If '59% of people favour selective education'- are there more socialists out there or more deluded parents?

[miljee]

ASSUMING this means 'academically selective' education.... This statistic, apparently from a YouGov poll makes ME think there are an awful lot of parents out there who genuinely believe their child would fall into the academically selected camp whereas, in some areas (I'm thinking 11+), only 5-10% of children actually do! OR am I being a cynic and not recognising those parents who genuinely want a Secondary Modern education for their own DCs? Could it be the 11+ was abolished so long ago in many areas that many of today's parents actually have no experience of the great Grammar/S.M divide?

I have to say that I am extremely pro-selective education. The comprehensive ideal that all children are educationally equal and learn at the same pace in the same way is a ludicrous fallacy and the result is that in accademnic terms it often educates down to the lowest common accademic denominator. However, whilst failing accademic children it also fails children with other abilities by failing to recognise the talents which they have and encourage them.

Comprehensive education has IMO led us down the path where the only successful outcome from school is a handful of GCSEs and A-levels and a place at university. This in turn has led to a proliferation of degrees such as media studies which are often not valued and of little practical application.

Instead of forcing everyone to follow the same path, we should have an education system which celebrates differences and supports different talents. Of course to be successful, society would need to learn to value someone who has a talent for carpentry or music as much as someone with the ability to obtain a third class degree in media studies. I can't see that that should be too hard for us to do!

I agree GooseyLoosey, the problem is that it is much too early to sort children at 11. My brother is a good example, he failed the 11+ and went to a Secondary Modern. After the first year there he resat the exam and changed to the Grammar school. At the end of the following year he went into the fast track stream that did exams a year early! He excelled at Latin and Greek.It is criminal,IMO, to judge children's aptitude and future at 11.

I agree that 11 is very early and selection then should not be a once and for all thing, there should be an ability to move children depending on how they develop.

A good comprehensive will allow children to move between different academic streams. The problem with comprehensives is that they are expected to cope with children with major emotional and behavioural difficulties or major learning difficulties.

Rather than creaming off the top 5%, it would be better to remove the bottom 5% to 10% who really can't cope with the national curriculum and put them into various different types of special schools.

The 11+ is unfair on boys as they go through pubety later and mature later. I think that 13+ is a better age of sorting children. In fact if a school offers a range of course that are open to all then the children will self select without the humilation of failing the eleven plus.

surely its a fallacy to actually believe that comprehensives think that children all learn at the same pace. My grammar school became a comprehensive the year below me and there was far more streaming and setting than there had even been before. All the children I know at comprehensives set children in most subjects.

Um, Goosey, media studies does have a practical application if you want to work in the media. As I was saying only today when I bumped into an old friend from university. Who is now a publishing director. And I was a magazine editor until I went freelance to spend more time with ds.

I can see the points Goosey is making, but there is an added difficulty in that there are some children who might be extremely academically able, but whose home backgrounds are so disupted and/or unsupportive that their academic potential remains hidden. For these children, being placed in a school that emphasises vocational training rather than academic study would be unjust.

I look on the comprehensive system as being a bit like democracy - a bad option, but better than all the other ones.

I've never come across a comprehensive school that doesn't practive either setting or streaming.

Complete mised ability teaching at GCSE level is exceptionally rare.

We set in science from year 7 onwards, as do English, Maths and MFL. Only humanities are taught in mixed ability groups and they set at GCSE level

and (warming to my theme) an understanding of the media is as important today as an understanding of engineering was in the days when our economy was based on heavy industries. Engineering is still a valid subject, obviously, but we are living through an age defined by mass communication.

My Dad went to a technical college too Leosdad. he left at 15 to start an apprenticeship and did professional engineering exams. Nowadays I think all engineering jobs require an engineering degree, although it is still possible to become an accountant purely by passing professional exams. I have a feeling it was also possible in the past to become a solicitor without a law degree, as long as you passed the relevant exams.

I think universities have changed a great deal since the heyday of the grammar school. As far as I understand, in the 50's anybody studying an 'applied' subject (e.g. engineering) was looked down upon, and universities specialised in academic subjects. I suppose the exception would be medicine, but that has also largely been taught in hospitals.

The point I am making I suppose is that its only comparitively recently that somebody would go to university to learn a subject that would enable them to practice a trade/profession of any sort, even if that trade would be very highly respected and competitive now.

Also, until recently a large labour force was required to work in mines/steel etc., whether individuals were suited to that job or not.

I may be talking out of my a*@e, with much of this post, but my point is that I don't think you can compare numbers of students going to university today with numbers of students going to university in the past and say that standards have declined without taking into account other huge social and educational changes. (But university entrance is a whole other thread really...)

er, what survey is this? I can find no recent survey that says 59% of parents favour selection.

I think Reallytired's idea is well worth exploring. I am less concerned about my dd being in a school of kids with similar ability but would like her to be in a school with kids of similar behaviour. She is very well behaved and wouldn't dream of disrupting a lesson ( I was the same) and frankly, it is intolerable to expect well behaved kids to have to put up with the severe lesson disruption which does go on.
Also agree that selection based on one day's exam is wrong. It is also wrong that in the areas where there is still a selective system, there are more Grammar places available for boys than there are for girls. I haven't heard of any mixed grammars - is that because most of the places would be taken by girls?

Apologies edam, you are of course right. I used it as a fairly hackneyed example but I do recognise for some people it leads to a good a rewarding career.