Surely the 'non-grammars' in a selective (grammar) area are Secondary Moderns, not Comprehensives?

[erebus]

Or have I misunderstood the meaning of the word 'comprehensive'?

No, they're not, because even in selective areas the 11-plus isn't compulsory. Many parents elect to send their children straight to the comprehensives to avoid their children going through the stress of a selective exam.

No, because you don't fail the 11+ to go there.

We have access to three grammars but at a bus trip away. Many very able children go to our town comprehensive. Last year 10% of the children got 8+ A-A* That is not a secondary modern cohort.

There are a lot of parents who still believe that able and motivated children will thrive where ever they go. If those parents are right, the children will also have the advantage of attending a school with no social selection and saving a lot of travel and possibly a lot of tutoring in year 5 and 6). These children are not secondary modern learners.

No, they're not. My DC chose not to take the 11+ and so go to a comprehensive that really does take pupils of all abilities. It has pupils that go to Oxbridge and pupils with quite severe SN.

My DC wanted to go there and not to grammar. Part of the reason was because the grammar schools in our area are single sex which they didn't want and neither did I, having attended a single sex school myself. 2 out of the three are in the top sets for all setted subjects at secondary school now (not all subjects are setted). Children can move up and down between sets which seems to work very well. My DD has just chosen her options for GCSE and the top sets are being told to make sure that they take a language so that they get the English bac (even though it's not an actual exam).

The most able at my DC school are told to aim as high as any grammar school child.

YES THEY ARE in Lincolnshire which still operates the tripartite secondary system.
Not sure about Kent and bucks.

In all other areas, the grammars are anachronisms

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grammar_school_ballots_in_England.png

I guess that to me the term 'comprehensive', taken in the context of schooling means just that- not schools which have had 'a percentage' of their most able potential students channelled into another school. Surely just because some DCs at that school were never tested by the 11+ doesn't make that school's entry 'comprehensive', does it?

I know I once read an OFSTED of a Salisbury secondary which began along the lines of 'although this school makes no reference to its status, it is a Secondary Modern in that it is situated in a grammar area'- then goes on to praise how well the school does with the students it has.

Our local high school is described as a secondary modern in its OFSTED report. It shares a small country town with a very selective grammar which has a large catchment area crossing two county boundaries, and a faith school that, in CVA terms, is one of the highest-performing schools in the country. It also has a quite different catchment area and set of admissions criteria from the high school.

There is certainly a small percentage of children from the catchment area 'creamed off' into these other schools, but there are still plenty of able and motivated children left for the high school. No, it isn't stricly speaking a comprehensive, but in effect the distinction is mainly semantic - there's no assumption that the children will follow a non-academic path in life, as in a traditional secondary mod.

It could be said that non-selective areas with a lot of children siphoned off into the private sector isn't strictly comprehensive either (I'm sure the private market round here is smaller than it would have been without the few remaining grammar schools).

None of this is an argument in favour of a selective system; it's a nonsense round here, where it exists as a fag-end of an earlier, fully-selective system, but its effect on the non-selective schools is bound to be less than in an area where 25% of children are selected for grammars.

Here in Bucks the local non-selective school is described by Ofsted as 'Modern'

Is the only criteria for whether a school is a 'secondary modern' the ability range of the pupils? The difference between the traditional grammar and secondary modern schools was that their curriculum was different. CSEs in the modern, O levels only in the grammar. So the question would be, do non-grammars in a selective area enter pupils for Higher levels as well as core at GCSE, can pupils take all three sciences, and do they offer as many MFL choices as other schools? If they do, I think they are comprehensives.

In the aformentioned high school, students can take 3 science GCSEs (if considered sufficiently able), French, German and Italian are offered (not sure how many of these can be chosen together for GCSE though) and the higher level of GCSE maths is available.

At the grammar, at least one MFL is compulsory at GCSE, 3 sciences are taken by almost everybody (i.e. I think students can do two if they're really struggling with science, but 3 is the norm).

Yes, the high school has a comprehensive curriculum, that's a good point. I don't know if that's universal though, and are there not comprehensives in non-selective areas which don't offer three sciences?

alison
they often don't
hence the disastrous ebacc results for
[[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/education/school_tables/secondary/10/html/bacc_925.stm?compare=
Lincolnshire]] and Kent

We're in Bucks, where there are no comprehensives, just grammars or Upper Schools. It seems to vary from one county to another, though.

