Parents' Buying places at Grammars

[Judy1234]

From the Telegraph today which is quite interesting...

"Middle-class parents are "buying" places at grammar schools, according to a leading academic.

Up to a third of children admitted to grammars in some parts of the country have received tuition at fee-paying preparatory schools, it has been claimed.

Professor David Jesson, of York University, said the findings underlined claims from the Conservatives that selective state schools "entrench" social advantage.
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It will be a boost for David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who has faced a revolt by backbenchers after severing the party's long-standing ties with grammar schools.

Mr Cameron said that selecting pupils by their academic ability at 11 benefited families from affluent areas but condemned working-class children to an inferior education.

Prof Jesson analysed the 22,000 children admitted to England's 164 grammar schools every year. He found that 3,000 - more than 13 per cent - entered grammars after being educated at private prep schools.

But just seven per cent of children in England are schooled in the private sector - suggesting that children from wealthy families are dramatically over-represented in grammar schools.

Prof Jesson said that in at least one local authority area 33 per cent of the grammar school population was from prep schools.

He also said pupils from the private sector scored similar results to state school pupils in national tests taken at the age of 11. However, they appeared to do better in the 11-plus - the grammar school entrance test - fuelling claims that they are "coached" to pass the exam.

He said: "Shouldn't we be more strict in looking at grammar admission procedures if wealthy parents are buying their children into schools that coach them for the 11-plus? On a national test basis, they are no better than state school pupils."

The most sought-after grammar schools get more than 10 applications for every place and their popularity continues to grow. League tables for 14-year-olds published earlier this year showed that 81 of the top 100 schools were grammars.

Parents are believed to be going to increasing lengths to ensure their children get in.

A report last year said that children as young as eight were being sent to private tutors for up to three years' coaching for the 11-plus. Some parents are spending up to £1,500 a year paying for one-to-one tuition. In Warwickshire, it was claimed that copies of 11-plus papers were being circulated among private tutors, who can improve their reputation by helping pupils into top grammar schools.

Brian Wills Pope, the chairman of the National Grammar Schools Association, said the figures underlined the need to build more grammar schools.

"The grammar school ethos is to take pupils from any background," he told the Times Educational Supplement. "I'm sure 11-plus coaching does go on in some areas. It's just a shame there aren't more places."

A separate report published this week by the London School of Economics said that a grammar school education could be very beneficial to children from poor backgrounds. But it warned that many could not get in because admissions procedures were skewed against them."

Chapter and verse, please Xenia, on grammar schools having significantly less good results than independants? certainly not true in Kent, for example.

Independents - I mean. My own expensive private educationobviously didn't teach me how to proof read! Among, I may say, many other things that my State educated children have learnt by the age of 11!

I would have to find the league tables of proper A levels (stripping out media studies and the rubbish subjects) which give for the country state and independents in together. Virtually all of the top 20 or even 50 are private schools. You have to be very careful which tables you take too as when we changed the tables for I think GCSEs recently state schools had been "cheating" putting people in for GCSEs which employers know are not hard or proper A levels. When they included maths and english which every private pupil has to take the state schools shot even further down.

It's hard to find the right stats.
The 2007 A levels on the Telegraph site www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/08/26/ngcse.pd f Independent are not geographical. North London my daughter's old school had about 99% A or B grade at A level, 2nd in the country which is good to see, Habs girls 15the, 95%, the other daughter's school and and Merchant Taylor's my son' school positioned 24th in the country (92%) AB.

Then look at the state tables www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/08/18/nalevel1 8b.pdf - QE barnet is first in the country for state schools at 92% AB, Dr Challoners Bucks only 81%, Tiffin only 90%, Henrietta Barnet 90%, Dr Challoners 74%.

So even if you take the top state grammar schools inthe country they are not as good as the privates.

? LEH is private. LEH is in Richmond which is non-grammar school. Neighbouring Kingston has Tiffins grammars. Not sure which is best results wise (would imagine not much difference). The Tiffins option would leave you with quite a lot of spare cash for educationally improving holidays, fencing classes, a yacht though!

Anyway, I think there is a big difference between enabling a child to reach their full potential and cramming them for 11+ exam - not the same thing at all and in many cases doing one means not doing the other.

Makes me so sad watching kids being crammed madly for 11+ and then slowly withering away. Watched a series be crammed for LEH and then slowly drop out one by one...

All the papers seem to do league tables differently. This one has lots of grammar schools beating independents. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6250419.stm

That looks like a very dubious table with none of the usual suspects in the upper reaches though, doesn't it?

suppose that fact that DS's sixth form has quite a few people from "high flying" independent down the road applying for year 13 after AS results announced as they are not on target to get the required A/B grades and putting the league tables results down for said independent

bloody obvious this goes on

I live in a grammar school and there are number of private primary schools which all claim to have 100% pass rate for the 11 plus.

Two of my neighbours sent their children to diffrent private primary schools because they focused on preparing the children to pass the 11 plus. One of the mothers even criticised the school because it did not do much science as most of the time was spent on doing stuff needed for the 11 plus. So much for the holistic education that they claim to provide.

