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?

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

In this world of MATs, this is, in many areas, no longer the case. Where all or almost all secondaries and the majority of primaries are no longer in LA control, ime the LA just about administers admission arrangements and gatekeeps the EHCP/SEN system. MATs report directly to the DfE and the LA has almost no power or influence over them.

@CurlewKate there are few Grammar school areas left so it would be an issue for relatively few schools but I can't see why non 11+ candidates wouldn't benefit from extra lessons in English, Maths, VR and NVR in the sense that they would stretch pupils. Alternatively, schools could simply offer sessions before school, during the lunch hour or after schools.
I don't see an issue with the number of hours each pupil spends on preparation. Once the pupil has a genuine understanding of exam technique - answer all the questions, guess the last few if necessary, time management, and understands exactly what the wording of questions means / requires, has practiced on a large number of test papers, then I don't believe you get a better result by doubling or tripling the number of hours spent on preparation. So I don't see a problem with parents also tutoring or not tutoring at home. Believe me, if I, or any other parent, had thought that simply drilling a child for hours would get a better exam result we'd have had them working all hours. The issue is between pupils who for whatever reason have no prep or inadequate prep and are seeing these exam papers for the first time on the day of the exam versus the pupils who understand exam technique and understand what is required from the questions.

@user149799568 I agree with you that parents don't want high performing schools dragged down to the level of underperforming schools in some perverted vision of equality. Nor do I believe that there is some mythical money tree somewhere, but how much of the problem is due to misuse of budgets or simply wasting money? How much of the problem is due to the people at the top simply treading water instead of acknowledging they are paid the big bucks to improve the service?

It is definitely worth asking the question whether the salaries of CEOs of MATs and others employed in MAT central teams are worth it and (critically) are delivering a better educational system both at a school and national level than the Local Authority system that preceded the current wildly patchwork arrangements.

And whether a system with nominal national-only oversight but no power to act at regional / local level is sensible.

It can't be a very good school then, if all of the children, including the most able need tutoring. None of my son's bright MC friends at our local comprehensive needed tutoring.

Does your school have 80% at grade 5+ in all core subjects?

I was commenting on @CurlewKate post that MC children in comps achieve the same results as in grammars.
Oh yes they do 😁

I didn't say anything about the school being "good" or "bad".

i would say that all children who repeatedly disrupt a class do have sen (adhd,asd,and or fas) and or mental health conditions. a mentally healthy nt child does not repeatedly cause or want negative attention. negative attention seeking is a sign of something not being okay somewhere (family breakdown, bullying or abuse).

The issue is that a test sat whilst aged 10 years old that measures a very narrow definition of intellectual ability, based on curriculum largely not yet taught in state primaries and in a format not seen in state primaries is not actually an effective way of identifying intellectually able students and takes no account that intellectual progress is rarely smoothly linear. It is too rough and ready, given what is at stake in terms of children's future educational opportunity, and hard bakes in a divisive two track system in Grammar areas.

@cantkeepawayforever, your idea already exists in many comps. At my DCs' comp school, there is a support unit within the school site where students can move into and out of as needs require. In the main school, fluid setting means you can be stretched in the subjects where you have strengths and be taught at the right pace where you do not.

No one is 'held back' and, crucially, if you have developed intellectually sometime after you were 10 (and many do), you are not consigned to a less ambitious track with fewer options, which can be the prospect for the majority in Grammar areas who have to attend de facto secondary moderns (whether such schools call themselves that or otherwise).

But my point is that lots of those children (the ones in top sets) would easily get high grades without tutoring, if they are taught the curriculum.
I think @CurlewKate was specifically referring to the children that would get into grammar schools.

Absolutely agree. I was thinking, as I posted, about a co-location model - I know of a large comprehensive with two co-located Special Schools for different levels of need, and think that model would work well to provide flexibility for an 80/20 model. For example, within an area, each 80% school could have units / co-located special schools for different needs, combining to give universal coverage. This would allow access for 100% of children to eg sports facilities, DT workshops as well as flexibility for movement of students both ways into and out of the ‘20%’ provision as well as ‘part time in each’ transition option and training for mainstream staff in catering for children with needs that do not need ‘20%’ provision but do need adaptations.

When I was researching grammar schools where you can sit outside of catchment. I came across a school/academy within a grammar school area) that had only being established a few years but called itself a grammar school. It’s in Halifax/Huddersfield off the top of my head.

It had what it describes as a ‘grammar-stream’. There is no 11 plus to sit but you can take an optional test and you are streamed into classes based on the results of that.

…. that school had a catchment area.

Exactly what @SheilaFentiman said. Both of mine went to grammar schools (Kent) after doing a few practice papers - Bond books. It is unfair though as NVR and VR are taught in the independent prep/junior schools but not in state.

