Ballot to abolish grammar schools

[zeolite]

With all the talk on catchments, here is the second ever ballot to abolish grammar schools (the first was in 2000, on Ripon Grammar, which failed):

www.reading107fm.com/newscentre/local-news/petition-launched-to-scrap-two-reading-grammar-schools-247

What do MNetters think?

[takes cover now]

Oh, and at DS's comprehensive he isn't even streamed (Y7) and the school get great academic results.

OK, when I say "great" I mean perfectly adequate.

That would get my vote. Grammar schools distort the true comprehensive essence of other schools. In our area, there are no grammars and the comps are really good mix of kids. In the neighbouring LEA, the inner city comps have a problem because the parents that are really bothered with able kids use private tuition to get the kids into grammar.

By the way I went to a great comp that was not streamed but set for Maths, English, Science and Languages. Most of us all went to uni and got really good grades. They can work if given the chance. I loved the ability to mix with lots of different kids and also being one of the brighter ones it was great for confidence. Far better than a grammar. Personally I disagree with streaming as well.

Atm, in many parts of the country, grammars are crammed full of children who have had private education from the age of 4 and/or been tutored to pass the 11+.

State primary schools do not tutor to the 11+.

It is a ridiculous system and until the selection process is fairer, I cannot support the grammar system. I think the bright but poor children who get in are a tiny tiny tiny percentage.

I agree with you Lynette. My dd is super bright and we could afford to get her in to a grammar (by tutoring) and I have no doubt she would pass the 11+ with flying colours. But I am actually relieved that I don't live in a grammar area and therefore don't have to go along with the whole disgraceful application and selection process.

Joe, I'm in for the hand holding thing. Think I might need it before September though!

Hattie, it's reassuring to know that privately educated children are in the minority at Reading. I'm finding the prospect of starting there quite daunting!

If my ds hadn't got into the grammar he would have been at the comp. A very good one, that offers way more subjects at GCSE than the GS does, but great as that would be for ds2, I don't think they will interest ds1.

I don't think we have secondary moderns in this area, so again, this is irrelevant to the ballot that is currently being held.

Why are people assuming that the education is better at a GS? I don't think it is. It's just better suited to the boys that go there. Grammar education is unlikely to suit my younger son, although it's still to early to say for sure, but if we stick with this opinion then the education at the comp will be better for him.

Carrots,

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"Yummy, don't agree.

Neighbours DDs go to local good comp with very active streaming.

They have to work very hard to stay in top stream, lots of very bright girls vying for their spots.

At their school it is very cool indeed to be studious. Those in bottom stream are referred to disparagingly as "chavs". So clearly not cool to be bottom!

If they have managed this then surely others can do it too."

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Your conclusion, sadly, does not follow from your premises.

The primary factors that contribute to the attitudes and ethos of the students in a school are yo do with home life and general upbringing, no anything that the school in particular does. The school can have some limited effects in building ambition, school community cohesion etc, or in tackling bullying better. But the cultures that result in brighter kids being taken down and bullied come from outside the school and are simply not within the school's total control.

I don't know where your neighbours kids live but this clearly has a lot to do with the different demographics of local areas. I'm sure there are plenty of excellent comprehensive schools in well off middle class areas where such issues are minor or non-existent. But there aren't many (or any) at rough council estates. Sadly all you are doing is replacing selection by 11+ with selection by postcode, and excluding the kids who create the problem by virtue of the fact that they can't afford to live where these great schools are. (Or they're not the right religion, but that's another story...)

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"I don't know why so many of you are so scared of their DCs attending the same school as those who are not as bright. It is not infectious! As long as good active streaming is used they will be taught with those of similar ability and it is possible to have a school filled with DCs with a positive attitude to learning."

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I can only speak for myself but I certainly don't have any problem about mixing with the less bright. It's the issues of attitude, culture and motivation that I have a problem with.

And actually, I think I agree with you that properly streamed comprehensive schools are probably the optimum balance, in abstract at least. But the fact is that many comps don't stream, so you don't get that capacity for the bright motivated kids to be among their own peer group in class. They're forced to be a minority spread among the cohort as a whole. If a family doesn't have access to the kind of school that does all this right as you are suggesting, then their best option for a bright child is probably a grammar, if it's available.

