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

No new Grammars have been allowed to be built for many years but that hasn’t stopped them extending and taking greater numbers.

I think it’s a nasty system that basically tells kids at age 10/11 that they aren’t ‘good enough’ for grammar. I have adult friends that didn’t get in and still take issue and feel not worthy. One friend was the only one in his family of seven kids. Can you imagine the affect that has had on him.

It’s a horrible system.

He just didn't pass an exam to get into a highly competitive school. That happens. It's not a disaster. It happens in the private system with some schools. It will happen to people throughout life. Eg job applications, uni applications.

Having said that, I see your point about the effect on being the only child in a family of seven that didn't pass the exam. Must have been very hard and I hope his parents supported him.

That’s different. Private schools usually take only a small % of kids from their area and most kids don’t take the test, from economic reasons apart from anything else. The siphoning-off of a small % of kids therefore does not usually have much effect on the residual schools where most kids go.

Bucks-type grammars, however, are taking about 30% of kids. The remaining schools are not going to be truly comprehensive and there will be the smell of failure about them. Awful system.

I actually would have preferred Labour to go after grammar schools, rather than the VAT policy, if it had to be a choice between the two - I think the effect of grammar schools is more insidious.

I don’t think Labour should be going after C any schools, not private, not grammar, not faith, not underachieving etc. They should be helping all children to succeed across the board and work with all schools. We don’t have the money for too much change/disruption right now. Small but cheap and effective changes are the way forward, like dentists in school and more time allocated to exercise/brain breaks and closer alliance with local services like speech/language and early intervention for SEN. The last thing anyone needs right now is a full scale structural change and a ton of cash wasted for “effect”.

I didn’t pass the eleven plus, I didn’t let it define me thanks to the support of my parents. I hated my comp, lots of disinterested pupils, staff came and went, a few stars but lots would prefer to teach elsewhere, I wanted to learn but struggled to do so with so much disruption. Bullies drew blood on a regular basis. I ended up spending most weekends catching up in the local library, nothing to do with the school but supportive (but uneducated) parents and a fantastic librarian. With the best funding ever there will always be great schools and less great schools.

My daughter thrived in a grammar and got such a great education, it was economically, culturally, racially and theologically diverse, the non-selective school 200 yards away was more homogeneous, it was filled with those who could afford the catchment and very little diversity. Oh and the grammar was DD’s closest school, we were out of catchment for the ‘good’ non-selective school on the other side of the wood, she would have had to take two buses to the unwanted secondary in the borough and an hour plus door to door rather than walking distance, 8 GCSEs rather than 10 she did, one language rather than 6 MFL combined science and not separate etc. it may be unpopular to say but the undesirable comp catered for the lowest common denominator and didn’t flex for rhe capable. I appreciate some may be very different but my locale isn’t a ‘full’ grammar area as there are only two grammars in the Borough, one girls, one boys., the rest non-selective.

The grammar test doesn’t tell someone they have failed, it tells them they have at least tried. If they feel they have failed then that is the messsging of the parents. DD has not got through on all sorts of things (auditions, sports games, maths comps etc) but we’ve always encouraged her to try.

Yes I should correct.
There is no pass or fail. You just get a grade.

However when you don’t get in and others do that’s exactly how it is seen. You failed to get as high as others to get in.

This study would seem to dismiss the idea that grammars are a meritocracy and failing does not damage students:

comprehensivefuture.org.uk/parents-speak-to-mps-about-the-damaging-effects-of-selection/

You could say the same about GCSEs, A-levels, university admissions, job interviews, and armed forces fitness tests.

Why single 11+ out as somehow awful when failure and losing competitions are part of life?

You can retake GCSEs and A levels, you can use extra or clearing or take a gap year for uni admissions, most people apply for lots of jobs in the hope of getting a couple of decent offers.

If you don’t get the 11+ score required you don’t get a second chance. And that does impact your educational progression if you’re in an area that creams off a large proportion of those that are seen as more academically able.

The 11plus is taken when kids are much younger.

We had a girl join our class in year nine, so there is some kind of mechanism for pupils fo transfer into grammar school later on.

The trade exam I failed, every retake attempt came with a higher and higher pass mark, so it was not always just a simple matter of having another go. If you failed a module at my uni, your resit attempt was capped at the bare pass mark. This is a substantial adverse consequence of not doing well the first time that will hamstring your degree classification. The 11+ is not the only instance in life where failure has unavoidable negative consequences.

Were you taking those exams at age 10? Did they define your educational path at age 10? How many grammars admit now on a 13+ basis?

You were an adult taking university or trade examinations, and could understand the ramifications of not putting the work in to pass.

That’s a world away from a 10 yr old sitting tests that affluent tutored kids are given an advantage in.

And for my university course in the 1980s, resits were limited to the subsidiary courses only. Fail the core courses and you were out. Keep scraping through every year and you got a third. Pass degrees weren’t unheard of.

"But they're only kids" isn't an argument. The boys who sexually assaulted me at school when I was eight were only kids, yet their actions have had a lifelong effect on me that was only mitigated by being able to get into an all-girl school. I was only a kid with undiagnosed autism, and being able to get into the grammar school protected me from the worst of the bullying that "weird" kids get from the unintelligent.

