News: Announcing the End of G&T

[DadAtLarge]

Article on Mixed Ability Classes Failing our Brightest Pupils
(Just one in a series of how schools are failing intelligent children)

• millions of bright children are being failed by the "one size fits all" comprehensive system, according to a former Downing Street advisor.
• bright pupils would be better served by expanding the influence of the country's 164 grammars.
• academic standards had suffered because of an obsession with fairness.
• the number of children eligible for G&T has ballooned from 180,000 to 700,000 but its budget had remained almost the same
• the budget for G&T is £7 per gifted and talented child per year.

Today, the government has announced scrapping National Strategies. link

Does that spell the end of G&T?

Hi Snorkle,

You know you don't HAVE to send a child to a Grammar School even if they pass. You have to choose the right school for your child which may well be the non-selective school.

If everyone was less hung-up on academic elitism then everone would be better off - the academic and the less academic

Dadatlarge do gifted and talented children need a label? Children who are gifted and talented don't need strategies because they have a gift or a talent! The school education system is failing all children. All children are individual and complex.

Why do you not go to private education? If your child is so advanced there are scholarships available.

No cramming when I did it Cory (am antediluvian)

I think back in those days it was marks on day of test. Plenty got into grammar who really struggled whilst there; plenty who ended up at the secondary modern unable to take any GCE's (CSE's only)and told to concentrate on the vocational. I knew one set of sibllings, both I guess around same level academically - the one who got into grammar got to university and became a teacher; the one who didn't ended up in pretty grotty clerical job although top marks in all CSE's and lost all confidence to aim higher.

Oh yes and the girls grammar had fewer places than the boys. Far easier to get a grammar educ. if you were an average boy.

I think the test is the problem. It is open to manipulation, cramming etc

PLUS if you have a test you have people who FAIL the test and this alone seems to scar some people forever even if they did well at the school they then attended(John Prescott springs to mind). It creates resentment which clouds judgement and doesn't help anybody.

We moved to a grammar area (Lincs) from Hants specifically for accessing a good grammar for our eldest, who is one of the children let down by the strategies.
That said he has thrived at the grammar and the existence of 2 good grammars in our town, means that the mixed comp is also an excellent school - they all share a joint 6th form.
I'm all for students having individual needs met, but unsure as to how practical it is, certainly at primary level and to what end exactly?
To get into secondary early? to enter uni at 14?

it should be all about the quality of extension. Breadth of knowledge.

I'm open about grammars not always being the best choice for highly academic students - several here who passed the 11+ opted for the comp as first choice.

I passed the 11+ but my parents didn't send me to any of the grammars that offered me a place. They believed they couldn't afford it(and were probably right).

In our area if you pass you get a place - no super selectives or top marks only places. However, the children who pass are all, almost without exception, the children of middle class professional families. Even if you set aside the huge amounts of tutoring that goes on, the papers themselves demand a very extensive vocabulary and therefore favour children from "reading" families It is by no means a level playing field - bright children from disadvantaged or unsupportive families have very little hope of a place.

Oh the uniform. That was incredibly expensive - my parents had to fork out what was, to them, a lot of money. Luckily I was an only child - if they'd had more it could have been very difficult. My parents were very encouraging but many others in the family thought they were off their rockers - no point educating a girl, 'getting above themselves', they should be sending me out to work as soon as I left school etc etc. Quite a common view and reason why grammars were largely middle class even back then.

As Seeker says - key is supportive family.

"but his future would have depended on a snapshot taken when he was 11"

The 11+ exam is not a "snapshot".

I went to a grammar school in 1977 and there were lots of children on free school meals/free uniform who lived in council houses, as well as a few children whose parents were city lawyers, private school headmasters, publishers etc. There were also lots of local shopkeepers children.

There might have been lots of children on free school meals at grammar schools in 1977 - but there aren't now.

And the 11+ is a snapshot. One mark either way is the difference between pass and fail.

That's not the definition of a snapshot .

The 11+ measures your level of cognitive development - skills that you have acquired over time (and that aren't going to go away).

Went to grammar school in 1982 here and there was certainly no "cramming".

It's only a "snapshot" in the way that any assessment is, surely. If you do it properly, it isn't at all - it's about measuring skills acquired cumulatively. Oh mon Dieu, je suis d'accord avec Bonsoir Anna. Think I'm going to faint

I was thinking of snapshot as "This is your one chance - how you perform on the day" . Why the ?

Shame there isn't a [deeply puzzled] emoticon!

The 11+ is not a single exam set by a single board, it varies all over the country Bucks is non-verbal reasoning wheras a few miles away other areas have nvr, vr and maths. I think some areas have essay questions.....

So which version of the 11+ are you discussing?

Yes, what went wrong with the grammar school system was, ironically, parental interest.

I went to a grammar school 30 years ago. Everyone took three papers. A few passed, most went to secondary moderns. But there was no coaching, tutoring, fussing. I suppose some people moved into the area for the schools, but most didn't, they just accepted the system that was there.

I do remember some neighbours who moved and bought a house opposite the grammar school in expectation of their daughter's attendance there. When she failed to get in, the mother joined the pro-comprehensive campaign and displayed posters in her windows saying "Smash the grammars". What a hypocrite.

Bringing back grammar schools today wouldn't result in the social mobility it allowed in the 50s and 60s. The main reason being that in those days, clever, poor kids got good Alevels and went to uni without too much hardship and with a grant to boot. These days, even with good Alevels, kids from poorer backgrounds will not be able to do anything with them.

Grammar schools at the moment are not doing their job - ie they are selecting in a way that is very susceptible to cramming. The grammar schools my parents and MIL went to in the 50s had a social mix depending on the area (eg Dad - mining village in S Yorks - mostly working class, MIL, downmarket suburb of Derby, ditto, Mum, Twickenham, about half and half working and middle class). At the moment certain private schools with a strong commitment to equality (eg Manchester Grammar) are better at selecting the brightest as opposed to the most crammed kids. Grammars could work a lot better than they do now; there would have to be more of them and there is no justification for them being funded in such a way that they get the lion's share of the resources and condemn the schools around them to being crap, as they once did. Selection would also have to be more flexible than one exam when you are 11 - which does seem like a snapshot to me. There would have to be routes into it at later stages in your education.

my definition of a snapshot was the same as seeker's

ime children do change as they enter puberty, so an assessment of how they perform just before then may not be that indicative of whether they are the ones that should go on to academic education or not

and it is perfectly possible to perform badly in a test on one day in a way that does not reflect on your overall capacity

as you get older, of course you do need assessment, but then you are supposed to have the maturity to deal with nerves/bad days etc; imo that can be a lot to ask of an 11yo

my understanding is that people are now cramming for the 11+ in a way that they did not do in the 1970s, so that the system is now far more socially divisive than it was in those days- once this attitude has started it is hard to know what to do about it

Still, it is down to performance on a single day and it as BA and UD say, it is measuring'skills aquired' NOT potential ability. And it does not discriminate as to whether you aquired those skills through cramming or naturally.

A local cramming centre costs nearly £2,000 starts them in Y2 and gives 1 HOUR homework EVERY night!!!

I'm with Seeker on the snapshot definition

I agree Fircone.

I went at a transitional time when some kids went from a wide range of state primaries without cramming, others from a small number of local private schools which crammed like crazy. My mother was a teacher there and she and the other teachers used to be very snide about the 'dim' [shudders at horrible attitude displayed here] girls from the private schools who they felt were there just because they had been coached.

Do we have any grammar school teachers on MN? Are there many children there who were clearly coached through the exam and struggle once there?

Just interested.