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

They can demonstrate this at ages 15 or 16, not at 10. Additionally, state education is not designed for less than 10% of students to proof something.

You mentioned that proximity to home is relevant in educational contexts. Religious education is also relevant in this context. However, I am not convinced that an practicable IQ test at age 10 is any fairer.

The evidence suggest otherwise. So your experience or opinions do not count as much.

You don't get it! I give up! My answer to your question was already there. You just ignored it again and again.

Practically speaking, you don't have the same life elements as I do, but it's disappointing you still ignored it after I showed you my cards. I stop here. Good night!

I could look as a class of Reception children on their first day and predict with about 90% certainty which ones would pass the 11+. Without talking to them. Proof positive that the system is hugely unfair.

Same here. I had a 100% success rate on four successive Year 1 classes that I taught - all of the children I predicted ended up at the grammar.

To be fair, I did talk to them! But attainment/school readiness/parental engagement at that age looked very similar to how it looked when they finished Year 6. A lot of the basics are set in stone by age five (which is why Early Years input is so important).

Sorry I still don't get your answer except the pharse "you don't get it", in this case yes no point to have a discussion further. Good night.

From year 1 to year 5 is a long time, what is the secret identification formula? I have one but I can't say it.

The 11+ allows kids who are out in the cold to come in and sit with the kids who've always had their parents' support.

It allows a relative handful of these children to come in at sit with the others. There will be plenty of others in their primary schools who were just as good - maybe one point less in the exam, who didn't get in. If it were really the case, Kent and Bucks, or Lincs, all remaining grammar counties, would be havens of social mobility, but they are not. Dare I say it also, there are children now at the grammars who aren't up to it, but once there, they tend to keep their places.

Why is it that in non grammar areas there isn't a big desire for grammar schools to be brought back? Because parents are wise enough to realise that this would also bring back secondary moderns - even if called something else? I suspect that most parents in those areas would like a good comprehensive.

@SergeyB Early indicators for those I’ve taught who made it to grammar school: highly verbal even in EYFS and very ‘lucid’ in their speech, with a wide vocabulary (research shows that the number of words children know/are exposed to by 5 predicts later reading ability); generally reading a bit by the time they start school; strong general knowledge, highly inquisitive and engaged with the world around them (which generally reflects parental engagement with learning at home - e.g. one pupil asked me, in our first ever Yr1 science lesson, when we would be starting with the separate sciences!); often autumn born, so older ones in their cohort and more ‘school ready’ (I’m July born myself and made it to grammar school, but that was a long time ago!)

Purely anecdotal, but that’s what I’ve noticed, and I do have an excellent ‘hit rate’! Not sure whether this is a wider tendency, but the children I’ve taught tend also to have highly educated and motivated parents, but with one parent (usually the mother) who has taken a step back from their career to support their child at home - frequently it’s been a teacher who has gone part-time or become a SAHM since having DC. So education + motivation + time to invest.

Unfortunately it’s anything but a level playing field in this sense, and the fact that educational outcomes are often predicable so early on has made me passionate about getting the often overlooked Early Years right. In particular, we really need to get parents talking to their kids in the baby-preschool years, and invest in high quality EY settings that can boost the language skills of those who aren’t exposed to good modelling at home.

In urban areas, yes. There aren’t loads of local schools in rural areas. I can’t imagine all of these busses criss-crossing counties, each bus picking up a handful of kids here and a handful there, whilst another bus pulls in to take their 2 neighbour kids to a different school 15 miles away.

Grammar commutes are a choice. Parents choosing a one-hour bus journey to have their child be in an environment where every pupil comes from a home where education is valued highly. Sending a pupil on an involuntary one-hour bus ride in the am and again in the pm to go to a school on the lowest Ofsted rung, when there are closer, better ranked schools, is absurd. And who pays for these busses? We’re talking about thousands more kids riding busses. My DC’s annual school route pass is £1300. I won’t be paying that if my local authority forces me to bus my child to an inadequate school out of catchment, no way. So it’s on the taxpayer…

You’ve just described most Indian kids lol.

I don't doubt your assertion. Presumably you based your predictions on their parents at drop off, on their clothes, on the contents of their lunch boxes and, possibly, on their ethnicity.

