Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 4

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Continuing the discussion about the impact of VAT on independent schools…

@SabrinaThwaite both articles linked are the same (the first from ulc is an abbreviation of the second one linked which is the actual study results).
my issue with state schools however is not the grades my issue is the educational experience. i see zero reason why children need to experience disruption and antisocial behavior as part of their education. i believe in the smaller more 1-1 aspect of private education with more personal guidance (so totally against mossborn type strict rules).
but even the study admits to being skewed by london results and needs to be looked at regionally. again if 90% of the grammar students would do just as well at a comprehensive school the school atmosphere is not measured. education is lifelong what you want is a child to be interested enough to move forward at 18 with solid basic skills and intellectual curiosity to look at further education (which btw could be a skilled trade).

look at the numerous mn threads on the "dreaded" pe experiences which affect life long enjoyment of physical fitness. what i want to see is all children enjoying their educational experiences (no throwing chairs, no spitting at the teachers, no locked toilets along with everyone being treated with respect regardless of the shoes they have to wear).

Most caring parents want their child to have a happy time at school, not arrive at the end of their education being the 'survivor' of a less than good experience.

@CurlewKate this comment from @OhCrumbsWhereNow is very relevant. What about a child’s experience? I was an academically gifted child at a comprehensive which couldn’t really cater for me, and I spent seven absolutely miserable years frustrated, bullied, and depressed to the extent that I became a school refuser. Same happened to my DH. On paper, I got great exam results, so I guess you’d count that as a success; but that hides the fact that I was deeply miserable and unhappy for nearly a decade of my life, something which has had lifelong effects on my self-esteem, confidence and mental health. DH had it even worse.

One of the reasons we opted for private for DD was so that she could have a happier school experience, somewhere where her academic ability and aptitudes are better catered for, and she isn’t an instant target for bullying (I wasn’t only bullied by other pupils, but by teachers as well). Our catchment comprehensive school (our only other option) quite openly admitted to us that they couldn’t properly cater academically for DD. What would you have had us do, stick her in there anyway?

I specifically didn’t, but thanks for asking.

It wasn’t a question.

No one is taking away your need for a comprehensive but you would take away other parents’ first choice.

Why do you feel that’s a decision you should make?

Although your chosen education system might be great for you and your DC, I’m sure other parents are just as capable of weighing up the detrimental effects to their children before choosing a school. There’s no need to abolish any schools and limit other parents choices because you didn’t opt for that route.

Only 90% of secondary students are at comprehensive.
5% grammar
6% private
(have to assume there's a rounding discrepancy!)

what’s your justification for retaining it?

Not all children are the same. Why abolish a type of school which is the best one for some children, and also cheaper than the alternative?!

Each child goes to school for their own education. They are not a tool to improve other children's experience/education.

again parents tutor and guide children towards the selectives and superselectives not always for grades. they are focused on the atmosphere that those schools provide, which is a percieved lack of students with disruptive and antisocial behavior. the uk school issue which is actually not just a uk issue is the rise in children with special needs, emotional and mental health disorders.

You can read the research - here’s the top line:

The UK’s brightest pupils’ chances of getting top GCSE grades are actually lower in grammar schools than in comprehensives, according to a major new piece of research involving UCL researchers.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/aug/no-evidence-grammar-school-systems-are-best-brightest

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Xin-Shao-13/publication/373435781_How_do_academic_selection_systems_affect_pupils'_educational_attainment_New_evidence_from_an_analysis_of_large-scale_data_on_England/links/65c7b7ee1bed776ae33e8c0c/How-do-academic-selection-systems-affect-pupils-educational-attainment-New-evidence-from-an-analysis-of-large-scale-data-on-England.pdf

That is worth asking @Airwaterfire

Within SEND there are lots of different groups, each with their own needs. It's not a one size fits all issue.

Some have SpLd and just need 'educational' help
Some have mental health issues
Some have ASD or ADHD
Lots have a mix

But there are also those who are outliers at either end of the spectrum.

Just as we would not write off those children who have intellectual disabilities that make learning extremely challenging, there are those with intellectual abilities than need equal help and support to prevent most of them joining the ranks of the mental health issue contingent.

How are we catering for all the groups within state schools?

Dear Bridget seems to like the idea of having ASD units within mainstream.

Are we going to have separate units for ASD, ADHD, SpLd, Mental Health issues etc in every comprehensive?

My guess is that the DfE are rapidly going to realise they have bitten off more than they can handle.

