Scrap school catchments now

[Momentumummy]

If Labour wants to eventually end parents buying privilege through private schools, it needs to go after school catchments. How can it be fair to decide schools by distance to gates when it often depends on ability to pay rent or mortgage which will usually be higher in catchment for good schools?

The only fair system is a lottery one by borough (at least for secondary when kids are old enough to travel alone). You should be allocated a place within your borough but it should be randomized and not based on distance to gates.

Making claims without any supporting data is pointless.

What claims?

@Ubertomusic

I don't wan't to believe you are a teacher.

I don't know what I have said that is controversial?

I enjoy teaching SEN students & get great joy when they do well. I get a lot of satisfaction from teaching them.

I don't believe that a grammar school is necessarily the best fit for all. It's not the only path to success.

ASD is a clinical diagnosis that leads to a disability. Yes, disability doesn't necessarily means SEN but in reality even high functioning ASD have profound impairments and SEN.

You said you didn't count ASD as SEN. Your other comments about SEN show your ignorance as was pointed out by other posters. It looks like you don't understand the concept of SEN in general, not just for ASD.

By your own words, you are a teacher who doesn't count ASD disabled people as SEN. This means they suffer in your class because you're simply ignore their needs as if the needs just don't exist.

You're not the only teacher who says or does such things, both on MN and IRL.

This is horrible.

I don't believe that a grammar school is necessarily the best fit for all.

Has anyone said it's the best for all?

My DC2 is not into STEM so I never considered grammar until VAT turmoil as our local grammars are very STEM heavy.

Horses for courses.

But why does being a socialist mean bringing things to the lowest common denominator. Why not improve all schools so everyone gets a decent education. Instead you just want to punish middle class kids and make them travel up to an hour a day even if there is a school 5 minutes away!

@Ubertomusic

You said you didn't count ASD as SEN

Well ASD just didn't spring to mind when stats on SEN at grammar schools were mentioned. It doesn't mean I don't believe ir exists or simply don't care.

I think you're jumping to lots of conclusions! I enjoy teaching all kinds of students & am empathetic to all whatever their needs.

I don't know this has any relevance whatsoever to the original question posted!

Because that’s how logic works. Can’t have private school, or grammar school. That’s unfair! So no one should have it. Can’t have a nice house near the nice primary or secondary school. That’s unfair! So no one should have it.

To create true equality. It’s impossible to bring everyone up to the top bar. So the only way to achieve is mandate the lowest denominator. Like have everyone starving equally in North Korea. But some will still be naturally more resourceful even with nothing. So you have to kill or imprison those ones.

If they did that then only wealthy and bame kids would go to school. It’s fairly well understood that poorer white families are less likely to send their kids to school if it’s not walking distance.

How old are you that free school meals weren’t a thing? I got free school meals in primary and secondary and I’m in my 50s

I do think we need a bit of fact checking on this thread.

1)There are only 168 grammar schools in the country, so most posters can have no contemporary experience of them.
2)Even in selective areas, the vast majority of kids do not go to the grammar.
3)Comprehensive education does NOT mean mixed ability teaching.
4)In studies of comparable cohorts, there is very little difference in outcome for high ability kids between grammar and comprehensive schools.

All schools are different. Some stream. Some set for a few subjects. Some only offer academic subjects, some a wide range. Some have a diverse intake. Some it is a very narrow strata of wider society.

The Super Selectives are very different to the Full 11+ areas like Kent.

Theres also the simple fact: the system can be fine in theory... but human factor changes things.

(I agree with Gramnar schools in theory.. but I don't think the current system works, with too much pressure on a test at 10years old and associated tutoring beforehand)

Also-I honestly don't understand the whole "If you want equality of opportunity you must be a socialist and should move to South Korea" posters. Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are completely different things.

"Even in selective areas, the vast majority of kids do not go to the grammar."

Of course they don't. They are meant to be specialist schools for the brightest children (top 10%?) so that they can reach their full potential.

"Comprehensive education does NOT mean mixed ability teaching."

My local comp (which I thankfully didn't attend and which only achieved 22% A-C passes) didn't have streaming - and didn't that work well...

"In studies of comparable cohorts, there is very little difference in outcome for high ability kids between grammar and comprehensive schools."

