed to targeting the parents and hoping it will trickle down.

On the other hand more Louise Casey's would be a very good thing, that is true.

It wasn't always the way it is now because in the past society didn't mind the fact that huge swathes of DC left school barely literate and numerate. British adults no longer want to become fruit pickers, builders' labourers, waiters etc (Eastern Europeans are good for that) so they need academic qualifications for an office job if they are not to be a burden on the state.

Kesstrel thank you. That's a wonderful blog and I agree with every word of it.

Bobochic - as opposed to now? [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/young-people-england-have-lowest-literacy-levels-developed-world-says-oecd-1540711]

www.ibtimes.co.uk/young-people-england-have-lowest-literacy-levels-developed-world-says-oecd-1540711

sorry still learning on links etc

I'm well aware of the OECD analysis, WinchesterWoman. It doesn't alter my point.

The unpleasant truth is that many British people have greater lifestyle expectations than their relative education status will allow them. School alone cannot lift youth up.

That article a pp linked to upthread www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/grammar-schooling-to-reintroduce-concept-of-riff-raff-20160909113564

has made me so much that I feel nearly physically ill.

How on earth can Justine Greening get away with calling children "riff raff"?

"THE government is to bring back the term ‘riff-raff’, which will be used to describe the sort of children not welcome at new grammar schools.

Education secretary Justine Greening believes that parents should have more choice both in education and in describing the strata of society they do not want their children to associate with.

She said: “As a society we have tried abandoning the term ‘riff-raff’ and we have seen that the experiment simply doesn’t work.

“There are two types of schoolchildren – your own, with quaint, neo-Victorian names like Edgar and Maisie, who wear smart caps which they doff to passing tradesmen, and the riff-raff who chew gum, wear their ties askew and play music from their phones on the bus.

“This new system will separate the former from the latter once and for all and bring entrenched inequality back into education where it is so sorely needed.”

Greening confirmed that grammar schools will include a quota of ‘riff-raff’ who will fail to demonstrate that intelligence is unimportant compared to manners, breeding and wealth.

Bobochic - forgive me - but your last post leads me to believe that you are one of those teachers? are you a teacher? or educationologist? who will always blame the parents.

More reading in school would help? No, it's the parents expecting too much.
Less 'enrichment' during the school day? No, we must do all the dress up play because the parents won't do it.

I have come across education establishment types who blame everything on the parents.

The Daily Mash is a satirical paper that publishes spoof articles. She didn't actually say any of this.

Cognitive psychologists have entered the education debate in the last 10 years or so. They suggest that the kind of 'child-centred' approach which has dominated primary education for the last 50 years may actually widen the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children, in contrast to old-fashioned methods of teaching the whole class from the front, using a carefully designed sequential curriculum with an emphasis on acquiring knowledge.

The child-centred approach includes things like project-based learning, getting children to 'discover' things in groups around a table, avoiding textbooks etc. But this is a very time-consuming process, compared to teaching from the front, and somewhat haphazard as well. More advantaged children will have prior knowledge acquired from home to help them make sense of what they encounter in school (and also in their home reading). They are also more likely to have parents who can fill in the gaps.

Thank you Kesstrel that's very interesting. I'm not a cognitive psychologist so I'm actually thrilled that people with expertise have gathered evidence along the same lines!

I'm not a teacher! I'm a parent and stepparent who has SDC who are now at university and a DD in Y8. I am very aware of just how much work DP and I have done, and continue to do, to have high-attaining DC (and they are all three genetically fortunate, with able minds and good concentration). So I just don't believe that school alone is enough!

Excuse me! Please don't feel offended. But then it's also not surprising that you are a 'high input' parent.

High input parents would e the most likely to lose out if the potential for their advantage is removed.

kesstrel - all our DC are/were in the French system and are/were taught from the front in large classes (in secondary averaging 35-38) with a carefully designed sequential curriculum.

DP dropped DSS1 at Cambridge yesterday. He's doing an MPhil in a quantitative field. The type of schooling he got, combined with good support at home, gave him an excellent grounding!

It's so different in the UK Bobochic. That's the problem.