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?

According to BBC, there are 163 grammar schools - mainly in counties that never went comprehensive in the first place like Lincolnshire.

For context, there are about 3,500 maintained secondary schools in total

As a pp has already said, it’s true of many non-selective schools as well.

Bus fare, really? That’s the argument against grammars?

Sorry this feels like therapy! One more “secret” I want to put out there is that state schools actively encourage heads of dept. To make life hell for upper pay scale teachers,l so that they leave and a new teacher can replace them. I have seen it so many times and witnessed it. Everyone knows but nothing ever done. This means the experienced teachers are replaced by new teachers who might not have the experience of dealing with challenging behaviours. As a teacher friend put it “ well it makes sense why pay a teacher on UPS3 whose earning £49k+ When you can have a new teacher whose earning around £27k”.

I haven’t witnessed this in private or grammar or even the PRU. These places value experience. Of course there’s private’s that employ non-teachers but not all privates go down this route.

@WhileMyDishwasherGentlyWeeps that just illustrates how out of touch you and some people are in this debate with real circumstances of many families. Bus fares, yes really, they affect whether children can attend grammar schools.

It depends on the area you live in. The exam for our nearest grammar is easier than the entrance test for some local private schools.

I disagree.

And I say this as someone paying fees for a selective school because the local schools are inadequate but I would far rather live in a country with decent state comprehensive education (and yes higher taxes to pay for it)

A good and adequately funded comprehensive is just as good as a gramnar for bright pupils and also works for all the other kids too. Comprehensive education is supposed to have provision for the very brightest and the very weakest in each subject. The huge benefit is that a child can be in the "grammar level" stream for maths and science but be much lower down the streaming structure in English and Humanities, and can therefore get the right kind of teaching across the curriculum. Separate grammar schools only work for the kids who are able to be top stream across the board, and the kids who are genius level in some areas but need additional support in others get lumped in with the lower-level classes for everything and aren't stretched to their full potential in their areas of talent.

Obviously this is an idealised and theoretical description of the comprehensive system and very few comprehensive schools actually achieve that end, but establishing more grammar schools is totally the wrong way to go. Working out how to get more comprehensive schools to achieve an outstanding quality is the top priority.

Transport costs affect choices for sixth forms too. I live in Hampshire where most schools don't have sixth forms. You can only go to the best sixth form colleges if your parents can pay the train fares to places like Peter Symonds. So poorer families lose out again.

Odd how Labour are so opposed to Grammars and private schools when many of their MPs and their children benefited from them 🤔. Blair, Abbott, Corbyn, Harman and probably more. Complete hypocrites.

I had a shit time in a shit comprehensive, it is one of my DFs biggest regrets that he wasn’t able to afford private education for me and DB. In a comp you are generally only set for Maths, English, Science and MFL. We had one maths teacher who had previously taught privately and was shocked at how little we knew. Same with MFL. Sadly, they were temporary (Maths) too late (MFL) in my school to make any real difference.

Behaviour was shocking then, I left nearly 30 years ago. I dread to think what it’s like now. Talking to peers/colleagues who went private/grammar it’s obvious their education was so much better; well-rounded and not just taught to a (shared) textbook but more in depth.

My DF was astounded when we were doing WW2 in History and he would say “You could also add…..” to my answers when I told him it was pointless as we wouldn’t get extra marks, we had to answer only what was in the extract/passage. Weren’t encouraged to ‘read around’ a subject and boy did that show when we got to A Levels! There are, of course some good comprehensive schools but they are (or certainly were), few and far between.

There is a huge disparity in the provision offered by state comprehensives and I think that needs to be addressed first.

I live in a town which has mostly awful comprehensives. We live in a relatively affluent area, the local comp is a mess but there is no other school our DC would get into (apart from private) as all schools are over-subscribed, not because they are any good, there is just very high demand for places.

