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

@Blankscreen I was just about to mention the 'Educating' series. I can tell you that any aspirational parent that witnessed that level of disruption would be straight up to the school. Now this is where the issues begin to arise. The school is not the issue. It is the child and the external factors affecting the child, which the school has no power to deal with. Yes they can give detentions but aside from that what other tools aside from expulsions can a school offer. No school wants to expel children but the mechanism to support disruptive children/chaotic families is not sturdy enough to do much.

People avoid schools like this and this is how the UK has ended up with 'sink schools'. In the same way that instead of tackling nuisance neighbours the vast majority of advice nowadays is to move, which creates neighbourhoods more prone to anti social behaviours.

The answer is for parents and children to take more personal responsibility. I have yet to see any government party be really honest and try to tackle one of the major reasons for the decrease in social mobility.

Apologies if I didn't explain this well.

Truly comprehensive teaching (ie no setting at all) raises student standards. Working in mixed ability classes raises attainment and (more importantly IMO) is good for society.

It was in response to those posters who were implying that the less able kids bring the more able kids down significantly affecting life chances. The research just doesn't support it

I was a bright and studious child who went to the local sink school. I’m certain I didn’t bring the school ‘up’ in any way. I was bullied in year 7 for being a geek, teachers pet and library freak. By the second year I had begun to reinvent myself as someone who would be more popular, fit in and no longer fodder for being kicked and covered with phlegm. By year 9 my parents barely recognised the child I had been, I changed everything in order to be accepted to hang onto the fringes of one of the various Vicky Pollard type gangs. I hid all my books in boxes under the spare room bed so none of my friends would know I read for pleasure, I was even embarrassed if my parents and siblings caught me reading. I left school at 16, it was unthinkable to me that I would stay on for 6th form. I got a job as an admin assistant, made some decent friends with aspirations and slowly began to come back to myself. That was over two decades ago now and I have a wonderful life now but I don’t keep in touch with anyone from school - probably many have died from drug addiction and road smashes by now. It was a vile six year nightmare of ugliness and violence, barren of any culture, any beauty, anything good at all. I home educated my children until age seven and then they’ve gone on to private Steiner school. I’d rather they went somewhere with more rigorous academic standards but this is the one we can afford, it’s nearby etc. No one will ever force me into sending my children to the local comp, I’d sooner emigrate. We have however, befriended a troubled family two streets down where the council houses are - I can see clearly all the ways my children are bettering those children’s lives, real change happens on an individual level.

Does anyone know if they have any plans regarding home education ? Will
they be changing anything ?

I get your point but I'm not sure that's always true. Schools still stream according to ability in a subject. It can be hugely demoralising to a child to be bottom of a class of very able pupils. Often they just give up.
I just don't believe one size comprehensively (aha!) fits all.

I do hope so! Any party that actively works to reduce selective and faith based state education is very likely to get my vote.

@Workasateamanddoitmyway proper comprehensive education does not stream in any subject. At my DC school (comprehensive) they only do it in one and are likely to change this quite soon.

When grammar schools were first set up (my parents both went to them) tutoring wasn't available so affluent parents couldn't game the system. Nowadays it's really not selection based solely on aptitude and ability because of widely used tutoring. Even back then it was divisive, the children who lived locally to my mum who went to the secondary modern no longer played with her. It's a lot of pressure and preparation to put on 10 year olds, a significant number of which will then be told that they have 'failed' at such a young age.

This thread is pure speculation and scaremongering anyway, the new Goverment is already going to have plenty to do implementing their manifesto, let alone things that are not in it!

Ok that's bad.

1 size certainly doesn't fit all.
With 30+ puplis in a class how on earth can a teacher meet the needs of every pupil and manage behaviour etc? They can't.
We need more choice not less

Why? It is raising attainment (Progress 8)

1 size certainly doesn't fit all.
With 30+ puplis in a class how on earth can a teacher meet the needs of every pupil and manage behaviour etc? They can't.
1 size fits all fails; SEN, the lowest ability and the highest ability. You see it all the time, the well behaved kids get ignored as teachers are trying to manage behaviour and spend time with the less able kids, so the quiet bright kids do OK but maybe not to their ability. The lowest kids also struggle because they feel left behind.

^^ taken from good friends who teach in our local state schools and have chosen to send their kids to indi schools.

We need more choice not less.

I can just speak from the experience of my own DS, bottom of the class with very able class mates in one of his Alevel subjects. He felt guilty holding the rest of the class back as they wanted to go faster than he was comfortable with. He got very demoralised. As I said, one size does not fit all from my own experience.

Obviously lower class sizes mean more attention per pupil. We'd all choose that. However if you have ever watched a good teacher teach a mixed ability class then you'd see meeting varied needs is possible and does happen.

My children probably wouldn't get in to our local grammar as they arent academic enough.

Recent research shows that children in grammar school areas that don't make it to the grammar achieve less well than children in comprehensive areas,

So yes, you are supporting a system that disadvantages your own children.

In DDs outstanding state school she was always put with the lowest ability or worst behaviour kids so that she could influence them. FFS an 8 Yr old kid being responsible for managing the behaviour of others. How is that "fair"?
Everyone who welcomes indi kids going to state sector is hoping for exactly this scenario to happen. To "drive standards up". Well sorry, it isn't my daughter's responsibility to do that, unless she has superhuman powers which mean she can influence 30+kids in each class.

As someone who has done OTLAs I agree but they are a minority. The state sector is on crisis and violence against teachers and lack of engagement in education is high. A lot of teachers are too busy firefighting to differentiate effectively to meet the needs of every child in the class.

Presumably those in comprehensive areas were never assessed for grammar schools so I am not sure how the two areas can be compared numerically.

Yould have to take the overall pass rates for GCSE's and Alevels in the entire area, make adjustments for the catchment etc. And if there was a huge difference then I would see your point.

It is not feckless parent bashing, it's acknowledging a very real problem that is a key driver to inequality. There are clearly a significant number of families that do not engage with school or education in a reasonable manner. Not only does this impact their own children's education but it also impacts anyone else that happens to be unfortunate enough to be in their class. I am speaking from experience and you can read on this thread that I am not alone. You would not believe the amount of resource and attention one disruptive, disengaged child can demand, let alone a class that has many of this type of student.

I agree that there are usually complex circumstances involved with these families and it can be difficult to attribute blame, but that doesn't mean that we just have to pretend that this issue doesn't exist and that it's not wreaking havoc in many of this country's poorest performing schools. Labour pretending that they can charge a few wealthy parents a bit of VAT and hire some more teachers will resolve this problem are in absolute dreamland. The idea of comprehensive school always seems lovely until your kid is getting caught in county lines gangs and being encouraged to skive school with their friends that are completely disengaged from education. Then you see that actually the inequality in schools was never really about money and investment into the school itself. Not really.

There is so much that needs to change in education. Teacher morale and retention is definitely one of them.
That's not to detract from the fact that mixed ability teaching can and does work in the right context. So many posters implying that standards get lowered not raised with this form of teaching.

Because you can compare the outcomes of pupils in selective and non-selective school areas using large data sets?

@Bauhaust Are you talking about grammar areas or areas with super selective grammar schools? The two are not the same. I think most people are less in favour of wholly selective grammar areas than areas with super selective grammar schools.

Does anyone have a link to the top local authorities for secondary schools performance uk? I can only find links to older stats. And these showed a number of authorities that did well with grammar schools within their area.

See my follow up post as to how I would go about it. I don't think you could accurately judge it though.