Why not make grammar entry fairer?

[belladonna22]

My kids are still young so I have no direct experience with entry exams for grammar schools, but why is it that the exams seem to cover topics that children haven’t yet covered in most state schools?

If their (stated) purpose is to enable the best and brightest to attend, why do they make it more or less essential to obtain private tutoring, thus tilting the scales in favour of better resourced and informed families? If Labour were serious about improving access to education, wouldn’t one policy be for grammars to limit exams to topics most children will be familiar with at that point in their schooling?

My son sat two tests for his 11plus in what is deemed ‘super-selective’ (ie no catchment areas so any child can sit) in different counties.

He came out of the first saying it was NOTHING like any of the books we studied or the sheets the school gave them. He scraped through.

The other one was sat in an area where we’d had formal tutoring. He sailed through that and was in the top 50.

A lot of what we were doing at home was going over the curriculum for Year 5 Maths and English. Making sure it was ingrained in his brain not something school had covered a year ago.

The Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning. I do believe kids need to be familiar with this as it’s not taught in the majority of schools. Sure you will get some kids that can do it - but there are strategies for tackling and identifying patterns. The more you do the quicker you become etc.. These are the IQ bits.

There is no contradiction - the mother's culture and education is the defining factor, not the school. There is no universal "British schooling experience" btw - many children leave school illiterate and innumerate, surely their "schooling experience" was very different to ours. Many are choosing HE now, this is also changing the landscape massively.

Indians come from an ancient culture that places supreme value on knowledge and education so not sure it's a relevant example. Interestingly though, the classical Indian systems of logic, Nyaya and others, are very different from European, almost impossible for an ordinary European to
comprehend. And it would be impossible to "measure IQ" 😂🤦‍♀️ of a true Indian sage who thinks within the true Indian schools of thought. But there is no question of course that the Raj affected Indian middle classes, they had a couple of centuries to get westernised.

As for Maths tests @nearlylovemyusername aren't they effectively stopped past basic arithmetics for many pupils? If you're not allowed to sit higher papers, that's what you do for your tests to get the required 4.

@Ubertomusic of the 37% non British parent families many will be from other white western countries. Hardly disadvantaged if a parent is; American, Canadian,Australian, Ukrainian, Polish, Swiss etc.
Research has shown white British boys score the lowest and struggle the most along with children of Roma heritage.
Selection at 11 is all kinds of wrong but so is the lack of identification and treatment of special educational and mental health needs in children. The lack of funds for physicians, psychologists and therapists is criminal in itself.

They don’t where we are. Hopefully the change it by the time mine does the 11+

A much more sensible option would be to identify the 10-20% of children who are performing LEAST well, or have barriers to their learning such as SEN affecting behaviour, and make sure they are in schools that are catering specifically for their needs.

It is obviously not fair that able children from MC families are able to further advantage themselves by accessing a school where education is less disrupted by children whose needs (behavioural or learning) are harder to accommodate in a mainstream setting.

So my suggestion would be a ‘top 80% of ability’ mainstream school, with setting as needed, and then an array of specialist schools for those identified as needing additional help - some specialising in mixed ability but with SEN that affects behaviour; others in SEN that impact learning - with extra finding and much higher and specialised staff ratios.

Much of what parents claim they are looking for in a grammar school could actually be perfectly well met in a ‘top 80%’ environment, while the needs of those in the ‘lowest 20%’ genuinely would be better met in a different type of school.

There should be fluid movement between the school types as children develop - another weakness of the current system is the hard separation based on a single test aged 10.

@cantkeepawayforever excellent idea!

So just because kids are more middle class they’re not worthy of a school that meets their needs?? Right then.

Everybody deserves a place of education where they can have safe, undisrupted education that matches their educational needs.

Reserving that education specifically for the already advantaged, knowing it further disadvantages others, is obviously wrong.

@cantkeepawayforever

Agree on 80% / 20% idea, this would remove a lot of issues.

What I don't agree with is the idea that education should be all about equality. I do believe that education should be about stretching kids abilities and one of the aspects of this is being surrounded by intellectual peers who stimulate each other.