At DC's school, in the last year or so there have been two stabbings, the pupils have no teachers in some subjects, there is persistent poor, disruptive behaviour which is not addressed, nearly half of the pupils in DS's year have a diagnosis of ADHD, ASD, ADD or similar, yet the support for them is minimal, homework is not marked, poor communications from school, failure to deal with bullying, no access to toilets for pupils. It's just generally an awful learning environment. Surely we should expect more from our government? In the state system at least, access to education should be fair and consistent - rather than re-introducing grammar schools, focus on the comps which are failing and put funding into increasing the SEN provision or providing specialist schools where pupils' learning challenges can be properly addressed.

@SecretVictoria how is it hypocritical to disagree with a choice your parents made when you were 10? Sometimes you are against something because experiencing it makes you see what's wrong with it first hand.

@AllProperTeaIsTheft ". It would be frankly ridiculous to claim that a bright child from a working-class or disadvantaged background would be likely to be equally successful in the local comprehensives as they would in the grammars."

The problem with this is we have no idea-because bright kids from disadvantaged backgrounds do not get into grammar schools.

I meant that they had chosen to send their own children to selective schools as well as (some of them) benefitting themselves as children.

I have just compared the FSM% for the leafiest of leafy, privileged comps and its nearest grammar. Even though the grammar has a special admissions policy for those on FSM, they have less than half the FSM% of even that most leafy of comps.

So yes, postcode variation and house price inflation around leafy comps IS an issue in terms of fair access, but it is still a smaller issue than the disproportionate privilege of those who access grammars.

Nope. When the overall results / achievements of fully selective counties like Kent are compared with similar demographics in a fully comprehensive county, there is no overall discernible difference.

Good comprehensives, through setting, streaming, different ‘pathways’ etc do give children the learning speed and curricula that suit them best.

Ensuring that every state school is well funded, adequately staffed and effective is the priority.

And a totally separate issue from VAT on a private provision.

Not everywhere has Grammar schools, not a thing in Scotland 🙄

Many MPs who say they are using the state system for their children aren’t choosing to send them to the local failing comp though. They often live in very affluent areas with excellent state schools, which many children don’t have the opportunity of attending.

OP’s contention seems to be that if one way of buying privilege at a ‘reasonable’ price has been blocked, then another should be made available to them .

Yes, removal of privilege can be perceived as disadvantage by those who are affected. That is not the same as becoming genuinely disadvantaged, and should not make restoring the advantage a priority for scarce funds.

The problem with this is we have no idea-because bright kids from disadvantaged backgrounds do not get into grammar schools.

They absolutely definitely do at the grammar school where I teach. I have seen the stats, I know some of these students' backgrounds. Where my parents live, you pretty much have to be a millionaire to even live vaguely near a grammar school.

Of course they do

AllProperTea,

Is the %FSM at your school identical to that of the nearest non-grammar and identical to the average of its effective catchment? My guess is no - I have searched the stats for a grammar and non-grammar serving the same effective catchment with the same %FSM over years.

So you will still have a disproportionately small number of the less deprived than the non-selective and than the community as a whole.

This.

I haven’t read the thread, so apologies if this has already been mentioned, but I read this interesting study about a month ago: https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/28/english-regions-dominated-by-grammar-schools-do-not-improve-grades-study-says

Also, having taught a core subject in inner city state schools for many years now- top set teaching does not fail bright and capable students. Issues can lie in mid to lower groups due to lack of funding.

If you want grammar schools I would eliminate the tutoring element and take it back to how it was when it began. A greater number of children from less affluent backgrounds went to these places then because of their raw talent. A new test, which cannot be gamed by tutors. It would be interesting to see

Is it still a full grammar school system in N Ireland?

I remember reading (ages ago) that educational outcomes there - in both grammars and secondary mods - was the best of the home nations at that time. I'm not sure if they meant exam results or social mobility (the article was talking about both)

This. They should focus on improving all existing state schools.