Arguments against grammars and for comprehensives often seem like this: they're based on how comprehensive education CAN work when all the circumstances are right and it's done best. That's all very well, but it's not the real choice that many people have.

Agree confidence

It's very easy to say you don't like the grammar system until you are faced with a child who is very academically able but socially quite immature and unconfident.

I can easily complain about the wrongs of private education, but faced with sending my child to a failing state school, I would quickly change my tune.

I think it's a lot worse to deny a child an eduction that would suit them and bring out the best in them on principle, than it would be to spend money on tutors and a load of practice papers to give them the best chance possible.

Hmm, "mixing with the less bright", it's a problem isnt it?

I guess my son would fall squarely in that category. He's summer born, young for his age, needs help to find his school kit each morning, is not at all street wise, and has absolutley no common sense. Fortunately he has much brighter friends who can do all of these things, and when they go off to university in September I guess they will continue to look out for each other as they have done for the last 7 years, each playing to their strengths.

So my DS (predicted 4 A/A* in his A2s) will continue to help his friend with the academic stuff, while his friend (BTEC in engineering) will continue to help my DS with just about everything else.

I live in the middle of grammar school country. There is nothing good about the system. I would change it tomorrow if I could. And I have a child at grammar school.

I'm so glad not to be in a grammar area just now. My quirky oddball 11yo would be wrong in a grammar, wrong in a secondary modern, and she's the sort who could go either way on an 11+ test. My academic one would be fine in a grammar, but she'll be fine anywhere. My youngest isn't look like grammar material at the moment.

I am really very happy not to have to worry about my children being divided into successes and failures aged 10. Which is what would happen with us, and I think that would be very painful, they would notice, and they would care.

Heqar hear. It's so divisive. In our town there's a high school on one side and a grammar on the other - it's like getting on a plane. Do you turn left or right? Awful

Sadly I still dont agree that the classes at RB & Kendrick are not made up largely of privatly educated children, from different areas of our life I personally know 4 boys who are same year group as my DS that are going to RB that have been privatly educated and 1 from a local state school, also know there are many more going. I bet if you took St Edwards & Crosfields statistics for leavers for the last few years and compared them to one of the local primary schools the highest percentage would be from the private sector.

There was also a link yesterday on another thread (thanks to webwiz) to a study which showed how the top 10% attainers at 11+ would fair in subsequent years:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/education/1223352-able-children-does-comparative-data-exist

It shows that half of the top 10% at KS2 will fail to retain their "place" by KS4, they will be "replaced" by those who didn't make it at 11+.

There are of course a lot of reasons for this, but I can't shake off the feeling that time and money and stress from all sorts of sacrifices can't buy the brains to sustain attainment. I also can't help feeling that in our heart of hearts we knew that already; the 11+ result neither guarantees failure nor success (and that's only attainment, not their wider outcome).

It's an enormous shame when a child does not have the support to understand that a day of tests that didn't go as wished will not change much in their lives, that they change their lives themselves. But is that a parenting, or schools, issue?

The funding for places comes with the child (not the school) so postcode selection is a lazy way to resist political criticism initially (which then shifts to inflated house prices...). Our small and heavily-populated land is also unlikely to result in any successful state school having its funding stopped because it selects other than by postcode. The fee-paying sector doesn't select by location, it's not sensible, but it is sensible to pay tribute to the local community, which good schools do through sharing resources and partnerships with local schools.

Some parents hold the view that the few GSs left can be an oasis for less confident children, who would find it even harder to cope in large and sometimes challenging environments. How would they manage, even if we really believed we could standardise all our schools?

The article on Reading caught my eye because there's been no similar ballot for eleven years. I didn't think anyone would be that interested, because we now have so many ways to get our children where they wish to go. I'm sorry I posted it, because it seems to have stirred up emotions from our youth which didn't seem that relevant any more.

Good luck to Reading.