Or perhaps the big plan is to buy up all the closing private schools and repurpose them as Great British SEN Schools... followed by Great British School Taxi Service.

17% of pupils attend a private sixth form.

Re: "Comprehensive users’ make up about 96% of children in England, Scotland and Wales"
I don't think the maths stacks up. About 6-7% are in private, 3% in grammar, some must be in secondary moderns in grammar areas, so less than 90% can be in comprehensives. 96% of children in state schools might be closer.

Something that's rarely highlighted is the "comprehensive minus" (so called by Chris Woodhead - formerly head of ofsted) - comprehensives where a significant number of kids in the top quartile of ability/attainment are creamed off by nearby grammars and privates.
The problem with grammars is that every time you open a grammar, you create two or three secondary moderns and/or comprehensive minuses in the surrounding area. Frequently, they're called comprehensives, but they're not much different from secondary moderns. "Bring back grammars" is a good soundbite but "Bring back secondary moderns" - less so.

This. @SabrinaThwaitesurely you can see other parents don’t all feel as you do.

I know it wasn’t a question.

Why do you think that children should be educationally segregated at the age of 10?

I should have specified that it’s 96% of state educated children are at comprehensives in England, Scotland and Wales as a whole (although that’s 100% in Scotland and Wales, as there are no grammar schools in these countries).

@SabrinaThwaite please the title is really catchy but it really isn't supported by the study.

first off "little difference" Overall, the results show little difference in GCSE pass rates between areas with grammar schools and areas which were non-selective. The paper concludes that expansion of England’s 163 grammar schools would be expensive and unwise, given the lack of evidence that it would raise standards.
then "slight positive" The research also looked at how selective and non-selective areas fared in getting pupils five GCSEs at grades A-C (now grades 9-4), and found no difference between selective and non-selective areas. While there was a slight positive effect for those attending grammar school, there was an equivalent negative effect for pupils in non-selective schools in those areas*.
finishing off with:Limitations of the research include the linear and logistic regression model used. The authors recommend that future studies add a regional element to this new analysis to “further explore the ‘London effect’ in the effectiveness of selective schooling”.

recognizing that it's often mentioned that mn has a strong london centric base.
as is noticeable on the 11+ discussions.

again my view is that parents interest in grammar and private schooling is the atmosphere more so than the grades.

They're segregated in most comprehensives.

In schools that set extensively half the year group have probably never even met the other half.

The kids in the top sets might momentarily meet those in the bottom sets in the corridor but that's probably where it ends.

Welcome to the club, someone suggesting closing down your DC’s school for some vague common good notion that can’t be articulated is quite alarming isn’t it,

I think you’re mixing up setting and streaming.

Comprehensives generally set for core subjects such as English and maths, sometimes MFL. Other subjects will be mixed ability.

‘Can’t be articulated’?

I guess you can read though?

My (very big) comprehensive school streamed and setted as well (though they called it all “setting”, so some schools do stream but call it setting anyway).

I don’t think I ever even knew the kids’ names who weren’t in my set/stream. It’s been said on these threads that you could follow a top set child around all day in many schools and find it a radically different experience from following a child in the “bottom” set, and I think that’s absolutely true.

Schools that stream/set have one lot of issues; but schools that don’t, have yet another lot of issues. In my current LEA there is no streaming, and instead the schools use a really draconian behaviour management system, Michaela-style, which is more like being in a borstal. The aim is to keep the more disruptive pupils from disturbing the others, but the school is pretty harsh, and a lot of the shyer and less resilient students suffer badly from the very overbearing discipline. Having witnessed it in action, we were even more worried about DD, who would have had her spirit absolutely crushed by it.

Although national evaluation showed that students in grammar schools achieved higher than the counterparts in non-selective schools after controlling for pre-existing differences. The geographical difference is substantial.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131911.2022.2054960?scroll=top&needAccess=true#
So again more of a mn issue that for privacy reasons posters rarely post where they live a forum discussion on "education" throws up massive differences between lambeth/brixton and the scottish highlands both of which and all the area in between have unique primary and secondary settings.

‘I guess you can read though?’

I’ve made it very clear I’m against education tax and ‘abolishing’ schools.

Streaming and setting are not the same thing.

Ah, of course. You only count 'our children' (BP trademark). Not private school kids. They don't count.

Did you actually read my post? I know that, as I made clear. My own school did both. But many schools actually call streaming “setting”, no matter the difference between the two.