7% at comps get AAB

[Judy1234]

Just looking at today's FT schools tables/reports. Only 7% of comprehensives get pupils with grades AAB at A level. 62% of pupils get that at the best 50 independent schools (about 70 such pupils a year per school) and about 31 from selective grammar schools.

However the top 10 comps have 31% getting AAB which isn't too bad and the bottom 50 comps have 1% of pupils getting AAB.

The best comperhensive - Watford Grammar gets 8 Oxbridge offers a year.

But then surely you'd expect that. If the school isn't selective, whether it's fee paying or not, you can't expect to get lots of high a level grades so why does the Government want more children proportionately from comprehensives and (new rule) whose parents didn't get to university? It's like saying I want people who aren't right for this given preference over those that are. That these really bright pupils from the state grammar school whose parents both went to univesrity will not be allowed in but these rather thick children who have left it too late to be brought up to an Oxbridge standard age 19 will get preference.
www.ft.com/cms/s/4037c7f2-ceae-11db-b5c8-000b5df10621.html

I think that healthy parenting gives children all the opportunities that parents are able to afford for children to develop all their natural talents to the full, whether or not those talents are the same as those of parents.

But of course a lot of parents secretly want their children to resemble them or (far worse) are jealous of their children or want to keep them for themselves and don't let them seize all life's opportunities.

No Xenia is not right about the evolutionary stuff. Evolution is 'the slow, continuous process of change in the characteristics of organisms from one generation to the next'. Natural selection (survival of the fittest) is derived from Darwin's theory that 'only those plants and animals which are best adapted to their enviornment survive to breed, and, through inheritance, their characteristcs become established in future generations.' What some people do is misuse these theories (which are about BIOLOGICAL change to our bodies over time and through REPRODUCTION) to justify abhorrent human behaviour. As I have said they have been used to justify slavery and Nazism but also to justify women not going out to work etc etc. As I have said we are not animals, we are not at the mercy of our bodies and our 'instincts'. We have choices, emotions and empathy which are not available to animals. We have technology, medicine and transport which Darwin could never have envisaged and partly for these reasons we live in a world which is in no way natural and where our actions and behaviour is not limited to our physical characteristics. When you look at how and why arguments are used about evolution you will see that they are never neutral e.g. imagine a rapist defending his behaviour on the grounds that it was his 'natural instinct to procreate', imagine being prepared to conceive every time we have sex (this is our biological destiny after all), imagine being told you can't have an organ transplant, pain relief, antibiotics because you're told you're just not one of the fittest so shouldn't survive according to natural selection, or being told that your premature baby should be left to die without medical intervention because it obviously wasn't 'supposed' to live. And yet you think it's ok to say that some are richer than others (when wealth is nothing to do with biology anyway) and some get a better education than others, and we are naturally competitive etc etc because that's how evolution made us.

blackandwhitecat - it is the proper role of governments in advanced democracies like our own to legislate for the benefit of the weaker members of society.

That doesn't mean that it is the proper role of governments to iron out differences in the talents of all members of society such that we all have the same standard of living. That is communism and it's been widely discredited, though perhaps you've missed that as you don't seem to read very much.

"though perhaps you've missed that as you don't seem to read very much"

What an utterly pathetic, bitchy post. You don't like being outclassed in every way in arguments, clearly. And again, Xenia is NOT RIGHT about evolution, the pair of you very obviously understand nothing about the scientific basis of what you think you're arguing about.

'blackandwhitecat - it is the proper role of governments in advanced democracies like our own to legislate for the benefit of the weaker members of society.'

Right, so you don't think that individuals can, do and should control their own behaviour and make their own choices? A bizarre comment of yours considering that you and Xenia are arguing both that weaker children (in terms of their parental and financial support) are being failed by the govt but also that stronger children (in terms of parental and financial support) should be allowed more choice (regardless of whether this is at the expense of others). When people speak about human behaviour being nasty, competitive and determined to succeed (meaning in status, money and power which are not my values) at others' expense I actually increasingly believe that they are speaking for themselves and about their own characterisitcs (probably motivated by insecurity leading to a need to prove themselves to others). These are not the traits of human beings that I typically see on a day to day basis though repeatedly from certain Mumsneetesr

'That doesn't mean that it is the proper role of governments to iron out differences in the talents of all members of society such that we all have the same standard of living. That is communism and it's been widely discredited,'

