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

Try to say the same to yourself.

You are just repeating yourself again and again. Do you even realise it?

You refuse to acknowledge the importance of school funding increase - isn't that one of the biggest factor of current crisis? Cut a healthy man's arm to balance the other without. Is that what your best proposal?

You don't have personal feeling in this topic. All what you think is "a system". So I care more than you do.

If labour party are similar minded like you, you will lose the next election for sure - by failing to listen and believe you know the best before you even ask, a guarantee to lose the vote. (Listening is a must for policymakers)

@SergeyB

• you have refused to highlight the elite university most of the current cabinet attended; and
• you have not replied to my post on the Sutton Trust report commenting on the 150 comprehensives that are more socially segregated than some of the remaining 163 grammar schools.

Listening to a small minority who are driven by self-interest will never lead to election win. As I mentioned earlier, replied to you I quote "if funding is limited, we can still create a more efficient system that delivers better overall outcomes and is fairer for everyone.”

The brighter, academically inclined children may continue to perform well in a mixed-ability setting, but the overall effect may not lead to an increase in intelligence or an improvement in the academic performance of struggling students. In fact, it will emphasise the existing gap between different levels of academic abilities.

This thread is not discussing elite universities but secondary schools and its admissions policy. Feel free to open another thread to dicuss.

As highlighted in the report, these comprehensive schools will have to review their admission policies to achieve fairness. But it won’t be an excuse to defend the existence of grammar schools.

Now, my turn to ask you one more time, do you have any research evidence showing that brighter students perform better in grammar schools?

Seems deeply unfair to only have grammars in some places.
It’s not as if there aren’t kids who would thrive in them across the nations and regions.
Either they’re a great system and should be everywhere, or they are divisive and should be changed.

I’m so conflicted on this. I get the idea that removing grammar schools keeps the top academic students in the local comprehensive, which benefits those schools. But the one grammar where we are absolutely smashes the Progress 8 score. It hugely stretches the most academic students.

rather than a huge piece of work and consultation re abolishing grammars, I’d rather they concentrated on looking at the curriculum content and alternative curriculums for the students in comps who struggle with the awful GCSE content we have currently.

Functional maths, English, sciences for all who need it. Exams with realistic grade boundaries - make them easier , you shouldn’t get a pass if you know less than half the content. The specs are not fit for purpose if that’s the case.

The brighter, academically inclined children may continue to perform well in a mixed-ability setting, but the overall effect may not lead to an increase in intelligence or an improvement in the academic performance of struggling students. In fact, it will emphasise the existing gap between different levels of academic abilities.

The thing is, comprehensive areas perform
in line with matched grammar / secondary modern areas.

So either:

• Grammars get better results but secondary modern students do worse than they would in comprehensives (ie struggling / non-selected at 10 students do better in comprehensives) OR
• If you want to say that non-selected students do not do better in comprehensives, to match the data you have to agree that grammar students do not do better in grammars.

There isn’t a way to say ‘grammars do better and secondary moderns do no worse’ than comprehensives that still matches the overall data.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/state-funded-schools-inspections-and-outcomes-as-at-31-august-2023/main-findings-state-funded-schools-inspections-and-outcomes-as-at-31-august-2023

Only 16 per cent of schools are outstanding. So good luck if you want to drive the 6-7 per cent of private school kids and the 5 per cent of grammar kids into that small pool (note there is a bit of an overlap as a lot of the grammars are outstanding).

Certain parents will only send their DCs to an outstanding school. They don’t care that much necessarily about how the school was funded or even selection at 11 plus, they care about peer group and quality of education/teaching and being around equally motivated parents. Most don’t even care how much money the other parents have, it’s more about educational values.

So I really would like to know how this is all going to work with zero additional education budget. Especially post Covid when our kids have already been through the worst.

@SergeyB - you cannot just look at performance in GCSEs or even A levels for grammar students. GCSEs are really a terrible performance measure for gifted pupils as they are dull and prescriptive and many of the most gifted pupils switch off a bit/dont necessarily give it their all. You would need to do a full scale review of kids getting into Oxbridge and other top unis and their ultimate degree outcomes. On that measure, grammar kids outperform. Just like top selective private school kids. These children need far more than your standard GCSE syllabus and if you teach them together they feed off each other, create academic societies etc etc and we can absolutely see the results further down the line.

Provide the evidence before making claims. Oxford and Cambridge admit more students from comprehensive schools than from grammar schools.

In fact @SergeyB - just go look up the Oxbridge degree outcomes. It’s all there.

You don't get complacent 😂 You won the election not because majority of the voters desperately wanted you. You know that. 20ish% , you can indeed call yourself elected by the minority.

If you prove you are worse than the Tories (by the sound of this thread), you can see the back of the Downing street in just a blink.

Carry on, @SergeyB , believe in your intelligence and yours only.

"Independent school pupils are more than twice as likely as pupils in comprehensive schools to be accepted into one of the most 30 highly selective universities: 48.2% of independent school pupils in England were accepted by these universities, compared with 18.0% of pupils in non selective state schools, and 47.6% in selective state schools."

"State pupils in Reading, Hammersmith and Fulham, Sutton and Buckinghamshire are more than 50 times as likely to be accepted at Oxford or Cambridge than pupils in Hackney, Rochdale, Knowsley, or Sandwell."

Guess what Buckinghamshire and Sutton have lots of...

Why is everyone giving @SergeyB so much clout? I doubt they are in any shape or form some spokesperson. Not enough facts/knowledge to back anything up really. And in the very unlikely event that they are, we are in for some serious trouble.

Do you learn maths at A-level? Do you understand prior selection bias? Among those comprehensive students, if I took a test before they applied for UCAS, I could come up with a group of students with a higher percentage success rate than any schools in the world.

Angela Reyner is envious goose. They will probably reduce grammar school places, unfortunately.. But it won't be for long, Labour doesn't stay in Govt for long, so at the next opportunity Tories will re-introduce! Hopefully your dd will still be school age by then.

I would need to see a breakdown of elite university entries, outcomes and so on by socio-economic class before I accept that simply attendance at private/grammar school adds significant value here....

This makes zero sense. I didn't take maths A level, but I'm guessing you certainly didn't pass English GCSE.

Public policy decision-making is based on science and facts, rather than beliefs and myths, otherwise brings a lot of trouble.

The most worrying aspect is of course that the private school brigade will put up such a fight/throw legal challenges thereby resulting in the state selective/state aptitude/state outstanding potentially being the easier victim to attack- to supposedly create the pretence of some equality victory. So buckle up anyone who cares about education and managed to get their DC into a great school, whatever nature. Get your alpha mum gloves on to fight the demagogues.

Wouldn’t social class in this context be hard to define?
There may be poorly paid parents who are ambitious for their children and do everything they can to promote their educational progress.

OK then no point to argue if you think your kid will be more "likely" to go to top university because where they live. Good luck with moving.