Bucks, Kent and Lincs are the only three counties that are fully Grammar
The Bucks results are less extreme than the other two - most likely because A LOT of the parents cross into and from neighbouring counties - not an option from Romney Marsh or the Wash!

We are in Kent, and I would say the "high" schools are definately not comprehensive in that it is unfair to judge their results against true comprehensive schools.near here they are mostly v good but it is a fact that approximately 25% of children in Kent are at grammar schools and therefore whatever the others are, it is not truly comprehensive. Buggered, maybe! ( in league table terms!)

The term ?comprehensive? refers to the student intake not the range of subjects available, so in the strictest semantic terms a non-grammar school in an area such as Bucks where the grammar schools take the top 25% or so cannot truly be called comprehensive.

That said, many secondary moderns now offer the full range of academic subjects as well as more vocational options. For example, DD?s secondary modern offers triple science, a choice of French or Spanish (or both) and she will be entered for higher levels in all her GCSEs, which are: maths, English x 2, triple science, ICT, French, history and PE.

This is almost identical to DS who is at a grammar school and is doing all the same subjects, plus geography.

Grammar schools in Bucks don't take all the top 25% - while the vast majority take the 11 plus, there are still some that opt not to.

To all intents and purposes - yes.

Pterosaur - yes there are such comprehensives. And this is something I find quite worrying - that there are some comprehensives that drift towards being, in effect, secondary moderns, without anyone noticing. I found TalkinPeace's link a bit of an eye-opener - but not only for the results for Kent, but also because when you poke around in other parts of the country there are supposedly comprehensive schools that also get very low EBacc results - which to me makes them not really comprehensive. At least if you are in a selective county, you know what the score is.

alison60 I think it's important not to get too hung up on the Ebacc.
In my sons case, DS1 has achieved the Ebacc

Whereas DS2 HATED learning MFL and gave up his languages with great joy at the end of Y9. He is taking 11 academic GCSEs and is predicted all A/A* in his exams in June. But he will not have the Ebacc.

Both are at a well regarded comp.

Frumpyinthefrost, I agree with what you're saying.

I was just using the EBacc as a sort of rough indication of how many children are succeeding on a more academic route. I certainly don't think that is the only way to judge a child, school or an educational system.

Apparently, the non-selective schools in a selective area are skewed towards a less academically able intake. That's not a big surprise. But some supposedly comprehensive schools in supposedly all-comprehensive parts of the country are equally skewed.

What matters is that every child, whatever school they are at, should get the appropriate exam results for their ability and interests. You don't want a bright eighteen year old who realises they have a passion for some scientific or technical job and suddenly finds they can't get on the course because they don't have the right Science GCSEs, not because they were mucking around in school but because the school did not offer those exams. Or the kid who suddenly finds they need that A or B at English or Maths which the school didn't put them in for.

But I know kids in both those situations. One of our local schools stopped offering all three Sciences at GCSE because they just didn't have enough able kids to do so. (They have now closed down.) Others put kids into BTEC courses without being straightforward about the effect this will have on their A level choices. In both cases parents are choosing a comprehensive school at Year 6 for their kids and subsequently finding out that they are actually at something more like a secondary modern, without this ever having been made clear and of course, without ever failing the 11+, or indeed failing anything else.

Perhaps the problem is that there isn't a proper definition of what makes a school comprehensive - its just a school that isn't a grammar. Presumably, it would be possible, though draconian and unpopular, to enforce school admissions that created more similar ability ranges at all schools. Perhaps there should be clear rules about what a school has to offer academically to be called a comprehensive.

Sorry - longer post than I intended!

The super-selectives in Essex have a huge catchment area and they take kids from over 20 miles away. Obviously a percentage of kids live closer than that but there are not enough of them to make a huge difference to the intake at the Comps in the vicinity of the Grammar Schools.

Superselectives are clearly MAD.
How many thousands of miles of hugely expensive fuel and carbon emissions every day to give incremental differences in education.
I'm sorry but if a school takes state funding it should be forced to take all pupils equally
(BTW I'm utterly against 'faith' schools being taxpayer funded too)

TalkinPeace - some taxpayers might want a faith school for their kids and for non-taxpayers who also want one.

Giddy - that is utterly mad. It's where "parental choice" is overriding "child welfare"

inky - faith schools are fine - but they should not be taxpayer funded. You want your faith to be able to decide who goes to the school, go private. No worries.