But how accurate do you think your predictions would be about whether, say, they would go on to university? And do you think your predictions would be more or less accurate if the 11+ were eliminated? If the existence of the 11+ would make those predictions less accurate, then I'd say that system is fairer than the alternative.

Yup. I had to do this in my comprehensive. Sitting the absolute worst behaved, most disruptive child next to the brightest, quietest child. Happens every day, in every classroom.

My kids were those kids throughout primary, and by the end they’d had enough of it. As PP have said, I’ll say too: my kids’ education is my responsibility and I ensured that I put them in a secondary environment where they weren’t left to it at best, and paired with/tutoring trouble makers at worst. I wanted them to be stretched and challenged.

And it is particularly unfair when the child that the disruptive kids are sat next to is the well-behaved girl with ADD who is bright enough to just about keep up despite SpLd and therefore falls completely under radar. Not meeting their potential, but not causing trouble or failing so badly that they stand out.

DD was used in this way the whole time in primary. Hence why I have no shame in using every resource at my disposal to give her extra help now.

Most of those things are not comparable to private schools it's just more coping from private school parents.
Faith schools are free and for religious families the reason they do well is because those families are more likely to have less tolerance for shitty behaviour meaning there's less kids playing up and being distracting in class.

There was a recent thread moaning about sibling priority but imagine how inconvenient it would be to take multiple kids to multiple schools just because you moved a few streets away. And no most people who move house aren't doing it just to cheat the system and get their kids in a certain school. That's way rarer than people on this site think

This. 100%. Your description absolutely nailed my kids (and me).

So what’s the answer? How do we get parents engaged? I was always amazed at how many pupils landed in my Y7 classroom with Y2 literacy skills. And I met the parents at parents’ evenings, and the majority didn’t see value in education, didn’t support, thought teachers were the enemy, etc. I never asked, but I’m fairly certain these parents weren’t reading to their toddlers from a well-stocked bookshelf every night as part of their bedtime routine, nor do I think they were diligently listening to their children read in primary and filling in their reading journals. By the time these pupils get to Y7, it’s too late. They’ve lost too much ground over the previous 11 years. If parents don’t take the active role in pushing education and literacy at home, what’s the answer? I don’t know. Trying to sort it in Y7 via catchment areas, closing grammar schools, etc, is futile.

If you move from catchment your convenience shouldn’t trump those that live in catchment.

My DD's (excellent) comprehensive in one of the most deprived areas of the UK admits by fair banding. Anyone can apply - so presumably you only apply if you have a way to get there. The kids all take an entrance exam and then they are randomly selected within each decile - so say 15 kids who came in the top tenth, 15 kids who came in the 2nd highest tenth, etc. This seems the fairest way to me.

Let me translate what you said: Parents who have the financial means but prefer not to invest heavily in private education should have the option to send their children to a state funded grammar school further away. Meanwhile, those without the financial resources should accept the available other school options as destiny.

While the advantages and significance of early years education are widely acknowledged, this is not a justification for maintaining the grammar school system and the 11+ exam. Both issues can be addressed simultaneously for maximum impact.

No. That’s not what I said. I said that students shouldn’t be bussed out to schools outside their catchment areas.

Our local grammar school has a catchment area. Because of how the bus routes work, the first child on the bus has a one-hour journey. It is not unusual for there to be only one student at a particular bus stop. In order to get a full bus and make the route viable for the bus company, the bus covers a wide area of the catchment before it is full. This takes time and the bus doesn’t fill as quickly as the local comprehensive bus, which only collects at 2 stops before it is full. The grammar children are not out of catchment. Parents are not “buying” their way into the school. Yes, their bus journey is longer.

Let me translate what you said: I have a chip on my shoulder about academic children having the ability to thrive with other like-minded pupils. I prefer a race to the bottom. I don’t understand how grammar school catchment areas work. I don’t understand how bus companies need a full bus to have a viable route.

Are you an education practitioner?

I'm, from your username I don't think you care much beyond the grammar school for your child.

Comprehensive schools aren’t about lowering standards, but areas with grammar and secondary modern schools often are the place of race to the bottom. The grammar school or catchment area isn’t relevant to the bus route setup; you could replace it with any school system. You simply prefer the idea of selecting schools for your children at age 10.