I'm really wondering where you got the idea that I think governments or anyone else should do this (I spend my working life helping to develop others' talents whatever they may be and however they choose to express them) or that I'm a communist (though yes I believe we are all entitled to a minimum standard of living and I do think as you don't seem to that we should all be entitled to the same quality of education and qualificatins and health service etc regardless of our ability or our mummys and daddys ability to pay for these things). Again, scare-mongering and exaggeration are predictable when people feel they or their arguments are under threat. Yet, in spite of making assumptions and guesses about my political view point without reading my threads carefully and making bizarre, potentially offensive and untterly unscientifc assertions about evolution you say this,

'though perhaps you've missed that as you don't seem to read very much. '

Yep, that's right. I don't read very much. Yet somehow I've managed to get A grades at A Level, a university degree, a Masters and a PGCE plus a couple of diplomas and teach literature amongst other subjects (oh, and without paying for it by the way) without reading very much. How did I do that I wonder?

You're a walking miracle, blackandwhitecat, clearly, to have done all that without reading

blackandwhitecat - that you are a teacher truly scares me.

That's me Tamum

It doesn't surprise me that it worries you that I'm a teacher Anna since you obviously find it difficult to have your attitudes and assumptions challenged and that's part of my job.

To clarify my point about 'evolution' (though actually it's not really evolution that you and Xenia are talking about)

Arguments about evolution outside of a biology lesson (when they are about SCIENCE and biological facts)are inevitably used by a dominant group to suggest that they are biologically superior to the relatively powerless group and justify their treatment of it. Hence it's one used by the Nazis to defend their extermination of the Jews, Europeans to justify slavery but also men to justify their dominance over women, whites over blacks in South Africa and the rich over the poor. In contemporary western society our fortunes in life are still argely determined not by our genes or our IQ but by what our parents do or don't do for a living.

blackandwhitecat - part of mine too (though not working at the moment) since I teach too (MBA and Executive Education)

I think we do a lot of things without the choice we think we're exercising. I believe that happens every time women target richer men. What % of mumsnet posters earn more than their husbands? Very few because they pursue the money, status and power and really aren't too different from how we used to be years ago. That may not technically be evolution but it's how we are. I think are many aspects of how we behave from what men find attractive to women's selection of a mate which come down to very basic things about how we are made and our past and development. I would love it if we could get beyond that in the interests of proper equality and choice but we aren't doing very well at it.

"These are not the traits of human beings that I typically see on a day to day basis". I find that an amazing statement. You're in a school. Children compare each other evrey day. You have in and out groups. You have people who like someone because they look good or have the right trainers. Children display all these characteristics in the raw, worse than any City bank.

Why does b&wc being a teacher scare you Anna?

I would welcome someone with her values and opinions teaching my children.

saggar - Poor facts. Long, incoherent posts. Very left wing.

Anna - you are being highly offensive now.

I think you should let us make up our own minds about who is posting long incoherent posts and who is never able to support the statements that she makes!

In any event, it is incredibly rude to present your views in this way. Unspeakably bad behaviour.

soapbox - people in glasshouses...

No glasshouse here Anna - it must be your reflection you are seeing!

soapbox - I responded extremely politely on another page to your provocative questions

What provocative questions?

I really am baffled now! Or is asking for an example of your lunch time convo now provocative!

I can only conclude you are living in some kind of parallel universe, Anna, in which blackandwhitecat is incoherent and Soapbox is rude. I think if you got 100 people to read this thread and the other one, and give their views, it would be very very clear-cut.

tamum - I don't think it is anyone's role other than MN HQ to pass judgement on participants in the debate. You can either be a participant or observer of the debate, but not a judge

Anna - you are very naive if you think that people will not be judging you from your posts here.

"I think we do a lot of things without the choice we think we're exercising. I believe that happens every time women target richer men. What % of mumsnet posters earn more than their husbands? Very few because they pursue the money, status and power and really aren't too different from how we used to be years ago."

Perhaps women do that on a subconscious level because that is what the family set-up was whent hey grew up.

I would be highly suprised if either of your daughters married men who earnt more than them. - wouldn't you? And that would be because that is their norm.

soapbox - I am anything but naive. Of course we all have our opinions about what we say and we have freedom of speech.

What I said was that tamum should not pass judgement while not actively contributing to the debate. She is not some kind of higher authority.

Oh right, so you are able to judge that I am not actively contributing to the debate, but I am not able to judge your posts. An interesting distinction.

tamum - I passed no judgement on you...