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

Fortunately UCL have done it for you, using GCSE attainment data.

@IFollowRivers that's not true of the comprehensive school I attended nor the one my children attend. In those you had certain subjects taught in your mixed tutor group but by the time you got to GCSE level you were streamed by ability (learning at the right pace for you and the group you are with) So I would never have been in the top PE stream but I was in top set humanities subjects whereas other people would have experienced the opposite to me. This isn't set in stone either, depending on how children perform they can then move up and down the sets. So it works well and is bespoke to the child. Schools also often offer vocational subjects alongside the GCSEs so it's a truly comprehensive system with children coming together under the umbrella of the same school at secondary level, doing Duke of Edinburgh etc together but coming away with different skillsets and qualifications.

I went on to do degrees at Russell groups unis and work at Oxbridge so it's not been detrimental to me.

Ah right. So they compare Kent and Surrey and then adjust for socio economic background etc. And there's a huge difference in exam results per county?

I agree. My 2 oldest were higher achievers at their state secondary and they were both used as informal support staff in the classroom.

Both of them were routinely sat with children who were struggling to help them out instead of being taught well and academically stretched.

It really pissed me off.

Fortunately we were able to pick up the slack at home and use a private tutor.

Good! It's completely wrong that at age 10 children are being pigeonholed to their potential and only in certain parts of the country plus the 11+ is open to so much abuse through excessive tutoring by the parents with the most means. Most parts of the U.K. do not have state selective education

That study is massively flawed due to the London effect. Also anyone thinking that grammar schools and private schools are the root of educational inequality should read this article anyway as it really highlights how unjust the system currently is!

www.fenews.co.uk/education/new-data-reveals-the-areas-in-england-with-the-highest-and-lowest-gcse-pass-rates/

The study controlled for previous academic attainment, social background, ethnicity, SEN, sex and birth month.

It found that overall pupils in selective areas had a lower chance of getting top GCSE grades than equivalent pupils in comprehensive local authority areas.

It also found that pupils in selective areas who did not get into grammar school (did't pass the 11+), performed slightly worse at GCSE that their counterparts in a comprehensive local authority.

abolish grammar schools
abolish faith schools
remove sibling priority if parents move out of catchment
put in place lottery system to eliminate purchasing better education through post codes
give every where else the same funding that has elevated London schools but left everywhere else lagging

Isn’t this basically just saying ‘eradicate the class system’? I hate that social mobility has dropped off a cliff, and that the U.K. remains so class-bound, but pragmatically this is never going to happen. The reality is that as a country we are pretty anti-intellectual, and this attitude is reflected by behaviour and attitudes in many of those schools that don’t select in any of the ways listed above. There will always be ‘nice’ and ‘not so nice’ areas to live - even within a supposed lottery system engaged parents will just hedge their bets and flock to the ‘nice’, affluent places where schools in general are better.

Back in the day I was the academic child who made it to grammar school from a very modest background - my school experience absolutely made me, and I would never have had the same challenge or breadth of opportunity at my mediocre local comp. This thread is only making me more determined to move to the ‘naice’ leafy area we have our eye on so our keen, bright DD can access the Outstanding girls’ comp there. She’s only in Year 2 but is already bored and being held back by the behaviour and low attainment of the kids in her class whose parents are much less invested in education than we are. These struggling kids, not sensible, high attaining DD and her ilk, are and will always be the main focus of time and resources at her current school.

Cynical though it is, we’ve reached the point where we just want her to be in an environment that has fewer issues and supportive, like-minded pupils and parents - if this involves gaming the system, then so be it.

Re your first paragraph if they compare like for like and include every pupil in a grammar area and a non grammar area with the same number of private schools in each I might take your point. Although I did see a PP mentioning the London effect as skewing the figures.

Re your second paragraph, that wont work as if in the comprehensive authority no pupil had ever been assessed for grammar school you dont know who would have got in (if the area was a grammar area) in order to compare the figures with a grammar area.

I am autistic and had the enormously good fortune to attend an all-girl grammar. I was also at Guides with the girls who weren't at the grammar.

1. I was bullied frequently and sexually assaulted at my mixed primary school.
2. I was bullied frequently at Guides.
3. I was bullied exactly once at all-girl grammar and the other girls defended me against the bully.

My sister went to an all-girl comprehensive. She was bullied a lot by the other girls, despite being neurotypical, and developed an eating disorder as a consequence of the bullying. She refused to take the 11+ and I wish she had taken it because she was a high achiever and grammar school would have been a safer environment for her.

