If Labour make private schools charge VAT then they should allow new grammar schools to be created

[iPaddy]

I live in an area with zero grammars, no real choice in secondaries other than (often failing) local comprehensives or private.

I appreciate the arguments against private schools (creates unfair advantage) but what about areas with grammars? That's also an advantage. I'd love the option of a grammar school for the kids locally. The bright ones are being let down by the current situation. Has Labour said how they will address that?

@Madrescuechicken All the more reason not to decide on a child's future education based on one test at the age of 10.

@Araminta1003 before the government introduced austerity my comp and others in the area decided you had SEN if you were very bright. They would then put things in place to ensure you got the education you needed. Lots of it still relied on the good will of teachers and lecturers including in other institutions, plus the pupil/student themselves to have some flexibility.

My point is you don't need grammars to do this you need fund schools and education properly.

@noblegiraffe
I suspect there are multiple factors involved. I don’t doubt that children who have been specifically tutored for the test do better at it and that some of the disadvantaged children who are capable of grammar school lose out on a place for that reason. But I also think that part of the reason for the attainment gap is likely to be the effect that poverty has on development in early childhood.

You missed my point which was that there is a strong link between deprivation and poor parenting. You might not have spent much as much time in poor areas as I have. To acknowledge this link is not 'disturbing' or 'disgusting' or any other of the middle class hand-wringing terms you have ascribed to it. It is 100% necessary to tackle poor parenting which leads to poor behaviour in our schools in order to work towards the fully comprehensive system that you say you want. I would have no problem with my daughter going to the local comp if there was less bad behaviour and more focus on learning, and not constant disruption from children with no boundaries in place.

A lot of poverty is also to do with poor mental health and then using drugs/alcohol to self medicate. Obviously that is never going to be a great place for a child to thrive. Most of us using state schools will have experienced this in some shape or form - the type of parent who shows up late most days or not at all because they couldn’t make it to school despite not working, barely ever reads with their DC and rarely completes homework. There is no point pretending this does not exist. What teachers need is TAs to work 1 to 1 on catch up reading etc with those kids. My DCs primary school did this and they could because they only had 2-3 kids like this a year. Across 4 DCs in state schools we have also experienced multiple parental suicides over the years.
In deprived areas where there are far more DCs like this, what are teachers actually meant to do with such low funding for extra help? And let’s not pretend it gets any easier when those kids reach 13/14 and hormones are raging.

We should start by funding maternal services properly as well. Being chucked out of hospital after a traumatic birth with no support absolutely increases the rate of postnatal depression leading to likely worse outcomes for children. And that applies to women across the income levels. When I compare what we have to put up with in England when giving birth to other European countries with similar GDP per capita it is pretty shocking. The centralised ideological health and education system we have here is hugely inefficient and simply does not work optimally. And politicians using it to get votes on both ends really annoys me.

“With Google translate and AI not sure speaking 4 languages and Latin will be much use. Being able to code or work at a trade might be more lucrative currently”

Coding is a language too. Kids with high IQ absolutely benefit from broad educational exposure. My DC learnt languages and Latin very quickly and is ace at Coding and Maths too. So are most of his friends at his superselective grammar. As AI takes over people need to be more analytical and educated, not less so.

Even the US has schools for the gifted. It is absolutely ridiculous to expect all DC to fit into one mould.

As regards the poster who said that DC with high IQ have SEN, yes they do to some extent. However, they do not just benefit from excellent teaching, they absolutely also benefit from peer group. Especially if their intelligence is off the scale, they can present differently in play from an early age and often it is a peer group they desperately need after being different at primary school.

@Araminta1003 Im in the US and the gifted programs are filled with the children of the PTA mothers. My two children who both have been tested formally and have a report showing their IQ to be 145+ were both denied entry to the program because they didn’t do well on an achievement test.

Giftedness and achievement are two entirely separate things and add ASD to the mix and their needs are not met in the public schools. I’m now paying a reasonable amount for private school and high school is going to cost me $40k per child per year.

