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.

cantkeepawayforever

There are 3,408 state funded secondary schools overall, so again it is worth considering whether we first address a problem which affects no more than around 1 in 10 schools in England

But the Sutton Trust report only looked at the data for the top 500 comprehensive schools - we don't know whether the schools ranked 501-1000 are socially selective as well because they weren't included in the study.

Ah, just checked. They have erroneously classed faith schools as comprehensives

Difficult to ignore the existence of faith schools though - there are 637 state funded secondary schools in England classed as faith schools (data from Parliament briefing March 2017) - 19% of all state funded secondary schools in England - accounting for 26% of state funded secondary schools in Inner London and 31% of state funded secondary schools in the North West of England. Admittedly, not all faith schools are good.

Sorry, I don't agree with sending children on unnecessary journeys miles from their home because of a lottery - it's wasteful, would clog up the roads and be extremely bad for the environment, not to mention a stressful waste of children's time and does nothing to foster community spirit.Also, it's bound to cause problems for children with caring responsibilities, children with disabilities, costs of providing/paying for transport, etc, etc. I do not see that as a good way to solve any problems - more like a way of causing a whole new set of problems.

"So wealthy areas that dont have any FSM children still wont have any FSM pupils in their school, just like it is now"

Of course it wouldn't solve the problem entirely, but I think there are many, many schools with very small catchments, and with substantial numbers of poorer families living within a 2 -3 mile radius, so within accepted walking distance for secondary school children.

I'm sure there is no perfect answer, and I'm wary of lotteries for the reasons roundabout gives, but that doesn't mean that one couldn't improve matters somewhat.

"Let’s hope a usurper thwarts your twee virtue signalling ambitions."

Twee virtue signalling? Explain?

Let’s contunue looking at all forms of state sponsored educational discrimination before starting on independent schools -which actually save the state money. The grammar system -albeit unfair to those who don’t get in- discriminates against a far smaller proportion of children than faith schools do. One third of schools are faith, almost totally funded by the taxpayer these days- but freely allowed to continue to discriminate against children whose parents are not of faith -or who cannot commit to 7+ years church attendance. The church is raking in a fortune from all those families forced to contribute to the coffers every week for 7 years (more when needing to get siblings in too). Most buggers paying for this service are excluded from attending.

I think there are many, many schools with very small catchments, and with substantial numbers of poorer families living within a 2 -3 mile radius So you would force every school in the country to ditch any catchment or admissions priority area? I would put a large bet if you forced all schools to accept a percentage of 'chair chuckers' (not my phrase), you would see middle class families moving en masse until there were NO poor families with 2-3 miles of certain schools.

I think IheartNiles has the right idea, what strikes me is that threads like these get people so worked up about the tiny numbers of grammar schools selecting people and very little about the massive discrimination by faith schools. As if there is something morally more acceptable selecting a child based on their parents real or pretend religious privilege verses the child's actual ability.

Clavinova,

Far from ignoring faith schools, I would separate them out as a different problem, because their form of selection is so overt that putting them in the same analysis as schools which have more limited forms of social selection completely muddies the analysis.

To me it is quite clear:

• Selection by ability or aptitude should be against the law in all state funded schools, with the sole exception of Special Schools to which children are admitted through Ed Psych / medical assessment and EHCPs as before, and of which there should be more., more uniformly geographically distributed and they should be better funded.

• Selection by faith should also be against the law in all state funded schools. If a school wishes to retain its faith nature (e.g. Jewish schools, Catholic schools) they should become private, funded by parents or by their faith body.

• Covert selection by a state funded school e.g. cost of uniform, requirement for parental contributions, disproportionate use of exclusion for certain children etc should, like safeguarding, become a limiting judgement in Ofsted inspections. If a school is found to do any of these, it is an automatic failure of the inspection.

• All schools (state and private) should be inspected every 3 years by Ofsted for the quality of their education, fully statistically adjusted for intake.