Yes. This is what makes the flip side of grammar schools a problem - a chunk of the smarter / better coached kids are removed out to another school, so the smart / less coached kids remaining have far fewer people to work alongside. Plus they’ve been assigned as “failures” at y6 (failing the 11+) which isn’t great.

Whereas in my kids fully comprehensive school they’re in sets based on ability, the lower sets are much smaller than the higher sets so they get more focussed coaching, and my kids are in sets with their peers to stretch and stimulate them.

I was at a grammar school in the 90’s (Manchester area, fully grammar system) and frankly we still had loads of kids mucking about, it wasn’t some haven of intellectual glory.

My old next door neighbour was a grammar school girl in the 1940s in rural wales. It was the making of her as a smart kid in a v poor area with no other good schooling prospects. It set her up for life. But they have become much more elite for elite now. Original purpose of giving less privileged children a chance to shine is mostly gone.

My posts were in response to PP who said "lower SES are less able" and "lower SES have lower mean IQ".

Ukrainians are of course disadvantaged, refugees are usually in the lowest SES. Do they have lower IQ because of that? LOL

There are few Europeans in births stats though https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/parentscountryofbirth/2023/2023birthsbyparentscountryofbirth.xlsx

I am of Romani descent and know a thing or two about segregation of Roma children based on IQ testing. There is research on this too. Funnily enough, I know of Romani children who compete in British maths challenges 😂 However, the values generally clash with the mainstream - like almost every ethnic group that survived persecution and genocide, procreation is more important than education, it's just yet another evolutionary mechanism of survival. And the longer the woman stays in education and delays having children to gain economic independence, the more likely she will have fertility problems. Some ethnic groups will never buy into this.

My DC is gifted in music and dance, it's both genetic and traditional for Roma and performing talent is highly regarded unlike in British culture - my DC was called "an abnormal weirdo drilled from nappies" by naice MN users 😂 Would I care to drill her for passing Raven? It's totally irrelevant in our life even though I have a PhD and accidentally score high in IQ tests 😁

The reality is much more nuanced than pure stats.

Sorry I derailed the thread, didn't mean to but was amused by the statement "lower SES are less able" (=the poor are dumb).

To answer the OP's question, if the powers that be actually wanted to ensure that private tutoring was unnecessary they could simple allow schools to tutor for the 11+! But, of course, that was the old system and outlawed by Labour.

To all the people anti Grammar schools, who would like to see them abolished, all the Education Authorities have to do is do what they are being paid to do and deal with the underperforming schools and bring them up to standard. If all schools performed equally well, parents would be happy with any school. Parents fight to get their children into Grammar schools because they look at the underperforming schools and despair.

Finally, no one, child or adult, ever looked at a NVR paper for the first time and said "I see what the examiner is looking for, let me at the paper!" Parents who insist their children got into Grammar school with no tuition are being economical with the truth. The kids, of course, are rather more honest when chatting to each other.

My DC1 got into grammar with no tutoring whatsoever, and there is nothing economical about this truth. The truth is called high functioning autism, that's all.

What are the non grammar school types doing while the 11+ coaching is taking place? How do you stop parents coaching as well, so they get free coaching at school and more paid for coaching at home?

It depends what you mean by ‘all schools performed equally well’?

In a current grammar area, it is obviously ridiculous to suggest that all schools -grammar and non-grammar - should do equally well. Funnily enough, schools which select the most able and best prepared - and therefore select against those from unstable or deprived or uneducated family backgrounds; those poorly housed; those with SEN; those with conditions that affect behaviour - have better results than those who take ‘those who fail’.

Even in wholly comprehensive areas, intakes of schools vary in terms of socio-economic factors; %SEN; parental education; %EAL; number of refugees etc etc. Local employment-or lack of it - drives or inhibits pupil and parent aspirations. Again, looking at results without taking these factors into account is clearly not going to give a full picture of how the school is performing.

Then there are other factors of funding, perceived status, rising or falling rolls, crumbling buildings etc etc, that both affect pupils directly and also affect quality teacher recruitment and retention.

