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

Generally they have more to spend their money on - many SEND students do not come with extra funding (over half of them in my school) and those that do require the school to fund the first part.

But that's not the argument - It is that it is better they are educated together for a whole load of reasons that go beyond academics

Exactly, but it is a system that requires excellent behaviour, skilled teachers and a wide range of vocational and academic qualifications. These all require investment in people and facilities, which have been lacking of late.
I would have loved my dd to have had cookery and DT offered at her comp but the courses were closed due to lack of staff and funding.

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

I think this is a very important point. The reality is that academic selection at the 11+ is about achievement, not ability, as demonstrated by the advantages of extensive exam preparation. And achievement is correlated with both ability and behaviour. A grammar's intake will certainly be higher achieving than that at non-grammar schools, since that's what they test for. It is very likely to be higher ability, but it is also very likely to be harder working, more disciplined and 'generally better behaved'.

Mixing students by ability may or may not adversely affect the highest ability students, but I strongly suspect that mixing students by behaviour does adversely affect the best behaved students. I believe that's why Michaela, which has no entrance exams at 11+ and also takes children by lottery from within a 5-mile radius, which encompasses an enormous number of families in London, does so well on many measures. The ability levels of their students may be mixed, but the behaviour of their students most emphatically is not.

Life is full of selection tests that some people will fail. Exams, UCAS, job interviews, security clearance, even the driving test. The 11+ is just another one.

It's less cruel to have the under-achievers filtered into one school and the high-achievers into another than it is to compel the high-achievers to parent and tutor the under-achievers and be beaten up and sexually assaulted as "swots" for their trouble.

Failing exams hurts. I know, I've failed trade exams that I'd studied hard for. I failed my driving test the first time. Being battered and sexually assaulted hurts more.

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

If you classified children into sets and drew a Venn diagram, there would be zero overlap between "high achievers" and "persistently disruptive", and that's why grammars protect high-achievers from swot-bashing so well.

I accept that some kids are low-achieving and also non-disruptive. What's needed is a third school type for the disruptive kids, not to remove the grammars and expose the high-achievers to swot-bashing and in-class parentification.

While I agree with your premise, the problem here is that the DCs who are the smartest at 10 may not be the smartest at 16, or 18 (or older).

So if you put the smartest into schools at 11 which aren't right for them a few years on, they are stuck and might struggle, with all the potential academic and social issues which can result. And conversely those deemed (at 10) not to be suitable for an academic education will never get the opportunity to show that they might be later developers. A good comprehensive addresses these issues, at least in part, by moving DCs into different streams, moving at a faster or slower pace according to each child's needs at the time.

It's not just about achievement, it's about keeping swot-bashers out.

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

Again, 11+ is not just about achievement, it's about keeping swot-bashers out.

Single-sex schools are also good for protecting girls from sexual assault.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/bright-pupils-get-better-gcses-at-comprehensive-schools-jvqnw2g6x

@MaidOfAle
Sadly girls aren't safe anywhere these days due to growing porn addiction and sexual assult via phones.
www.standard.co.uk/news/education/jags-dulwich-college-sexual-harassment-claims-change-b925523.html

In any event, plenty of people now tutor in late primary to make sure their DC make top set comp and move into the right catchment, if that is what is on offer. Any effort to mitigate segregation at secondary level just won’t work. The trouble with the comp model is that the smaller ones won’t offer the really academic subjects that the most able thrive on, like Latin (and sometimes even Greek), Ad Maths as standard for first 3 Maths sets etc. All the stuff you may get in the superselective grammar.
It is a massive fallacy to state that geeky very clever boys are happier in comps. Not in Years 7-11, they are not. Most are awkward and going through puberty and best off with other kids more like them so they don’t get bullied and can indulge in as much chess, strategic gaming, maths clubs as they may possibly want. Yes, it is a cliche, but on the ground, that is best for that type of child.

It reduces the attack opportunity if the boys aren't in the same building. A boy can't rape a girl who is half a mile away.

We don't, when faced with image-based abuse, throw our hands in the air and say "well we might as well put the kids in the same room so that the boys can rape the girls too": quite the opposite.

@Oakandashsplash - if you know anything about gifted children then you will acknowledge prima facie that GCSEs ain’t the right thing for them in the first place. They are a necessary annoyance.