What outcomes? At what age?

I attended a comprehensive until the age of 16 and then a grammar for a-levels. Even the 'dunces' from the grammar rugby team* went on to get jobs in investment banking, etc.

* My grammar school fetishised rugby and there were boys in the school who clearly weren't that bright, but they were good at rugby and they appeared to have bypassed the academic selection process.

If you'd been to a grammar, you'd probably know the difference between North and South Korea. 😉

@ThisOldThang

"Even in selective areas, the vast majority of kids do not go to the grammar."

Of course they don't. They are meant to be specialist schools for the brightest children (top 10%?) so that they can reach their full potential. "

My point is that we need to think, even in grammar areas, about what happens to the other kids.

"Comprehensive education does NOT mean mixed ability teaching."

My local comp (which I thankfully didn't attend and which only achieved 22% A-C passes) didn't have streaming - and didn't that work well...
As I said- not contemporary experience.

"In studies of comparable cohorts, there is very little difference in outcome for high ability kids between grammar and comprehensive schools."

What outcomes? At what age?

GCSEs and A levels.

"GCSEs and A levels."

GCSEs and A-level results will very much depend upon things such as Examination Board.

I did exceptionally well at GCSE and nobody at the grammar school had done better than me on paper, but it quickly became clear that my subject knowledge was massively behind the grammar kids - e.g. I took chemistry A-level and I'd never heard of a 'mole' (double A* in combined science GCSE). All the grammar kids had taken individual science GCSEs and were well ahead of me entering A-levels.

Just because you went to a bad school @ThisOldThang doesn't mean all comprehensives are bad. Many comps do separate sciences at GCSE, have Sets for either all or some subjects, and have a culture where hard work is appreciated.

I was extremely badly bullied at a Grammar school, so it doesn't follow that they are havens either!

@ThisOldThang "I took chemistry A-level and I'd never heard of a 'mole' (double A* in combined science GCSE). All the grammar kids had taken individual science GCSEs and were well ahead of me entering A-levels."

Well, of course they had more knowledge if they did single sciences and you did combined. Lots of comprehensives do single sciences.

I don't think this will happen. Because it is predicated on accepting that there are some good schools and some bad schools and it's ok for some children to have to go to a bad school and all we need is a fair system for working out which kids to condemn to going to a bad school.

If you accept that, then you are right there should be a lottery. Rather than it being across a whole LA it would be better to cluster 2-4 schools that are nearby to each other with a range of quality levels, and have a single catchment area for the cluster, with random allocation within that cluster.

However I don't want that and I don't accept that.

I want every school that is undersubscribed and has a reputation for being a terrible place to be allocated, and which sharp-elbowred parents will pay through the nose for private, move house, jump through a multitude of other hoops and go through the Appeals process to avoid, to be given a huge boost of the personnel, resources and funding they need to revolutionise, reinvent and metamorphose into an amazing school that families are scrabbling for places at.

There really shouldn't be any mediocre schools, but if there are they should be the ones in the naice, safe, leafy suburb areas which are perfectly adequate and do a reasonable job getting a prescribed level of knowledge into the brains of their cohorts of reasonably able, reasonably compliant children from naice families who are switched on to and engaged with education. But that the really aspirational families will nevertheless also apply to the innovative and exciting inner-city school that they aren't in-catchment for and which was regarded as awful 8 years ago - because their offering is something so intrinsically desirable.

Your lottery system embeds the culture that there must be winners and losers. I want instead to make every possible outcome a prize worth having. And given the enormous costs that would be intrinsic in the chaotic quadrupling of rush hour traffic if such a lottery was instituted, I don't think my plan would actually cost much more.

@TickingAlongNicely

My comp was actually considered to be a 'good' comp (44% A-C passes at GCSE).

I achieved very good GCSEs at that school, but there were serious knowledge gaps versus the grammar school.

Those gaps meant i wasn't able to take further maths a-level because the grammar kids had taken GCSE maths a year early, etc.

"*You're deluded if you think those kids are going to get the same outcomes if they're forced to attend non-selective schools."

Except that they do.

What do you think happens to bright kids in the vast majority of country which is non selective?

Can working class parents not elbow!