Who saw BBC 2 Grammar schools - who will get in " last night?

[Foxy333]

Watched this last night with interest. We're not in Grammar school area and generally I think it was / is a bad system that works for the top abilities but not for the middle and lower ones. However I've seen my daughter suffer in years 7 to 9 or a comprehensive from not being stretched and teachers concentrating on the most demanding pupils who need lots of help and ignoring the quiet well- behaved pupils who going to pass GCSE's anyway. Often some pupils disrupt the class and the whole class gets punished.

They only set them for 2 subjects and I've heard that's changing in future to one. so I see why a Grammar would suit some. But why cant all schools be good. Is it stricter discipline that's needed?

Felt for the children in the program, so young to face this divisive test.

I live in a non grammar area but boy is it massively selective, probably more so than grammar areas. Most parents either move house out of area, or can afford private school, or can afford to buy/rent a very expensive house within 0.7km of the pretend comprehensive, or pretend to believe in a god, or dont give a crap about education and accept a sink school.

A clever child from an average income family has no chance of a good education. So I support grammars because they would be a lot more honest rather than all this pretend comprehensive nonsense.

“Bertrand as I keep saying, I'm specifically talking about non-selectives. Do you think it's correct that there are distinctions between the non-selective schools?”

I think all schools should be non selective. But there is no point pretending that secondary moderns and comprehensives are the same,

Akart from anything else, it would mean that at a first glance, all secondary modern schools would look as if they have done catastrophically in league table terms.

I just think it's bizarre and unfair that non-selective schools are somehow tiered by name.

However, there is an obvious difference between 'completely comprehensive' and 'taking those who are not selected to go elsewhere', and it is important to recognise these differences when e.g. comparing results and progress between different schools.

In grammar school debates on here, there is often confusion for those who live in wholly selective counties, because they assume genuine comprehensives (full range of ability) are exactly like their local secondary moderns (children not selected to go elsewhere, so a restricted range of ability skewed towards the lower end).

Being precise about vocabulary and what it means is critical to making these debates sensible and meaningful. Otherwise it is like 1 person using the term 'male' to mean 'all non-females, of any age', and another using the term 'male' to mean only 'non females over the age of 18'.

But there is no point pretending that secondary moderns and comprehensives are the same

Exactly the point I was making, secondary moderns are exactly like comprehensives. Not because sm are comprehensive but because all comps have had children selected away to other schools. Its just the difference between 6 and half a dozen.

The secondary modern school my ds went to gets excellent exam results, for a secondary modern. They would be distinctly average, to say the least, for a comprehensive.

“Exactly the point I was making, secondary moderns are exactly like comprehensives. Not because sm are comprehensive but because all comps have had children selected away to other schools. Its just the difference between 6 and half a dozen.”

Sotrty? All comprehensives have the top 25% by ability selected away to other schools? They don’t, you know......

AndromedaPerseus The 180 children who score most highly in the Bexley test are guaranteed their first choice of school, regardless of where they live. Is that what you're thinking of?

Interestingly, Erith used to be a "bilateral" school with a separate Grammar stream, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more.

Walkingdead,

I think it depends very much on the area.

Consider 2 areas of the same socio-economic mix, one in a wholly non-selective county, the other in Kent.

In a wholly non-selective area, an average of 7% of children (of a range of abilities) will go to private schools.

A few - again of mixed ability, and depending on options available - may go to a faith-based school.

In Kent, about the same % will go private.

25%, of the higher end of the ability range, will go to grammars.

a few may go to faith based schools.

Are you genuinely suggesting that the 'other' schools in both cases are the same and the difference is '6 of one and half a dozen of another'?

Sorry, meant to add a third example, of a super-selective area, with a very few grammar schools. In that case, the 2-4% of pupils of the highest ability ranges who might go to the superselective make much less difference, and the 'non grammars' in that case are much more like comprehensives elsewhere.

secondary moderns are exactly like comprehensives... because all comps have had children selected away to other schools

So is it safe to assume that all comps. are being outperformed by all Grammar Schools then?

I think some presume an SEN always means a learning disability. Sensory disabilities and physical disabilities don’t affect a child’s ability to pass the 11plus although adaptations may be needed.

Odd how very few children with statements make it through the 11+ then.......

All comprehensives have the top 25% by ability selected away to other schools? They don’t, you know......
Where I live in an area of the south west I would say its a lot higher then 25 %. Once you select out the moved out of area for better schools, privately educated, children with parents of 'faith', then you are left with those that are selected to go to the pretend comprehensive that selects for wealth, or the pretend comprehensive that is really a secondary modern.

So the only comprehensive a working/middle class family can actually choose is exactly like a secondary modern.

pretend comprehensive that selects for wealth

So if this schools is not a comp. what is it?

So if this schools is not a comp. what is it?
Its called a comprehensive but it does not have a comprehensive intake. I guess the colloquial terms would have something to do with 'leafy suburbs' or 'expensive catchment area'.

What % of high, middle and low ability children does it have?

Are you saying that the children who go to faith schools and private schools are all high ability?

Do you think children in selective areas do not go to faith and private schools?

How many of the comprehensive schools in the country fit your definition of "pretend comprehensive"?

The thing is, I can at least see the logic to a super-selective that takes the top 1-2% in terms of ability. Those are the dc who can be genuinely hard to differentiate for within an average classroom (particularly in Maths IME). They're probably also on the whole more obvious at an earlier age, and taking out 2% of super-high achievers seems less likely to skew the ability range in other schools. (You still leave the problem of tutoring / pushy parents, but lets assume a magic black-box solution to that one.)

I don't understand why someone on say the 76th or 80th percentile for VR / NVR ability age 10 benefits from learning Latin, for example, while someone on the 70th percentile doesn't.

A comprehensive is comprehensive if its intake is broadly representative of the spread and balance of abilities in its effective admissions area - and it likely to be very similar to the spread and balance of abilities within the primary schools within that effective admissions area.

Of course, the effective admissions areas of comprehensives differ, so some will have a higher proportion of wealthy families, others a higher proportion of deprived families, and that should be taken into account when evaluating their quality and effectiveness as educational institutions.

However, even the leafiest of leafy comprehensives have proportions of deprived families (as measured by PP) many times that of the average grammar school. When i sorted schools in England from lowest to highest %PP, the first non-grammar school was over 50 schools down the list.

Sadik, i agree. Especially because the 11+ is not very good at genuinely discriminating between pupils of similar ability. So 2 children who are both on the 75th percentile (or 12 on the 74th and 78th) can be deemed to 'need' wholly different education on the basis of a single test on a single day, whereas on another day their positions would have been reversed.

Its called a comprehensive but it does not have a comprehensive intake

So how do these "pretend comps." exist if "all comps have had children selected away to other schools."

Plenty of kids are bussed in from London boroughs

For which schools in Bucks? One of the admission criteria is distance you live from the school. How would you get in if you lived miles away?

A comprehensive is not a comprehensive if a family who has always lived in its effective admissions area can be 'selected for or selected against' in its admissions criteria.So no faith school is comprehensive, no grammar school is comprehensive, no secondary modern is comprehensive.

It IS a comprehensive if families who have always lived in the catchment, often for generations, can get in, but it is expensive to 'buy' your way in through a timely house move. That is what people often mean by 'pretend comprehensives' - schools that they would like their children to go to, and genuinely local families go to, but they cannot afford to buy their way into.

(Or, famously in one of these threads, the parent COULD buy their way into but didn't want to compromise on the size of their house..)