Live in a grammar school area

My parents and some of my aunts and uncles live in the Kent grammar school area where I lived as a child. It is widespread in that area for parents to pay fees at prep school in the hope of getting their children to an excellent grammar school in Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Cranbrook etc.

In this area, different primaries have different approaches to the 11+. The LEA's guidance is that there should be no preparation other than a mock so that the children can familiarise themselves with the format/timing, etc.

However, some schools (including the boys' one) adhere to this guidance but others don't. This leads to an unlevel playing field which is why some parents then feel that have to go down the tutoring route to reclaim some sort of balance.

Personally I don't think there should be an exam at all. The schools know which children are best suited to a grammar and which aren't, so they should go on teacher recommendation coupled with the SATs results. Any school found to be recommending children who are not suitable (to improve the school's image) would be subject to some sort of sanction.

If you look at the stats in the OP, the apparent over-representation of independently educated pupils attaining State Grammar places (13%) is not extreme (against a backdrop of 6 or 7% of pupils receiving an inependent education in the population as a whole). Even if these children had not been prep educated, the parents would pay for tutors (and be well able to afford to do so) to groom them through the tests. They should do the same stats with family income, I bet the top end are over-represented as well, and the same stats with house price data of child's home - again, I bet the upper end of the scale is massively over-represented. Surely the point is this, these children wherever they hail from or have gone to school previously are being blessed with a fine state education based entirely on academic merit. Some people will only stop moaning when we are all truly mediocre.

Hurrah for Freckle! That is exactly what should happen. DH and I both grew up in this area and we really want to stay here to be near to DH's parents. If they weren't around, we'd be off like a shot - the house prices are totally skewed, primaries are bulging in Years 5 and 6 (funny that) and the world and his wife feels they have to pay for tutoring so that their children have any chance at all competing against the zillions of prep school children. Aargh!

Freckle that system would be fine at most schools and for most children BUT the Head at my DDs primary was really anti-Grammar (didn't know when we sent her there) and only entered 2-4 kids each year for the Kent Test. She told us our DD was not suitable for Grammar and when we insisted she put her in for it she fought us at every step of the application. How would you get round that with no test?

(Our DD passed the Kent Test with virtually top marks but was refused a Grammar place because of the Head's input . She got an Assisted Place at an independent school on the strength of her 11+ scores.)

The only problem with Freckle's plan is that it doesn't say what would happen if more children were recommended for grammar schools than there were places available.

In our area some schools have 10 applicants for every place, and a large proportion of those children would be entirely capable of benefiting from the schooling on offer. But with only 93 places available, how can the school choose if not by some kind of competitive test?

There has to be some kind of objective test, it would be completely unfair to rely on someone's opinion...

Oh and DS2 would probably appear on some list as a prep school kid coached for the 11+ to steal a place off some poor child.. When we sent DD private they also took him (again after assessment) but his Assisted Place was only for the Juniors and as much as I would have loved to keep him in the private sector we just couldn't afford it. He was clever enough to pass the 11+ (whatever they did at school) and went to the Grammar.

We moved DS3 to a different state primary because we were very unhappy with the original one, especially after what happened to DD. He had no coaching and passed the 11+ despite being thought to be borderline. In his case the school was happy to recommend him.

I actually think everyone should take it. The results could be used to set pupils in their next school. (My DH thinks so too, despite being an 11+ failure himself )

It's interesting because in the 7+ exams my sister's children's private school does to prepare children for 7+ entry the entry is based on the exam plus the head's report so part of the system is to try to get the head on side that XYZ is the right school. Similarly the prep school common entrance system for 13+ entry in the private sector works the same way - a fairly comprehensive entry at 5+ and then the school has a good few years to work out who is thick as a plank and wil be lucky to get in anywhere and who is top of the range scholarship to Westminster School type boy and then the schools trust their 50 year erlationship with the preps to make sensible recommendations.

Bit like university entry too - where children are mostly getting AAA AAB the differentiator as well as the personal statement on the form is the school's view and they are unmoveable, very fair and very strict because the entrance tutors trust them and they want to keep that trust.

They sit the SATS anyway, so there's the objective test plus think the others have it about right that any school worth its salt would not wanting to be putting children forward who couldn't cope in a grammar school - they could be "named and shamed" possibly.

If there were more pupils than places, I guess there would have to be a further process for the more borderline cases, much like there is now. I think it would work if schools could grade the pupils in their assessments e.g. A=definitely, B=should really go, C=borderline D=shouldn't go, E=couldn't cope at all

Tallulah - that sort of thing happens in our neck of the woods too. Except that I believe the grammars are so used to ideological subjectivity in the heads' reports from some neighbouring borough primaries that they are obliged to take them with a pinch of salt

And I agree about Kent Fio - at both ends of the county the grammars are anything but posh! Our local ones have exclusions and teenage mayhem in keeping with the general local demographic - and plenty of local accents to be heard too .
The super-smart band down the middle round Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge is a different world IMO.