• Schools should have sufficiently large effective catchments to allow balanced intakes for each school in terms of SEN, %PP and other measures. So for example, a school could have a catchment of 2 miles for PP children, but 300 metres for wealthy able children, while a neighbouring school might have the reverse.

• Admission criteria for all schools funded by the state should be set and administered centrally, to ensure no school can set criteria which are to its own benefit.

• No state funded school can retain historical endowments. Any schools with such funding either have to become private or release the funding for general national education.

• The national funding formula should be completely rewritten, with much more uniform funding nationwide. As disadvantaged and SEN children will be more uniformly distributed, funding per pupil per school can be almost identical, except in inner urban areas to account for some earnings weightings for staff.

Walking, do you assume that all children from poorer families are inevitably 'chair chuckers'?

I have taught in a school with nearly 40% PP and never saw a chair chucked until I moved to a school with far less than a third of this, and even then it was a child with SEN where no Special School place was available.

Walking, I agree with you that faith schools are a problem, and should be abolished. However, the fact that there are faith schools does not mean that grammars are not ALSO unfair and should not ALSO be abolished. To try to deflect the argument onto faith schools or covert discrimination by some non-faith comprehensives instead does not make grammars fair.

VelvetSpoon
They all left school pretty much illiterate and ended up in min wage jobs where I know at least 3 of them still are 30 years later

If you are giving us all a history lesson you should be aware that the first 30/35 years of 'comprehensivisation' are viewed as something of a failure - plenty of reports and interviews about 'the betrayed generation' for me to quote on this:

1993: Alan Smithers and Pamela Robinson found that 40% of those with 3 A levels come from independent and grammar schools which have only 11% of the cohort. The authors commented that while:
…the comprehensives include a number of first class, quite academic ex grammar schools which do well with A levels, there are very few A level pupils (relatively speaking) spread among all the others. For many of the school population therefore, A levels is very much a minority sport^

1996: Comprehensive schools have failed, according to David Blunkett, Labour's education spokesman. Last week he angered teachers by saying so. But, as Tony Blair's son crosses London to a grant maintained school and Harriet Harman's prepares to take the train to a grammar school, how can the Labour Party pretend otherwise? Mr Blunkett blamed mixed-ability teaching, pursued in some schools with ideological fervour, for many of the comprehensives' failings.

2000:To put it another way, if comprehensive schools across the country were achieving for their pupils results which are as good as those for pupils of all abilities – both high and low – in selective schools, the overall GCSE results for the country would be about 30% higher than they currently are or about another 60,000 pupils^

About 700 comprehensive schools – a quarter of the total – perform less well than the average for secondary modern schools

2001: Introducing a Green Paper outlining the plans, Mr Blair said comprehensive education had been allowed to become an end in itself. Despite all the idealism that had surrounded it, only a minority of pupils had gained good qualifications and levels of failure remained stubbornly high. He said the time had come to move on to a "post comprehensive" era.

cantkeepawayforever
That is a long list of reforms!

Claivinova,

To be honest, the main reform is to make selection by any means whatever, whether overt or covert, unlawful, or at very least the cause of failure of an Ofsted inspection, and to set admissions criteria centrally to balance intakes across different schools.

The other is to fund education properly nationwide, including an expansion of well-funded special schools.

The rest are details of how specific details should be 'mopped up'

(And apologies, I also threw in reform of Ofsted, because dysfunctional educational and public behaviour in response to the current Ofsted regime is a bugbear of mine!)

Clavinova,

Are all the studies you quote fully corrected for the different socio-economic intakes of all the schools involved?

So, for example, if the 700 comprehensive schools in the 2000 analysis were in areas where measures of deprivation were much higher than those in the areas which contained the residual SMs they were being compared to, and therefore the intake of the SMs were on average both more able and less deprived than those comprehensives, then that is an obviously flawed analysis.