Thick kids bully smarter kids because they are jealous. I'm not sorry for saying that. Boys bully and sexually assault girls because of their sense of male entitlement. I'm not sorry for saying that either and you needn't bother piping up with NAMALT because one boy can leave a girl terrified of all boys.

As a then-undiagnosed autistic girl, the kind that is disabled but in a way that isn't glaringly obvious and so isn't on the SENCO's radar, there's no way I would have survived a mixed-sex secondary nor a comprehensive of any kind. Autistic burnout had me attempting suicide at 15 as it was, what do you think that chronic bullying would have done to me?

Stop and think about the "hidden" disabled girls you are hurting by advocating for the removal of single-sex and selective schools.

The reality is that to equalise things then some children will get a significantly worse education

Agree, and this is why I also struggle with the current ‘equity’ agenda in schools. This and ‘narrowing the gap’ are a massive priority at DD’s current demographically mixed primary, but no one seems to be able to explain how ‘narrowing the gap’ in educational outcomes is possible without holding back those at the top end (since stretching and allowing high attainers to fulfil their potential would just serve to open up the gap again).

In practice, given the current funding and staffing crises in schools, ‘equity’ seems to be about throwing resources at struggling and behaviourally challenging pupils while ignoring the needs of those who are more able (or in many cases not even more able, but simply no trouble).

Re your first paragraph if they compare like for like and include every pupil in a grammar area and a non grammar area with the same number of private schools in each I might take your point.

The study wasn't looking at the impact of private schooling, and given that only 7% of children are privately educated then it's clearly set out to consider the 93% of children at state schools.

Re your second paragraph, that wont work as if in the comprehensive authority no pupil had ever been assessed for grammar school you dont know who would have got in (if the area was a grammar area) in order to compare the figures with a grammar area.

The study considered prior attainment using SATS.

Nice try.

The only reason those schools are good in the first place is because ‘those’ parents send their children to them, it doesn’t matter how good the teachers are if the parents aren’t interested in their children’s education, there will always be the odd one child who comes from the worst possible home life who does really well but in general crap parents breed underachieving children.

I am surprised people don't know this already, this is what some people are voting for on Thursday. Socialism. What do they think Labour means otherwise?!

Where every child is squeezed into a square box that is exactly the same as everyone else's box, and everything is the 'same'. This is their very ambition to flatten the playing field so it is completely 'fair' as they see it. It certainly won't stop at private, grammar and faith schools. It is very likely to continue into removing 'sets' within classes because that is seen by socialists as unfair and uneven, and discrimination to the lower sets. It will continue with sports, music and in every direction. It is the ambition of all of Labour to completely level 'down' in ways well beyond 'the rich', and bring everything down to the lowest dominator.

This will ripple into house ownership, cars, bedrooms, garden sizes, land and taxes will be sky high on all these things in an effort to redistribute wealth across the whole country.

I grew up under a Labour government very much like this (I think many people mix up the Blair years but there was nothing Labour about Blair!) and it was suffocating for that reason, no one could be an individual or stand out or be good at anything. Being successful or talented in any way becomes an ugly, dirty word. It was dystopian and seriously undermined this country for years, and led to an IMF bail out and power cuts and three day weeks. People just stopped trying. A mass resignation of effort if you like.

If you go to the Netherlands you can see the culture lives on there. My friends are embarrassed to buy a new car or an expensive new dress for instance. You will be judged harshly for doing well. Everyone keeps their head down.

If you want to live in a socialist world, and many on here seem to be relishing the future of socialism and wish to take it even further. I will leave the country and so will all of my professional friends, it will bankrupt this country of everything that is special about it, and the economy and ambition will tank.

I just can't believe this is what it has come to.

But why is everyone focussing on exam results as a mark of attainment? I went to a top girls grammar but know a lot of people who went secondary and without hesitation would say those from secondary are far more likely to own their own businesses, and are very likely earning on average far more than those from grammar. Of course, those businesses are things like garages, building firms, beauty salons and hairdressers and the people very likely don't have much of a grasp of Shakespeare, but why aren't we including them in our measures of 'success'? It's also not to say they can't go on to do something more academic - my extremely talented - and expensive! - physio is from secondary, a close solicitor friend is from secondary, I know a top scientist from secondary and even a university professor (in computing - not sure if he has much grasp of Shakespeare either!). Girls from my school may well have the exam results but by far the most popular career has been nursing, followed by teaching. Only a handful have gone on to 'elite' careers like law and I can think of only one who went into finance.