This is an interesting thread. A few people have said that grammar schools should be banned outright - I think the opposite. It’s peculiar that they are available in Kent and Buckinghamshire but not in Sussex (say).

Rightly or wrongly, there are people who really want grammar schools and will go to fairly serious lengths to get their children into one - moving to a grammar school area, tutoring (there was a news story about a boy in the Isle of Wight who passed the exam for a whole bunch of grammar schools and whose family is going to move off the island).

They are aimed at state primary school children and the raw marks are also calibrated for age, so that summer babies are not disadvantaged. Or at least they were when I used to mark them some years ago and I don’t think they have changed.

Knowledge isn't intelligence or potential.

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

All they have to do?! As if that is a simple thing to do with pared-to-the-bone budgets, a system that's haemorrhaging teachers, a curriculum that's inaccessible to many kids, and ever-expanding numbers of children with SEND, mental health issues and family problems!

I agree with you. If you go back to when they were abolished, grammar schools were doing an excellent job. It was the secondary moderns that were failing too often, but not all of them. Some secondary moderns were excellent at offering high quality woodwork and other practical courses.

The result of their abolition has been a steady decline in those practical subjects at KS4, as all children were forced into a lightweight grammar school style education that involved sitting still at desks all day and being told that they are going to fail their exams. And the bottom 27-33% of children fail by design, because the banding system is calibrated to work that way. We then expect kids that have been told they are officially failures to go out and become productive members of society. It’s utterly deranged.

I’d like to see a lot of grammar schools with surplus places, so all children who can benefit from a grammar school style education can have one. I’d also like to see a more suitable approach to education for the bottom third of children who are failing. For subjects like maths this would involve high quality modular qualifications that build on each other and don’t rely on final high stakes exams smitten back to back. There might also be integrated science and integrated humanities to allow more room for practical subjects again. Those subjects that particularly appeal to the half of children who don’t go on to university. It’s all designed in my head. I could write a white paper on it tomorrow, but I’m not well connected and I have spent 20 years teaching (not swanning around board rooms), so I’m not the sort of person who would ever be asked.

I dint live in a grammar school area, but I think a lot could be achieved at the lower end of attainment by a more flexible curriculum, progress 8 including more practical subjects and a lot could be achieved at the higher end by schools working together for stretching more able pupils

They are aimed at state primary school children and the raw marks are also calibrated for age, so that summer babies are not disadvantaged.

No, they are not. They expect knowledge of things not covered by the National Curriculum, deliberately designed to exclude state primary children.

They prevent those children from success at the exam, to promote those who parents can afford private education, including coaching.

Our local grammar schools did this and offered tutoring during school time. They were looking to target those who could not afford tutoring. The uptake was abysmal. No uptake especially from the primary schools in disadvantaged areas. The pta run mock tests which they offer for free to those who can't afford it. I also know of tutors who offer free tutoring fir those that would benefit. The grammar schools in our are also have places reserved for children on free school meals.

There are no excuses these days for not being able to prepare for the 11+ if you want to. There are so many free resources online. I know because I used loads with my dc who both got into grammars.

My dc was so bored at primary school. Not challenged at all. Started causing him to disengage. He was also bullied at school for his love of learning and gifting. He is now thriving in a grammar school where he is being sufficiently challenged and is among his people as he puts it. He is now a happy child. Why abolish a place that allows children like that to thrive?

Our local grammar schools are mega popular and it is highly competitive to get a place. I believe that most children are tutored - one issue is that they offer a load of really expensive optional activities (my friend's son was in a choir trip to South Africa) and the school expects parents to make a pretty significant "voluntary" contribution. And since so many kids from relatively well off families attend, socially it's more like attending private school, and the less well off students are at a clear disadvantage socially. You can't make everything egalitarian!

I don’t think they should be abolished as such, I just think we should be concerned why FSM kids are so underrepresented in grammar schools. That’s great that your local grammars put aside places for FSM kids, sounds like a really good initiative that would be a good starting place for other grammar schools.

Apologies fratellia. My comments about the abolishment of grammars was not aimed at you, but rather those who are wanting them fully abolished, rather than reformed.

I must admit that I was one of the people asking questions of why FSM were under represented, but have felt increasingly frustrated at the willingness to change it. I have seen initiatives to try and provide opportunity fail. I was thinking of setting something up in a primary school with a high number of FSM and was told by a few parents ' Why would we put our children through extra tuition when we have perfectly OK comprehensives to send our children to which don't require extra tuition.' Fair enough, but then please don't complain that it is unfair when others do work for the opportunity to go to a grammar.

To those that want grammars abolished: Should we then abolished all the football academies then as it is not fair that some get places and others not? What about the drama/arts schools? Just trying to understand what abolishing them will achieve?