A school performing ‘well’ (genuinely) is very hard to measure fairly, and often bears little relation to ‘school having a good local reputation’.

all the Education Authorities have to do is do what they are being paid to do and deal with the underperforming schools and bring them up to standard. If all schools performed equally well, parents would be happy with any school.

It's not possible on the current level of resourcing to bring all state schools up to the standard of the "best" schools. What might be theoretically possible is to bring all state schools to the standard of the "average" school. However, if all state schools were at the standard of the average school, if grammars and comps in well-to-do neighbourhoods were brought down to the middle, I guarantee you that many parents would move their children to the private sector. The existence of inequality in the state school system is a feature, not a bug, for a lot of parents including, I suspect, a disproportionately large fraction of Mumsnetters.

if you compare children from a similar demographic in grammar and comprehensive schools, their outcomes are very similar.

Yes, and across the cohort, counties of similar demographics with full bipartite (grammar/non-grammar) and full comprehensive systems achieve very similar results.

Why do you assume that badly behaved children have SEN? Most don’t.

In our local leafy comp all MC children are being tutored. The local tutoring centre has been in business for at least 20 years.

But it’s overwhelmingly middle-class children. I’m not saying to abolish grammar schools, just it wouldn’t hurt to look at ways to try and make the system fairer and make sure kids on FSM etc aren’t so vastly underrepresented in grammar school numbers

Yes, it's definitely a feature not a bug, but educational system is controlled and organised by the state, not parents. Segregation of classes is inherent to the system as a whole.

@cantkeepawayforever I take your point. I was concentrating on the learning environment. Time after time, I see posters complaining that their children who want to learn are being distracted by children who are disrupting lessons. Teachers are spending their time policing this behaviour rather than actually teaching. As I see it, and I'm not a teacher, if schools dealt with this behaviour, which would probably mean giving them greater powers to suspend or exclude misbehaving children, then teachers could teach and children could actually learn. Having said that, I'm mindful of the surveys which looked at which children were excluded under the old system and the justified criticisms so that would have to be addressed.
In respect of outcomes, Grammar schools take the 25% who are ahead of the curve at 10, however, it seems to me that there's no reason why the 75% couldn't catch up with the Grammar school kids by GCSE's (probably earlier) IF they are in a good learning environment, which brings us full circle to children's behaviour in school and the school's power to deal with poor behaviour effectively. It is also unacceptable for schools to use teachers who are not specialists in the subject matter. Schools would, of course, respond that the problem is that qualified specialist teachers are leaving the profession or choosing to work in the private sector for the sake of their sanity. So teacher's pay also needs to be addressed. I can't solve these problems but the Director of Education for each local authority is paid a great deal of money to address these issues, and has a team, so isn't expected to work miracles by his/herself. There's too much "taking the money" without delivering.
I can't disagree with the socio economic factors you list, pupils who fall within those categories are going to be at a disadvantage. I don't want to sound "glib" but a decent education can compensate for these disadvantages.
So I return to my point in my first post, namely that parents wouldn't chase Grammar school places if all school's streamed subjects, employed specialist teachers and dealt with poor behaviour i.e. were equally good.

I apologise, I should have been clearer.

One if the reasons that parents give for wanting their children to be in grammar schools rather than non-grammar is to escape some of the most disruptive in-class behaviour. However, this condemns the majority of pupils, (the 75-98% who don’t pass the 11+, depending on area) to schools where children displaying behaviour that seriously disrupts learning are statistically over-represented compared with the cohort as a whole.

In my preferred system, there would be alternative schools for pupils showing persistent disruptive behaviour, so that all children of all abilities can learn without disruption. There may need to be a variety - specialist schools for those with a specific special need (whether in-born or created eg through adverse childhood experiences); short-stay schools for a ‘re-set’, assessment and intensive work on behaviour; perhaps simply small nurturing schools with reduced practical curricula to create an environment in which such children can moderate their behaviour.

However, as someone else has pointed out, there is No Money.💵