@MaidOfAle Our school have had to deal with persistent teen boy offenders who deluge the girls with shocking images and then bully girls to try and get them to return photos. It is very very upsetting to the girls. They are not safe anywhere. Sure we can have a scale of awfulness, but single sex schools do not protect girls from abuse, they are often targeted by boys schools.

Those of you who had, or whose daughters had, an awful experience at school have my utmost sympathy. Truly.

But I do feel that is an indictment of the individual school(s) involved and their weak management. It's not a condemnation of the comprehensive schooling system per se, as evidenced by the fact that there are thousands of comprehensive schools where such problems do not occur.

@MaidOfAle in the examples of other selection tests you list, you get another shot at almost all of these. There will always be another university, another job, another chance to pass your driving test. You only get one shot at secondary schooling. Pigeon-holing children at the age of 10 with very little recourse for correcting that, is a terrible solution.

Of course. They want every child to be as dumb as the dumbest kid in class. Equality and all that.

See David Lamy or Emily Thornberry

It reduces the attack opportunity if the boys aren't in the same building.

Incidentally, where I live we have mixed-sex grammar schools. If you think some sexual harassment of girls magically doesn't go on in these schools simply because they are grammars, then sadly you would be very mistaken.

So @MaidOfAle your argument here is about the pros and cons of single-sex schooling – a valid discussion, to be sure, but it's nothing to do with the pros and cons of a grammar school system.

All systems are selective one way or another, the question is at what age is best to “select”. England is selective at 16 plus in many areas. Personally, I think that is too late and 13 would be the better age. Now many comps do set or even stream effectively from Year 9 anyway, but some don’t. The whole system is piecemeal and confusing.
It’s actually difficult for any parent to work out what GCSE options various schools will eventually offer when we chose at 11 plus. Choosing at 13 plus once you know more clearly where their talents may lie would be better. Clearly there is no will in this country to do what is best for children though, it’s more a question of what is cheapest. That is why even kids with higher SEN (by that I mean those who are not going to get to ks1, ks2 expected standard or pass English and Maths GCSEs) are in mainstream for as long as possible as well. Someone jumped on some academic research at some point to justify that, but really we all know it is about saving money. It’s a false saving though in the long run. And I disagree that this is better socially & emotionally. It should be entirely down to the parents to choose what they want in such a case. Most parents actually do know what is best for their own child.

It's about both.

Girls also bullied me at primary school, it just didn't look like physical and sexual assault. Girls bullied me at Guides. My single-sex grammar school was free of bullying, bar one girl who tried it and had most of the class tell her to pack it in.

This. And I say that as someone who was educated at a grammar school. We chose that our DD attend/attended a large and very mixed - in all measures- city comprehensive. They've had a great education. I'm very thankful that we didn't go down the 11+ route.

The reason faith schools get better results is because regardless of language, colour, wealth and housing everyone has one thing in common, and that binds them as a community and provides the rules they need to follow. Remove this and it becomes a regular school with a lack of cohesion. You would need a super head in every one of these schools to maintain the good results, and there aren’t enough Katharine Birbalsinghs out there.

Don’t forget to add all the children who currently don’t have an EHCP but will now be forced to get one. Once they do the council will be liable to pay their fees (after a one off £20k court case). There will be no extra money.

@Lazytiger and the admission criteria for faith schools usually involves up to 2 years active involvement in the church. Families meeting this criteria are more likely to be actively involved with their children and are exactly the type of parent that schools want.
There is no fairness in school admissions. There never has and never will be because it is not solely the type of school that makes the school good. It is a partnership between the student, the parent/s and the school.
Whilst a lot has been done to make all state schools 'good schools', the reality is that there will always be students/parents that do not value education and disruptive the learning for others. In response to this there will always be parents who will remove their child from disruptive learning environments thereby creating more desirable schools.

This. My DD attends a faith comprehensive school and 20% of the places go to children of faiths other than Christian. It's actually more mixed in terms of faith, income, race and ability than the comprehensive school down the road. What the parents at the school have in common is that they are all making an active choice to educate their child there. It's an oversubscribed school and behaviour isn't perfect but there is a lot of support from parents for the school.