We need to not look at the U.S. system. It’s not a country that has good social mobility and the discrimination is something else. Why we would want to emulate this is beyond me.

I think we should look at how UAE and KSA have both transformed their education systems in the past twenty years. The talent coming out of that region is impressive. There is also Russia. My children thrived with the Russian program Tools of the Mind and I had them in Russian school. They loved it and thrived.

Its worth noting that a total of 1,160 of 16 year old students got straight 9s across the whole of England. This includes students sitting between 7 and 11 GCSEs in one sitting. The most common number being 10 (500 pupils). This is less than 0.5% of the cohort. Obviously there will be a handful of people who sat them early to add to that but a lot if early sitters only do one subject early.

@Aintnosupermum- where are you in the US? Surely the school districts differ massively. I have friends in New York City and Washington DC with gifted kids and they are happy. Also with the advanced programs they take in later high school years, but I am not pretending to be an expert on US wide schooling, far from it.

Anyway, my gifted DS is in a superselective state grammar in London and it has been great for him. I don’t want to mention his actual assessed IQ because it might be boastful. And he absolutely is very different because of it and has struggles because of it. One thing is also that he has a strong need to self explore and self teach and find stuff to uni level, as do many of his friends at school and that requires a different type of teaching.

I’m in Dallas at the moment, in their top district, and wholly unimpressed by the public school everyone rants and raves about. I was previous in New Jersey, a commuter town to nyc and offerings for G&T were abysmal.

The Davidson institute have been fantastic and the only voice of common sense when it comes to educating gifted children.

NYC is interesting because the G&T programs and selective schools are all Asian. The parents are not high income but will work a 2nd job to pay for tutoring.

The parents are very strict, focused on academics and goals are clearly laid out for their children. The recent push back of affirmative action in schools really did leave a bad taste in my mouth. Most of these parents are from India and China. They were accepted and benefited from affirmative action policies themselves. African American children are still being left behind and it’s wrong to remove policies which have had a positive impact.

Interesting, the superselective grammars in London are also full of Asian (mainly Indian) kids now. But there was never any affirmative action - it is their culture to work hard academically. Getting in is all based on test scores which you can prepare for within reason. So a child would need to be quite naturally intelligent in the first place but with a ton of preparation the natural ability would not need to be exceptional. State schools here do not prepare for the tests - it is all left to the parents to prepare and research what is required.

Every country has its own challenges. Big differences in England, for example, between Indian children vs Pakistani & Bangladeshi children. It is important to differentiate.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/compendium/economicreview/february2020/childpovertyandeducationoutcomesbyethnicity

Primary schools do not prepare for the 11+ because it's supposed to be a level playing field. Everyone is supposed to go in cold. Ha!!!

Especially if their intelligence is off the scale, they can present differently in play from an early age and often it is a peer group they desperately need after being different at primary school

@Araminta1003 My, my relations and my friends' comp schools provided that peer group.

In fact the people I know personally who suffered from being way more intelligent than their peers where privately educated including at public schools. One was lucky and found his tribe at 16 when he crossed over to the state system, while the rest had to wait until university.

I would rather see them scrap all grammars personally, not introduce new ones.

I don't see that happening realistically, but it's a terribly unfair system.

@Aintnosupermum - https://www.davidsongifted.org/ - it really does look amazing, especially if they are now offering free online programs too for those who cannot move to the Academy. Sadly, I do not believe we have anything like this in England.
What we have is people paying up themselves for private schools (or getting full bursaries) or online schools where children have become school refusers, often with zero funding from our own government.
I am assuming this is a collaboration with the university as well. There is no reason why we cannot have stuff like this in London or Oxford or Cambridge, if there were the will to do it.

I believe this one is a collaboration with the university https://www.kingsmathsschool.com/

However, what was fascinating to me about the Davidson video I watched is that they really allow the students to self lead across many different subjects and also extra curricularly. I think you only get that in top private schools in England which most people cannot afford.

