Comprehensive grammars???

[mumzy]

just read about free schools on BBC website and the comedian Toby Young who wants to set up a comprehensive grammar school which is for all abilities
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10138787.stm
Free schools being part of the conservative party manifesto the same party under David Cameron who opposes grammar schools.
Could someone explain to me what is a comprehensive grammar school as it seems to be an oxymoron

A mixed ability school which provides a 'grammar' calibre education for all it's pupils doesn't seem any more unreasonable to me than a mixed ability school which provides a 'secondary modern' calibre education to all pupils. And IMO that's what some comprehensives have been doing for decades.

When is a grammar school a comprehensive? I think I've found an example, Newport free grammar school in Saffron Walden retains the grammar title but is none selective in terms of ability but they do have a catchment area. I still don't get what TY is trying to set up he says he did'nt do well in comprehensive schools and got his Olevels at a grammar so based on that I presume he suports the grammar system. I suspect he may be trying to get a grammar school through the back door but he's going to have his work cut out as the Tories definitely don't support the setting up of more grammars. Only today Dave Cameron tried to stall the election of MP Graham Brady as the chairman of the 1922 committee as he had previously resigned from the frontbench in protest over DC's lack of support re: establishing new grammar schools news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8706572.stm

EdgarAllenPoll - grammar schools weren't set up to teach grammar. Medieval grammar schools originally taught Latin. Not just grammar. That would be freakish.

To rephrase my earlier point:

When grammar schools were disbanded 30+ years ago the 'comprehensive education' which replaced them was often much closer to secondary modern standard than to grammar. Grammars had provided a robust 'academic' education and because this was seen as 'elitist' is was not provided at the new comprehensive schools (which seemed in hindsight to be more about social intergration than academic education).

The results - bright children from less affluent families were often denied a education suited to their abilities and the chance to reach their potential. The private schools, of course, flourished and social mobility declined.

Surely there will be a problem in teaching mixed ability intake with a 'grammar school' ethos, for want of a better phrase.

The GS my DCs are at/went to teaches at a very fast pace, they are not particularly interested or helpful to those who can't keep up, for whatever reason.

It happens to suit most of the children there, (personally, I wish they slowed the pace down, but then I shouldn't have sent mine there if that's what I want!!) but they are all of mostly the same ability.

How will it work when they are hammering out Latin declensions and very hard maths to children of very differing ability?

I just don't get how you can have a grammar school education in a mixed ability intake, a 'traditional' education, yes, but not one that is based on academic selection at the start!!

Toby Young isn't a comedian (well, not deliberately).

loungelizard

"I just don't get how you can have a grammar school education in a mixed ability intake"

If you are right - then what does that say about bog standard comprehensives schools and the fate of the academically able children who attend them?

I know jackstarbright and I completely agree with your sentiment about bright children from less affluent families being denied a good academic education!!

And I, too, think it is appalling that academically able children are being dumbed down in 'bog standard' comps (not all, but some) whilst their equivalents in the private sector are leaving with strings of As. I think it is outrageous and totally unfair.

However, they are still going to have to admit via 'ability' if they want to confer a 'grammar school' education on those academically able children. Then those less affluent, but clever, children will get the education they deserve.

And that doesnt't mean to say that children who are not selected via ability are chucked into crap schools. They too deserve a good education but a different one to a grammar school one!!!!

That, though, is the age old argument about selection by ability. You can't really have it both ways.

I know jackstarbright and I completely agree with your sentiment about bright children from less affluent families being denied a good academic education!!

And I, too, think it is appalling that academically able children are being dumbed down in 'bog standard' comps (not all, but some) whilst their equivalents in the private sector are leaving with strings of As. I think it is outrageous and totally unfair.

However, they are still going to have to admit via 'ability' if they want to confer a 'grammar school' education on those academically able children. Then those less affluent, but clever, children will get the education they deserve.

And that doesnt't mean to say that children who are not selected via ability are chucked into crap schools. They too deserve a good education but a different one to a grammar school one!!!!

That, though, is the age old argument about selection by ability. You can't really have it both ways.