Think about what you are subjecting quiet, studious, "weird" neurodivergent girls (who are still hugely underdiagnosed) to when you take away the all-girl grammar escape hatch.

That’s a complete reach from what wrote, and whilst I’m sorry that happened to you, it’s not an argument for categorising children at age 10 in a way that has a major impact on their subsequent lives.

And, for the record, I am a comprehensively educated neurodivergent female that would have hated the pressure of a selective single sex school.

A large number on MN think that Secondary Moderns are Comprehensive. I imagine is that it has more south east England members, which also has two counties, Kent and Bucks which never went comprehensive.

That’s because the most abled children’s parents would have worked harder outside school to subsidise what schools couldn’t provide them.

I genuinely don’t think so. We had always had some full marks in SATs, and those stayed at about the same %. There was no dip in the marks that would have been ‘lower middle of the upper set’, as there might have been if the ‘most able were now receiving coaching but those just behind were not’. And the marks from the children either side of what would have been the set boundaries went up dramatically.

Essentially, the graph went from 3 mini humps in terms of mark distribution to a single long hump that just touched the top of each of the previous humps - and it has remained consistent year on year, as I tracked it throughout the transition years (ie the years from ‘all in sets’ to ‘had the experience of sets for 3 / 2 / 1 year before transition’ to ‘never been in sets’. School as a whole went from average to well above in terms of Maths progress and has never dropped again.

You may be right that there was a sudden mass move to coaching / tutoring in the year we moved to no sets, but I heard no rumour of it.

All this only means there are no differences for the schools themselves. The reality is one can’t control all that and it doesn’t take many disruptive kids to make classrooms become an inefficient learning environment.

Teaching what you have learned does help consolidate, however, doing it on a daily basis at a lower level will only deprive one’s own learning opportunities.

Understand others challenge by being deprived of owns opportunities to learn? That’s not what I would send my children to school for. Watching couple of documentaries would serve the purpose very well and beyond.

On the other hand, what are the opportunities for the disruptive children also learn others’ challenges and struggles? I think it’s even more important for the society for these children to be able to learn and comprehend that everyone has challenges, including the better offs. So they don’t just grow up into adults and waiting for others to solve their problems and their children’s problems and the circle continues.

Racing to the tops, bettering oneself, shouldn’t only applying to the brightest children. ALL children should be taught to better themselves and to race to the top. Obviously one has to learn to deal with failures, that’s part of life, clever or not.

Selective process is not evil, it’s reality. We don’t expect everyone go to job interviews will be offered a job, why should we be fooling ourselves about schools.

@MaidOfAle Why single 11+ out as somehow awful when failure and losing competitions are part of life"

1. Because it's very public.
2. Because it's a one off.
3. Because they are ten years old.
4. Because there is absolutely nothing the child themself can do to to help themselves pass. Unlike A levels etc.

Very few secondary schools do completely mixed ability teaching these days. For example, my ds's school was quite strictly set for most academic subjects, but mixed ability for art, drama, RE and a couple of others. This meant that they worked together and realised that they all had things to offer to and learn from each other.

I would also add ‘because the 11+ is neither a reliable nor a reproducible test’

It does not reliably select the academically most able (it selects out the least able and least well-supported, which is all the grammar schools need it to be. It does not identify the true top 10% or 25% or 2% of the ability range).

It does not select the same children reproducibly. The same test on a different day, or a different paper ‘of the same standard’ on the same day, would select a different group of children.

Older 3DC were always greater depth at primary. They read a lot and were naturally good at Maths. We did some home prep for 11 plus superselective grammar in London and they got in. No years of tutoring etc etc - just tailored short bursts and focus on any weak areas, bit of focus on accuracy and understanding the test. Superselective grammar absolutely suits them. They were bored in state primary, we had to pay for extra curricular to challenge them and they had to help others all the way through. If we had a local comp with loads of differentiation and lots of academic subjects then that would have been fine too. But we did not have that very close by. The grammars are closer. It made perfect sense given our options.
If we lived in Kent or Bucks they would have passed with just a few weekends of prep. A kid who is on for greater depth KS2 sats will easily pass in those counties unless they have a really bad day. In which case the school can appeal. The issue comes with kids in the middle ground whose parents are overly ambitious and dishonest with themselves about their children’s natural abilities or if they have a spikey profile. Very bright all rounders can easily ace a standard 11 plus with minimum preparation and just familiarisation. It is different with the superselectives where competition is now a little crazy and so every question you get wrong coupled with date of birth means a bad day you are out. However, in those areas there are typically also good comp options.

Privileged areas like Tunbridge Wells actually now also have some really good non grammar options. I think Sevenoaks too. Where there is less deprivation it is less of an issue and kids can and do move at Sixth Form. A late developer is therefore not written off. This is often more of a parent stress issue.

You don’t need to be in the top set of a state school to pass 11+ and in some cases (eg when parents are aiming for 11+ or private secondary) parents become disengaged and stop encouraging kids to do homework in favour of private tutition and extracurriculars.

These kids aren’t ‘less smart’ than kids who are in the uppersets their parents just don’t see the value of state primary and will do their own thing - that’s probably why a lot of ‘average’ kids do get in and do really well at grammar school. Ie they aren’t average their parents just opted out.