Should all Grammar Schools be super selective?

[StressedaboutUni]

Rather than offering places based on living in a catchment area, surely grammar schools should simply admit by highest ranking? This would prevent local schools from losing all their bright pupils as some would not get into the grammar of it was purely based on ranking score. For example in Barnet, QE boys purely admits on highest ranking and all the local schools are doing really well compared to the average secondary school in England.
In addition, it would make Grammar schools even more meritocratic as you don’t need to live in the (often expensive) catchment area to get in.

@7Worfs I think you will find that not all are very ‘wealthy’. Otherwise why wouldn’t they choose a private school where they can have other advantages such as small class sizes and better facilities.

Hi @StressedaboutUni , I suspect it's very different from area to area. As an example, I live in an area where 4 nearest grammars are Colchester and Chelmsford. (One boys one girls in each.) The Colchester schools are super selective, the Chelmsford Schools have a catchment and something like the 1st 150 places are in a 12 mile radius, then the final 30 are score order (so not necessarily reserved for OOC.) The reality is that the scores even the in catchment kids have to get in our area are just as high as the ones who get in to the super selective. (The OOC scores for the Chelmsford schools are comparable with the higher scores at the Colchester schools.) So based on our area alone, I'd say a similar number of brighter pupils are having places in both super selective and catchment. Areas like Kent are quite different as more grammars I think.

Op, no. Look at the map of Kent. If all the grammars become superselective and some pull students across county borders, how does that change the schools far from such borders? It won’t.

I blame my device*.

Oh and Chelmsford has a number or outstanding schools, more than Colchester so the catchment grammar can't be affecting it that much!

@Wenfy , I am not saying that a child like your dd would HAVE to attend a grammar. Just that the criteria for accessing a grammar should be ‘having an ability so far outside the norm that an efficient education is impossible in a true comprehensive ‘ and that in that case it should be named on a compulsory EHCP - but parental choice applies as it currently does.

The annual train fare is over £10,000. These are not hard-up families. The school is considered elite, over 300 years old, and every year it gets harder to get in. If you can’t afford tutoring, tough luck.

So the local bright boys end up in the grammar 30 miles away.
It’s an absolute shit-show.

@cantkeepawayforever I think that such a system of only the very very brightest going to a grammar would work but that would probably require an entire dismantling of the current system.

We do this in NI OP.
It’s a nightmare and traumatic for the children. It’s also led to a two tier education system.

You sound so naive here. Tutoring isn’t gaming the system - it’s the only way all State primary kids can learn the content required for 11+ exams or get familiar with the exam style. KS2 content is only covered in one type of 11+ exam - the other expects state kids to learn totally new ways of thinking / studies. So tutoring isn’t a problem. The problem is that the KS2 national curriculum is insufficient for the needs of any but lowest performing able bodied students.

One near me introduced a priority catchment because pushy parents were making their DC commute ridiculous distances to get to the school and they were concerned about student welfare as a result. They have not needed to admit from outside this area since its introduction. It isn't hard to find 180 clever kids within the zone each year. It's within 10km of the school so encompasses less well off areas as well as more affluent ones.

An annual train ticket from Central London to Buckingham/birmingham = £10-15k per year per child (cheaper if you come in from the suburbs or drive part of the way)

School fees for private school (eg there are a few in Buckinghamshire = 15-30k per child.

As rich people don’t stay rich without at least a rudimentary amount of common sense most will prefer to send kids to the cheaper but still excellent grammar school. These commutes aren’t even that long by train (most london kids can expect to travel over an hour or two each way on the bus for a grammar school)

@BlackberrySky do you happen to know if the school decided on its own, or was there public pressure?
I kind of want to start campaigning for this in my town.

For reference the girls’ grammar in town has a catchment area and they are doing just fine.

The one in Cheltenham is already superselective, with people coming miles for it, so would impact the local schools less anyway.

All the Gloucestershire grammars are superselective - that was my point. The density of grammars in Gloucester means that the other schools are much more impacted than Cheltenham

Again, state schools typically have sibling preference on the list. What if your older child is top 3% but your younger is top 6% so doesn’t get in with a “score only” system?