If the analysis was of matched pairs of comprehensives with SMs of similar socio-economic makeup, then of course the conclusions are much more likely to be significant.

Which is the case?

It also, of course, depends on what counts as a secondary modern. The 'other' schools in fully selective counties only? The 'other' schools in partially selective counties (Gloucestershire, contains both grammar schools and very good 'near comprehensives', which an analysis wishing to make a political point could declare to be secondary moderns)?

I mean, it is obviously ludicrous to compare a SM in the leafiest of leafy Bucks towns - or worse, a near-comprehensive in an affluent part of the Gloucestershire countryside, far from the remaining grammars - with a comprehensive in central Skelmersdale. However politicians are very fond of doing just that with educational data, pretending that context and intake has no impact whatever on output.

As far as the left are concerned , comprehensive schools could never be a failure. This being because the sole ideology was to impose in children a notion of equality of outcome !

It was never about improving the education of the masses more about brainwashing or transplanting an ideological belief everyone is equal.

The very fact that comprehensive schools are in affect more socially selective than grammar schools is anomaly from the political left's intention ( this being remarked on by me and a teacher poster upthread).

The very fact that comprehensive schools are in affect more socially selective than grammar schools

Are you sure that this is true? Are you suggesting that if Kent moved to comprehensive schools, all these comprehensive schools would have LESS than the 6-8% PP that the current grammars do, despite the average of 23% across the country?

How many grammar schools are more socially selective than the most socially selective comprehensive (genuinely comprehensive, not faith) schools? I seem to remember, when I checked, it was about 50?

Social selection is more than just about an arbitrary 'Pupil Premium' monetary number. This based around a family not either singular or collectively working 40 hours a week !.

Social selection is evident with the 'cliques' that are bound to go on more in a comprehensive school . This being where the 'currency' is more likely to be about where you live than how many A grades you have !

However, I bet Tonbridge, Weald of Kent, Judd & Skinners et.al would still retain the same FSM% rate if they became comprehensive .

Perhaps the FSM% would actually be lower due to their location and the fact that demand would outstrip supply !

The desperate struggle parents would have trying to find schools with a grammar school history would see to that !

letstalk2000 - what a lot of rubbish. The grammar school I went to was full of cliques. There was plenty of scope for kids to be interested in where you lived, what you talked about, what you owned, what music you listened to, how you dressed, etc. If there are any cliques at my dss' comprehensive, they drift by them, blissfully unaware and uninterested and have an assortment of very mismatched friends - as did I at my grammar school, to be fair, as I never had the slightest interest in trying to conform to any particular group. I think you are trying to make rules for different types of school out of your own isolated experiences. Every school is different, and grammar schools are by no means immune from nasty, bitchy, unpleasant, cliquey behaviour and bullying. The town I live in has no faith secondary schools, selective schools, or even academy schools and is far too small to have a huge selection of schools for parents to get their knickers in a twist over. Generally, children just opt for the school closest to their side of town. There is very little to encourage divisions in the first place.

comprehensive schools are in affect more socially selective than grammar schools

I would expect this is the same in most of (England)

The town I live in has no faith secondary schools

Does anyone know if there faith schools in Bucks & Kent?

If so do they have a much lower number of disadvantaged DCs in them than the Grammar Schools do?

Bucks faith schools - just had a look quickly but did not really find it - this C of E primary seems to mention grammars etc

www.longwick.bucks.sch.uk/secondary-schools-2/

Some C of E schools and I think Catholic in the 1800s and 1900s provided the entirety of the buildings to the state for eduction. If we abolished those schools those churches would need to be paid an awful lot of money for that land (or take the school back into private ownership or charge rent I think to the state)

“Does anyone know if there faith schools in Bucks & Kent?”

There are faith schools in Kent. The ones I know have a higher level of PP and SEN children than grammar schools, but significantly lower than secondary moderns. As you would expect.