Quite strange to find the debate abour Reading and Kendrick on MN but as I am one of the parents who will be voting for a change in their entry criterea I feel I should comment. I am not against both schools being selective but am against so many of the children coming from outside of Reading and even more shocking from outside of Berkshire. I beleive and will be voting for the school to have a catchment area of say 10 miles. When you read the list of schools that are feeder schools it is a joke, schools (mainly private) in London, Beconsfield etc. There is even a feeder school in the vote from Kuwait! All this in an area where children who live less than a mile from these schools have no school at secondary level for their children to attend. Reading borough council and Wokingham borough council have caused this problem by not investing in education in the area and so very angry famlies have turned their attention to these two elite schools that their taxes pay for and their children have a very rare chance of getting into and they realise how unfair the system is. I do not think anything will change with these schools but it is good that people are looking at them and asking valid questions.

because it's not cool to be studious in a local comp

You know all comps then?!
Of course it is cool to be studious in the areas where there are no grammar schools-the bright DCs do want to get on! They go to top universities and as all the top set want to do the same.

I would sign a petition to get rid of them all.

I actually think that if they do have them they should all run like Reading Boys and Kendrick and have a huge catchment area with the very, very top.
Have you not noticed how high the comprehensives in Wokingham come in the league tables,katedan. The Holt is always high, Maiden Erlegh is high.Ranelagh at Bracknell is way up-every year. The rest of the schools perform well.It is especialy good as they take all-they don't cherry pick the best.

Sorry; I shouldn't have made such a sweeping statement.

I'm going on what friends tell me. DD1 goes to a grammar and DD2 is going to one in September. Friends with DC in grammars and local comp/secondary modern tell me that they have these problems with their DC, and they need to be on top of things because that's how their DC feel, compared to their DC in grammars.

I've based my opinion on what they tell me because they're experiencing these problems.

If there are no grammars, the DCs in the top streams are exactly as they would be in a grammar and will look at time wasters is if they crawled out from under a stone!
Sadly, those in lower ability groups do get the time wasters-but they wouldn't get into a grammar, if there was one.
You have to compare like with like i.e grammar- with top stream in a comprehensive, it simply isn't fair to compare grammar with bottom streams.

Katedan, I would also happily vote for the catchment area to be made smaller, but that's not what we are being asked. If you vote for change in the proposed ballot, it's the selection that will dissapear, not the ridiculously huge catchment area.

I can understand Reading parents being annoyed that they haven't got school places, but that is really nothing to do with the grammars being selective. Yes, some children from Wokingham borough go there, but then children from Reading go to Wokingham schools, Maiden Erleigh, Forest etc.

My child lives in in an area that is not run by Reading council, so his place at Reading school will not be paid for by Reading council.

The arguments on here seem contradictory. Some people on here are arguing against grammars on the basis that children at grammar school are not more academically able, and some on here are arguing against grammars because the children are more academically able and so are 'stealing' bright children from comprehensive schools.

joencaitlins mum, the actual percentage of children in Reading from private school was mentioned in the Sunday Times when it won School of the Year and I am fairly certain it was 15%.I only can speak for 2 classes out of four but in those 2, out of 54 children only 7 are from private schools. It sounds as if you may well know most of the private school children actually going to Reading but your experience does not reflect the actual situation in the school.

exoticfruits - yes the schools in Wokingham are high in the league tables unfortunatly living in Reading my children cannot go to those schools, apart from these two grammer schools the rest of readings schools are very poor so Reading borough council promotes these two schools as high acheiving (which they are) and the rest of Reading has no money for schools. You mention Ranaleigh which is a Cof E school and has a very strict church attendance policy.
bubblecoral - You are right that my issues with schools is not directly involved in the Grammer schools but as far as I can tell this has blown up because something has to be done about the lack of schools in Reading and these two schools are obvious targets for change.

something has to be done about the lack of schools in Reading and these two schools are obvious targets for change

Not aiming this directly at you Kate, but that is such a horrible attitude. It stinks of parents having a bad deal, and wanting other children to suffer, or lose out as a result.

Parents in Reading have every right to be upset about the lack of school places and fight for change, but wanting to target other children and damage a fabulous school is appaling. As an outstanding, soon to be academy, Reading school is not high on the list when it comes to funding. The parents there contribute a huge amount into making the school what it is, if they can afford it.

It just makes a mockery of the system. Wokingham has good comprehensives and yet DCs can take the 11+ for Reading grammar schools and yet Reading DCs can't get into Wokingham schools. (something seems wrong there!)