Well, I managed to leave my bog standard comp. with 13 Grade A's at GSCE. There was nothing dumbed down about our teaching, even though it had a mixed ability intake.

I wasn't an exception; probably 10% of the year got over 10 GCSEs at grade A.

Obviously we were setted to enable the teaching to be differentiated.

People have funny views about comprehensives. E.g. that you can't do well in one. Where we grew up, being a rural area, all schools were comprehensive and took everyone. (There weren't enough people to enable people to have choice, it was difficult enough filling one secondary school every 10 miles or so). And every comprehensive produced many children with strings of As at GCSE. A-level education was then in sixth form colleges even more widely distributed around the county. And again, many of us applied for Oxbridge.

I cannot see why people have to be separated into different schools; it's terribly divisive. Just have different teaching within the same school. I cannot understand why the previous government and the new one keep on wanting to fiddle. Just ensure that all comprehensives work in the way they should.

There is also a danger within a grammar school (that we observed when we moved to a grammar school area) that the bottom 30% were getting Cs at GCSE when - since they'd been selected - they should have been gettting all As. E.g. the 'bottom' set in a grammar school were living up to their title of 'bottom set.'

We have some odd ones in Herts. Like Watford Grammar. They allocate the first 20 places to those nearest the school, siblings etc, then the next 45 based on academic selection (within certain defined postcodes), then the rest on those nearest the school. Or something like that. I think it used to be completely academically selective but has been forced over the last few years to accept more of a catchment ethos. Dame Alice Owens and Parmiters are similar.

builde of course some comprehensives do provide good academic educations especially in more rural areas - though I'd put that down to the teacher's having less choice about where to teach - as much as the children having less choice about where to study.

It is probably difficult for someone who had a very positive comprehensive school experience to appreciate how badly it can go wrong. But the reason governments (even before the last one) have been 'fiddling' is because it has been going very wrong. The leveling and then dropping of social mobility, the resurgence of private schools and the polarisation of high achieving and underachieving comprehensives according to 'catchment' area all indicate a failure.

But that's not to deny some individual successes.

loungelizard I agree with you - but if TY wants to try out having it both ways - I say, give him a chance. Placing too high an expectation on a child is probably no worse than placing too low an expectation. And I think some of the more successful academies have been academically robust.

Builde, yes you are right, there were pupils at my DCs grammar school who got Cs when they should get As (my DS included!) and that was down to bad teaching and lazy pupils. But, they are still capable of getting an A though, some children aren't and never will be.

Jackstarbright, I agree with you too.

The problem is now there are so few schools that select on abililty now the private sector and the more pushy middle class primaries get all the places. If there were more schools that selected on ability then it wouldn't become the preserve of those in the know etc etc., and hopefully children from less affluent backgrounds would get some of the places over the Tim Nice but Dims who have been tutored up to their eyeballs to pass the entrance tests.

And yes, some children who are at comprehensives now would be perfectly capable of receiving a grammar school style education but surely there will be some who can't cope.

I absolutely agree with placing high expections on children, but only once they have been academically selected to a certain level.

So I found it very hard to see how one can have a grammar school type school whilst not selecting academically in the first place. I just can't get past that obstacle. Perhaps someone could explain it to me in simple terms

Toby Young answers your question.

'a school with a classical curriculum, high standards of behaviour and a competitive atmosphere, but a non-selective intake.'

I'd go for this. I'd much rather send my children to a school like this than to their current private schools, or to the one comprehensive in the local town.

Loungelizard - I can see the value in selective education - my dc's are in selective private schools! I actually think that if we could rewind the clock to the 1960's - significantly increasing the number of grammar schools and investing in secondary modern and technical schools would have resulted in a fairer, better educated and more meritocractic society today. But, we are where we are. And it seems selective schools are still not on the political agenda!

One thing that surprises me about private education is how much 'added value' is possible. Very 'average ability' children can achieve good exam results and university and career success. In my experience this has less to do with 'spoon feeding' and more to do with high expectations, good teaching and excellent support.

I can't say exactly how TY's school will manage to run a 'grammar ethos' school without selection. But I think it will tell us something about mixed ability schools - whatever happens.