(My kids actually did sit the 11+ at a distance blind school when we were considering moving. They both would have got in on score, but we decided to go
private where we lived instead)

Had we gone, we would have tried to live walking distance to the school and would then have been “ in catchment” so I’m not sure how that avoids the issue you mention?

With the kids that arguably could be better served by superselectives (i.e. those who, like @cantkeepawayforeverdescribes, "cannot efficiently be educated in mainstream due to how far their ability lies from the norm") without detriment to the ability profile present in mainstream schools, it doesn't really work that way. For some kids, being in a standard comprehensive school top set is like an average top-set student spending their whole school career in lower or bottom sets. Slow, unrewarding, unengaging, frustrating.

You often see parents on here say that if the kid is that bright, then they can do enrichment in their own time, do self-directed learning, and anyway, a bright kid will do fine anywhere (for "do fine" read "get eight Grade 9s and four A*s", when an education which catered for their abilities might get them a lot further than that, though the qualifications would look the same). But just being academically able doesn't mean a kid is magically self-directed and motivated, and in fact they may have worse study skills and motivation than other children, as they've never had to try that hard.

If you imagine a kid with average abilities going through primary school with everything set at a pace far, far slower than they're capable of, who never has to put in any effort to understand, and then at secondary school has to sit through bottom-set lessons all day every day for years, and can get the maximum grades available to them without applying themselves much, do you think it's going to be easy for them to come home and do lots of extra hours of studying to get them up to the Grade 5s they're actually capable of?

I know that excelling in some subjects doesn't necessarily mean excelling in all, so any "special school for abnormally academically able kids" would have to be able to manage someone who's top 0.5% for essay-writing subjects but falls apart when asked to do algebra, or vice versa, and would definitely have to be able to handle learning difficulties, ASD, and so on. But that's doable if the special school is big enough, and generally the most able kids — those one or maybe two kids out a whole school year where it's obvious to everyone they're the "smart kid" — tend to be able across the board, unless there's specific learning difficulties getting in their way.

It is far too expensive to administer. Research how many out of county places Kent has and how many applicants. Something like 5500 out of county applicants in 2022 chasing very few places… some people then move into county if the kid just passes rather than gets almost a 100 per cent, because getting the handful of out of county places is extremely difficult now.

KEGS in Chelmsford has the right balance. 120 places from a wide catchment area of 12.5 miles as the crow flies plus 30 places for the highest scorers out of catchment. Still very hard to get a catchment place - need a score of around 345. In comparison, the pass mark for entry into the Southend grammars within catchment is 303.

The local comprehensives in Chelmsford are very good and do not seem to be impacted by the grammars.

I'm afraid I don't know the history behind it as it's been in place a while and my DC don't attend the school. I believe, though, that the impetus came from the school, as they were seeing students struggling with very long journeys.

I'm interested to hear why you are suggesting this @StressedaboutUni

Are you looking to get your dc into grammar, are they already at grammar or are you a teacher or campaigner?

I know that excelling in some subjects doesn't necessarily mean excelling in all, so any "special school for abnormally academically able kids" would have to be able to manage someone who's top 0.5% for essay-writing subjects but falls apart when asked to do algebra, or vice versa, and would definitely have to be able to handle learning difficulties, ASD, and so on.

The sensible way to approach this, btw, would be to have these schools, as some existing Special Schools are, co-located or adjacent to true comprehensives, so that there can be Special School provision for areas of strength and potential for mainstream education for areas of relative weakness and to broaden access to some facilities.

The superselectives in West Kent Skinners, Judd, Tonbridge Grammar School for girls actually reduced their out of county places significantly in the last 10 years thereby making it more local. Orpington still has St Olaves - that is super selective with no catchment and on the train line from Central London. The girls equivalent Newstead is currently a 9 mile catchment. The Bexley grammars give places to the top 180 scorers out of catchment, currently.

I have friends teaching in some of the above schools. They say once there you cannot always spot the top scorers in a class environment. Many are simply tutored in from an early age. There is no such thing as being highly gifted and necessarily getting a top score in an entry test at age 10.

Makes sense cant.