@Reugny - where were these comps located? Cambridge, Oxford, London etc??

For those of you who think academic selection at 10 is a good idea, can I ask where is the evidence that the DCs who are the brightest at 10 are also going to be the brightest when it comes to GCSEs, or A levels, or beyond?

Actually I can answer that for you: there isn't any. Quite the reverse, in fact, as there is plenty of research showing that DCs peak (and trough) at different ages. There are myriad academic and social reasons for this. Grammar schools themselves acknowledge that there is little direct correlation between 11+ scores and GCSEs results 5 years later (you can access this information via a FOI request but as it isn't centralised you have to apply to each individual school you want the information from).

The problem with the grammar school/secondary modern model is in its lack of flexibility. In a lot of cases it removes, or virtually removes, the possibility of a later flourishing child being able to access more academic qualifications at a high grade.

I support comprehensive education provided there is effective streaming. I also support superselective grammar schools for the highly gifted and SEN support for those who need it the most including far more nurturing smaller schools with small class sizes. Sometimes this can all be provided on the same site, sometimes it cannot. It is well documented that there is an increase in SEN and mental health issues amongst youngsters. We can’t gloss over that and those pupils absolutely deserve money spent on them and far more support. It is really a health matter that crosses over into Education. I also support far more vocational pathways. If you look at the highest performing EU countries most have strong and well supported vocational pathways. We are spending our money completely wrongly if many Finnish kids go to school for just 9 years and ours 14, yet they outperform us. We are not prioritising well being enough and the whole child, including their physical and mental health.

All I was saying is that for my gifted DC his mental well being is very closely linked to his academic day to day. And children like him also deserve to be supported. My other 3 DC are intelligent but not off the scale into the 0.001 per cent territories and they are well served by the state system we have access to. However, because we are in London, we appear to have a choice of schools which I understand is not the case up and down the country.

@Araminta1003 Do you mean streaming or setting?

Setting makes a whole lot more sense than streaming!

Not to me- setting vs streaming depends on the area and cohort and size of school. My local schools that have grammar streams dependent on year 7 CAT scores are not wholly set in stone - there is flexibility there not least because of timetabling. It obviously means different things in different schools? It seems to be used more like a gifted and talented label and assumption of higher sets in my local schools. Where is it completely set in stone like a proper grammar?

London comps with banding tests- certain parents will only put the school first if they know their DC made Band A and or music scholarship etc knowing full well that translates to top set Science, Maths and English from Day 1 of Year 7 (coupled with Greater Depth Sats). People absolutely do this in the real world. Once in top set it is effectively streaming as long as you keep up.

We applied for 2 banded comprehensives in different boroughs - they don't tell you what band you are in until the letter comes after allocation day.

@Araminta1003 I do agree with you that very high performing children and those with associated SEN need the right support, like everyone else.

My maths- orientated Dc was not 'off the scale' like your DS, but did get 9 at GCSE, A* at A level and top marks in Further maths . The top mathematicians were always in teams and clubs preparing to compete in various national maths competitions, they did STEM competitions (and beat top private schools to win regional heats) etc.

As I said before both London comps my DC had experience of were hugely diverse in terms of all social factors and attainment levels. Gang members present etc. There was never any bullying about being clever - there was acknowledgement that the clever kids were clever. And one of my Dc is very weedy, and musical, and has a discernible physical disability.

The phrase 'he will be eaten alive' was used on MN a lot by parents of similar kids - he was never even nibbled.

Young people like your DS need the right support. Whether that means the whole school structure has to create separate buildings and institutions and divide kids out at 10 etc, I am not convinced. Certain schools (comprehensives) could have 'super sets' with places open to genius mathematicians (it is usually the maths students) for example. Or classes conducted over Zoom with similar students form other schools. In fact that would enable all schools to offer minority interest courses such as Latin / Mandarin or whatever.

We need to be innovative, flexible open and creative about how to educate, rather than just harp backwards and forwards between old models. We are nearly a quarter of the way into C21st for heavens sake.