Labour to reduce number of Grammar/Selective school places?

[Another76543]

This thread is not about private schools. It’s about the Labour Party’s dislike of state grammar/selective schools. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has, in recent years, stated that she wants fewer children in selective schools, and more in comprehensive education. Angela Rayner has also expressed her dislike of the grammar system.

Does this mean that, under Labour, the number of selective places will be reduced? Will parents have less choice over the type of education their children receive?

m.youtube.com/watch?v=OW21Tu38Txo

@Fightthepower - I actually got her talking therapy to understand what has happened to her. She is fine now, she has understood. Her job is not to save the bad boys.

CHOICE is good. Thankfully Tony Blair saw the dogma within his own party a mile off and the ship has truly sailed on the likes of Rayner etc getting a lid on any of it, because Academies will be Academies. Nought the hard left can do about anything now. Ship long gone bye bye into deep waters.

@Araminta1003 I don’t really understand why YOU chose not to intervene if you thought your daughter’s primary school setting was being so detrimental to her.

In a restaurant, choice is good. In a school system, I'm less convinced.
Regarding school "choice", you get to express your preferences, then you're assigned a school, which may not be the one you've asked for. Is that choice?
In my local area, the state schools are either single gender (the wrong one for us), religious (we're not), out of catchment due to council boundaries, or failing. In reality I had the choice of persuading my child to be transgender, feigning religious belief, moving house, sending them to a failing school, or paying for private. Did I really have a choice?
Choice in public services was one of Blair's more mendacious policies. If all your local schools were good, choice would be irrelevant.

I'm going to try to use a parallel to illustrate the benefit of a more comprehensive approach to education for all. I'm aware that it will make people start taking apart the parallel but here you go:

The driving force behind LTN's is that we need fewer polluting cars on the road to improve air quality and health outcomes for all. So as a general principle car drivers accept that we need to sacrifice our personal desire to drive our car as and when we want to benefit the health of others. Many of whom don't have and/or can't afford a car.
This is social engineering for the greater good.

It is possible to prove that low attaining pupils gain academically and emotionally from mixed teaching. This is a mental health benefit. It benefits highest attaining pupils socially but less so academically. Is it therefore not worth considering that the highest attaining pupils who are going to do the best anyway (and probably have better resources overall) are slightly put out for the overall benefit of all.

This is also social engineering for the greater good.

We get loads of choice where I am. Superselective grammar, out of county gremmar, catchment single sex, catchment co-ed, faith criteria as well as we are practising, aptitude test, lottery as well, banding. Because we have good transport there is loads available within a 45-60
minute commute on buses, trains or tubes. That is why London is doing so well, we get to choose the right fit for our DC and our family as a whole.

No.

@Fightthepower I don’t really understand why YOU chose not to intervene if you thought your daughter’s primary school setting was being so detrimental to her.”

I did say something at the start of every academic year when we got a new teacher. But what exactly can they do if they have a class of 32 (appeals), 2 autistic children and 24 boys in that school year, a lot of them summer born. The teachers in state cannot control the intake or birth month and for many of those kids when they were younger national curriculum requirements were unrealistic. The teacher has no choice but to bring them up to KS1 and then ks2 level expected. My DD could read chapter books when she started school, write full stories and knew all her timetables half way through Reception. The older kids used to test her timetables at lunch, for fun. It’s actually a really good state primary school but they don’t have the resources to extend the academically gifted kids. They also have a special need. And some of you want to deprive them of grammars too. All that means is that we as parents need to move to places with brainy kids like Cambridge or just send our DCs to the local school but keep them home 20 per cent of time to extend them there. And yes, I would do that. None of my kids will be martyred to the “system”. It’s kind of ok at primary level, but definitely not at secondary level.

It's not the responsibility of smarter kids to prop up the less smart.

It benefits highest attaining pupils socially

Do you have any source for this? I'm not aware of any study which claims to address this issue.

Oh @Araminta1003moments ago you werej waxing lyrical about all the wonderful choice you have where you live but apparently you have none at all at primary stage when you say the school she waa at was harming your daughter.

@user149799568
I'm not sure this one exactly addresses your question but it is a thought provoking read anyway:

www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/PotentialForSuccess.pdf

How does it benefit highest attaining kids socially?

It tends to make them pretty unhappy.

Fuck no. It is not comparable because smart kids don't disproportionately pollute by existing as smart kid.

It is not the responsibility of smart kids to prop up the less able. We are talking about individual children being used as pacifiers and de facto classroom helpers here. Child labour is rightly illegal and what you are proposing is a form of child labour.

A more appropriate analogy would be using older siblings to care for younger siblings. This is called "parentification" and is acknowledged as abusive.