Thanks for that Frogs.

As far as I can see he should be calling his schools 'comprehensive privates' not 'comprehensive grammars'!!! i.e.a mixed ability intake with a 'traditional' education, i.e. no Childcare, Tourism, Media Studies sort of GCSEs and more Latin and Greek History and Geography and English Literature.

So it is nothing to do with the children's academic ability in the first place but to do with what is going to be taught. Which is probably a good idea.

It sounds MUCH more like a private school though than a state grammar school where all the children are of more or less the same ability to start with and have to keep up with the pace. Grammar schools were orginally based on the private school tradition and ethos etc but these days some of them are much more selective in their admissions (eg where I live it is much harder to get into the superselective GS than many of the private schools).

However, if it gives more children from the state sector the chance to compete on a level playing field with their counterparts in the private sector then I hope it works.

I still think there may be a few problems ahead though if you have a mix of super bright and really not very bright at all children when they don't offer any more vocational subjects. Those children may end up with no GCSEs at all, or is Toby Young hoping those children won't want to go to his school?

The only way he can get round that is to select by ability in the first place (back to square one and the grammar schools....)

It's not private, though, because you don't pay.

I agree there'll have to be vocational subjects for the non-academic. This seems to be an obvious gap. Why no hairdressing and brick-laying as used to be offered in technology and secondary modern schools? I know teenagers who'd love to be learning a good trade from 15 or 16.

frogs thanks for the link.

"Comprehensive education does not mean that the virtues of the grammar school are destroyed. They will be extended to a wider group of children whose talents will be enriched by the higher standards created for all by the comprehensive system."

Source: Labour Party leaflet from the 1964 general election.

Lots of x posting. But (before seeing frogs link) I had started to see TY school has more 'private' ethos than 'grammar' ethos.

I do think there is bound to be an element of 'self selection' with TY's school. But, they need to ensure this is not social class based (no idea how they do that).

In many ways the school I want my children to go to is a comprehensive grammar. Its intake is comprehensive, and a banding system ensures that students of all abilities are admitted.

Once in school children are allocated into "overlapping ability groups" where they have all their lessons ie. streaming not setting. There are no mixed ability lessons at all, not even PE. This means that there is very little mixing between the sets, and children do get moved up or down at the end of each year.

The regime is quite harsh but the results are above the national average (85% A-C incl maths and English). The grammar stream would be getting all good GCSE's rather like a traditional GS.

The whole education system needs a good shake up though.

Comprehensives on the whole have not delivered what they were meant to (Builde's and my local one being exceptions rather than the rule.)

Private schools have got the examination system down to a tee so that all their average pupils get top grades whereas the average pupils at comps don't. Not because they are less clever.

Private schools and grammar schools both refuse to let pupils take any of the more vocational subjects, so however much we are told Media Studies = Physics GSCE, it simply isn't true and the universities know it.

Grammar schools are so few and far between only the most motivated and tutored children are getting the places over equally clever children from poorer backgrounds and so the old grammar school thing of social mobility is going backwards and those who would most benefit are not getting the places.

All the 'good' comps are in leafy suburbs where poorer people can't afford the property prices.

For 90% of the population paying for an education isn't even an option (even with doing without flat screen tvs/foreign holidays )

All examinations have been dumbed down so pupils have unrealistic expectations of how clever they really are.

Something has to be done!!!! (rolling up sleeves emoticon ).

Part of their "vision" is 100% of pupils getting 5 GCSEs at A*-C including Maths and English. How are they going to do that with completely mixed ability?

Exactly gerontius.

If the school is full of averagely intelligent children with interested and motivated parents then I am sure they will, and probably will get some with 10 A*s etc in 'hard' subjects.

BUT if they have any significantly below average pupils who aren't allowed to take more vocational GCSEs or lower tier GCSES then they are going to fail them.

Then again, the private sector manages to get average pupils good grades, but I am not sure that any NON SELECTIVE private school gets 100%, I suspect those schools don't publish their results!

longelizard have you seen Nick Cohen's take on our education system? I think you'll find it interesting.

Nick Cohen blog