My personal wish for education is much more flexibility and tailoring to a child's strength - if they're crap at biology but great at bricklaying, surely that should be celebrated and regarded as equally valid, and taught as a legitimate subject? We do really need these people, after all. It may well be upsetting for a child who doesn't get into grammar, but why should it be? Why shouldn't it be reframed as "you're not naturally academic, but we knew that anyway - you've always been so good with your hands, it was obvious you were going to do something more useful than analysing poetry!" Especially when I imagine it's going to be just as upsetting for non-academic children to be stuck in a classroom where they get daily reminders of how stupid they are and how they can't keep up, while failing exam after exam.

No need to be facetious just because I'm checking your workings!

You would need to include private school results because you would need to look at the attainment for the whole cohort of the year in each area in order to compare it with another.

You still can't assess who would actually get into a grammar unless they actually got in at age 11. Otherwise it's speculative.

I just don't see how your argument really works unfortunately. You will never be able to compare like for like and it sounds like rather a dogmatic survey really.

For those posters advocating comp. Education and no setting can you please explain to me how GCSE maths would be taught in practice in a class of 30, where some children are capable of doing further maths and others can't add fractions etc.

What would that lesson plan look like?

How would you make sure the clever kids are really stretched and the lower ability get the attention they need oh and not forgetting the average child in the middle who needs a bit of a reminder.

Similar with English how do you really examine the text when x in the corner can barely read? (Happened to dss at his shit. Comp) and not forgetting science, how do you teach higher level chemistry to a group of kids that don't even know what an atom is let alone learning the trends etc.

For all the data in the world I don't see how comp. Education doesn't bring down the grades of the cleverest children.

could you please share the links to this research?

Would you care to address the questions? Or do you know only how to make ad hominem attacks?

The usual way it works is by teaching the pupils in ability-based sets.

In a comprehensive there is greater flexibility for sets to be more closely allied to the pupils ability and to move between sets, rather than having ability at 11+ divide into totally different schools. The advantages are usually greatest for those who are later bloomers, or those whose abilities are very one-sided.

I don't know any comprehensive secondary schools that don't have streaming or setting in maths so that children are working in groups with children at the same level. they move up or down sets according to their monitored progress.

@Hummingbird75 don't worry the end is not nigh, it's only a change of Government.

Somebody up thread said that their child's school has no sets bar one class and even that is being removed.

@Blankscreen I would say that scenario at secondary level would be incredibly unusual and wouldn't be popular with parents, teachers or pupils. It's certainly not representative of how comprehensive schools work, as the idea is generally to offer a comprehensive education (that suits the needs and skills of all children) rather than trying to make them all do the same in an undifferentiated setting.

@Greentapemeasure you're scaremongering in the extreme.

Labour's manifesto does NOT indicate any of what you posit.

Having a grammar school in your area (if we are talking about the Bucks model which creams off 30% of kids) means parents no longer have the choice of a comprehensive school - the “other” school won’t be truly comprehensive any more.

I posted this on the other thread, but just to let you know, most of the grammar schools (and secondary moderns) which converted to comprehensive status in the 70s did so under Margaret Thatcher. She signed off record numbers of comprehensives. She didn’t want to do it, but had to do it, because the 70% of parents whose kids were winding up in a school with “Failure” written all over it were fed up with this and demanded change so her hand was forced.

If Labour can’t get rid of grammar schools/secondary moderns (I know nobody calls them SMs any more, but that is what they are), I hope that they will force grammar schools to take more underprivileged children - this is already a thing in some GS districts, so it’s perfectly likely that this will happen.

Those who like 11 plus systems always burble vaguely about all the marvelous “social mobility” that the 11 plus system allegedly provides (it doesn’t). If you suggest, however, that perhaps we could improve on this by essentially changing the rules so that GSs only or mainly admit the brightest kids from poor families…. They go all quiet. They don’t want “social mobility” - they want a free private school.

Sets and streams provide the advantages of grammar school/secondary modern (GS/SM) systems without the downsides.

They provide the opportunity for differentiated teaching, but there is the opportunity to go up and down and for decisions to be made based on observations of pupils’ progress over the longer term, rather than everything hinging on one bloody exam you do when you’re 10.

Sets and streams (rather than GS/SM) also cater for kids with spiky profiles who are (say) weak in languages but ace at maths and hard sciences - if you try to put a kid like that in either a GS or a SM, they will inevitably be at a completely wrong level for some of their subjects.

There is a reason why we got rid of GS and SM in most areas. I’d be quite happy if Labour got rid of the rest. Or changed their entry requirements so much that they stopped being a free private school for middle class people.