This in-class parentification disproportionately affects girls. It is misogyny to make girls responsible for badly-behaved and underachieving boys.

If some kids underachieve, that's for the teacher to sort out, not their more able peers.

The only "benefit" this high-achieving undiagnosed autistic girl got was being bullied and triggered into meltdowns, which I was then blamed for.

@Fightthepower - I do have loads of choice at secondary level. And yes, I could have moved DD at primary level eventually but by then the younger kids had started etc and the school itself is good. But the teachers cannot control the mix in a particular class.
It is actually the therapist who uncovered all of this.
It is massively grating that despite having multiple children I always made sure DD1 never had to look after the younger kids etc to only find that school are more than happy for her to fulfil that role and basically be a mini teacher all throughout primary school. Really compliant well behaved girls in particular - this happens far more than you would care to admit. I am sure. And with your first child you are much more willing to go with the flow, and be a goody goody two shoes yourself. I have learnt my lessons. My own DCs come first. I will put their needs above the system. That is my duty as a parent. As it is, higher attaining kids often do not get anywhere near as much teacher time as lower attainting kids or those with SEN. Which is Ok to some extent, but there has to be a balance.

“How does it benefit highest attaining kids socially?

It tends to make them pretty unhappy.”

Exactly @OhCrumbsWhereNow - higher attainment is a specific learning need. Some kids get depressed if constantly bored in school for years. They have to be extended more widely as well. Narrow focus on tests alone does not work either. This is where some grammars are really very good, because they do a full extra curricular program and lots of academic clubs as well as politics etc etc.
I think the large top comps do that as well, but the more local smaller ones do not even have lots of MML on offer, for example. Do not teach Classics, don’t have Sixth Formers who want to run a History society etc etc. These higher attainting kids need all of that.

If some kids underachieve, that's for the teacher to sort out, not their more able peers.
Firstly it is the duty of parents to properly prepare children for school. Then the teachers can teach not act as social workers to deliberately disruptive brats.

Exactly. And you've illustrated perfectly why forcing well-behaved high-achieving kids to pacify and teach their peers is parentification where I hadn't made the direct link: the able children are doing the job that the less-able kids' parents didn't do and should have done. Thank you.

For God sake, this infighting between highly educationally motivated parents needs to stop! The Governments have chosen to underfund schools and push out more experienced teachers, because they are too expensive. To underfund SEN both in education and the NHS. To fail poor children across the board. It is the duty of Governments to organise themselves far better, to budget properly and to sort this out. They are failing to do so. We as middle class educated parents are more than paying our fair share already. We do not need to sacrifice our DCs on top of that as well! Just sort out the huge inefficiencies!!

And that is the crux of the matter.

Teachers and other children being expected to compensate for poor parenting or mis-managed SEN.

While I have sympathy for disruptive children with SEN, they have no greater rights than my non-disruptive child with SEN. Yet her education has often been compromised because their needs have been put before her needs - let alone the needs of the majority of the class.

I imagine it's only a very tiny number of parents who would be happy to risk their child's future.

There's a misunderstanding here. The mixed (comprehensive) teaching model isn't about individual students being responsible for the behaviour of others. This should be covered by the school's behaviour policy and excellent mixed ability teaching from the person or persons in charge.

There's also an assumption that low attainment equals disruptive which may sometimes correlate but doesn't always.

Mixing students by ability, background, religion etc etc does allow them to learn about those unlike themselves. Gating them together in baskets of 'good' (e.g. grammar) and 'not so good' (e.g. secondary modern) just perpetuates inequality.

Inequality will always remain because people are not all equal.

You are not suddenly going to have 100% getting fab grades and becoming neurosurgeons because you have a comprehensive school rather than a secondary modern and a grammar school.

Perhaps the teachers and SLT in secondary moderns should be more ambitious for their students. After all they have far less differentiation to do.

Fundamentally if a child has a low IQ they are only going to be able to access academics to a certain point. In exactly the same way that the dyspraxic child is highly unlikely to become a champion figure skater no matter how much you try.

And children don't really mix that much outside their own crowd. DD is at one of the biggest comprehensives in England. Her friends are from a wide range of ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, but they're all clever and from families that value education and have ambition. She just doesn't mix with the disengaged, disruptive or very low ability kids - they have nothing in common.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow you misunderstand.

I'm advocating for equality of experience and resources. Not equality of destination. That would be ridiculous.

Secondary moderns get higher levels of funding than grammar schools.

It's a mindset among the SLT and possibly the parents.

This is in The Times this morning

www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/selective-schools-dont-increase-pupils-chance-of-university-place-or-job-z0wzp5zj3