Is this a reasonable question to ask a Secondary school, and should they be able to give me an answer reasonably quickly?

[seeker]

We like in an all selective area, and 23% of children go to grammar schools.

Would it be reasonable for me to ask the High School what % of their cohort are likely to start year 7 with level 5 SATS?

DS chose super-absurdly-bonkeroony- selctive.

I'll be interested to see the difference. In many ways, I'm glad DD went to her school first, so I can see how happy she is and how well she's doing, before I start making comparisons.

hazie the op is absolutley against the grammar system. But it's what she's stuck with!

Grammar schools are a disaster- and I have a child at one having a fantastic time and doing very well. But I know it is at the expense of the vast majority of the young people in the area.

It is wonderful if you are inside the grammar school looking out.

Less so if you are one of the 50% (or so) children on the outside looking in.

I think I dislike the sense that you are already classed as second best.

My dd represents her school on a cross-schools working group of 15 schools across Gloucester and just outside (each school has a y11 or 6th form child represent it). She says there is definitely a league table of schools, the 4 grammars are tops, then come the religious schools, then the special needs school, then the outside Gloucester comps, then the inner city comps and at the bottom the new academy. She has to fight to get her point of view to be recognised as some of the ideas put across from the kids at the comps can be disregarded out of hand, just because of where they are educated.

It is a wonderful lesson for her to learn at 16 about the committee politics.

seeker does everyone take the 11+ in your area? Or are there pupils who simply head for the high?
If the latter those DC might be really clever but maybe their parents didn't want to play the grammar game? Or couldn't afford tutoring? Or whwtaever?

There might be more of them than you think?

In the next county along from us the comps (how we laughed) are a nightmare.
Anyone whose DC didn't get into grammar and has enough cash to go private does so. People literally rob Peter to pay Paul.

It is the same in Bristol - I nearly moved there a few years ago, and then looked into schools and changed my mind. Pretty much everyone who doesn't get into the grammars sends their kids to private - usually really crappy privates as well, but anything other than send their kids to the 'comps'. Really, really depressing.

I went to a genuinely comprehensive (in that it took in the whole range of ability) school in Devon - it had a huge geographical catchment and there was no choice really (only a few senior schools in the whole area, so everyone went to their local one) and a good mix of abilities and social classes (because the private schools were awful as well). So it was a huge shock to move here and have this system.

I am still confused if send child to Grammar they are heading for high as opposed to the local comp or am I just lucky we have a great comp so really should shut up

I think they are called different things in different parts of the country, imnot.

High schools are grammars round here, but high schools are the equivalent of secondary moderns where seeker lives.

We had no such thing as high schools where I grew up, to me a High School was something from an american TV show.

This the thing, you get posters here pn MN really patting themselves on the back for using their local school. But it transpires their local school is fab!

But other people's options just aint the same. They might have faith schools they can't get into. Or grammar schools. Or they might have middel class flight. Or like my terrible comprehensive, they may just live in an area of disadvantage and low achievement.

Many of us live in a very imperfect world.

The "sink" comp here (no grammars) is called a XX High School

It is a "new" school on the site of the old failing school and I think the use of "High School" is intended to suggest that it's gone upmarket, which it hasn't

That is what I mean wordfactory I am coming from a different perspective as I said my DC school came higher than all other states and above 3 indies so Icannot comment on what it would be like to have this dilemma. We were thinking of moving... changed mind the education system it transpires is patchy

Really sorry you are in this situation, Seeker. I think you need to go and chat with the Head of yr 7 if you can and ask how they manage a stream of high achievers, will the top set have a range of ability, and just explain your concerns and ask your questions. I bet there will be a good smattering of late developers, too, esp boys. DS has friends who have been struggling in the support classes for the last couple of years and all of a sudden have shot ahead and are working at level 5 or even 6 (the top group do level 6 maths), and have been banded in the top stream for secondary. It happened all of a sudden - it wouldn't have occurred to their parents to enter them for the over-the-border grammars given the performance by the end of Yr5!.

Very mad that a child's school career is decided on one test on one day.

Yes, I think if you have a good local school thank your lucky stars.

Very mad that a child's school career is decided on one test on one day.

So agree with that. I had assumed (naively) that this crap had been done away with in the 70s.

Very patchy indeed.

My dd chose not to do the grammar test - I am sure she would have passed the test with flying colours, but hey ho what can you do..... We are in the town near Gloucester with the great grammar - one person from our primary got into it this year - but we are very lucky, our 3 closest comps are great and she got into one of those, so we are happy.

There are many children at our primary who could have gone on to grammar, but because of the "outstanding" comps nearby chose not to. So we are very very lucky to have truly comprehensive education over this side of town.

Some children also feel much better near the top of a comp school than middling to bottom of a grammar....

There are some brilliant comps in your town bythewaY but you would be a bit buggered if you lived in the huge council estate (or near) and had to go to the academy.

seeker, I have two friends (in different areas) whose dc ended up at secondary moderns, in both instances my friends made appointments and went to speak to the heads. I think it helped because it ensured the dc were observed, and it also showed that the parents were committed and therefore it was worth investing in the dc iyswim

*This the thing, you get posters here pn MN really patting themselves on the back for using their local school. But it transpires their local school is fab!

But other people's options just aint the same. They might have faith schools they can't get into. Or grammar schools. Or they might have middel class flight. Or like my terrible comprehensive, they may just live in an area of disadvantage and low achievement.

Many of us live in a very imperfect world.*

How do you know how fab their local school is? Most people just send them there - it is they whose options 'just ain't the same' as the people who pay fees, surely! To pretend that a private school user is the one who is all disadvantaged and unlucky is a bit weird.

The above should have been in bold to show it's a quotation from wordfactory.

Yep -GetOrf.. I would have scrimped and saved and "paid" our way into grammar through private tuition and not given dd the luxury of saying no if we were in that position.

Not everyone is in the position to be able to do that either, so I am aware of how very lucky we are.

Because of the dropping of catchment areas for our primaries, there are children from our school and other local outstanding/good/"posh" area primaries who were allocated the academy as their closest school - I know this is what the councils planned when they dropped the catchment for primaries, and they hope this is what will eventually up the standards for the so-called poorer schools in the area, but it does seem like yet another big social engineering experiment with our children at the heart of it.

theoriginal I have never said my DC are disadvantaged. I've always made it clear that i consider them absurdly adavantaged.

I am very very lucky. I can look at my so-called local comprehensives and say, thaks but no thanks, but not everyone can do that. As you say, choice is illusory, most people just go to the school their DC are given, good or bad.

If those people, by pure chance, end up with a great one then that is fantastic. But one can't extrapolate from that that all comprhensives are equal or even the same.

Oh sorry, you asked how do I know their local school is fab. Well, to be honest, they tell us. Ad infinitum...

And I figure people wouldn't form an orderly queue to celebrate their DC's comprehensives if they were shit!

I think people, including me,do sometimes feels they want to flag the things that are good about the comprehensives they use, often in response to what seem like misapprehensions by some posters. So yes, I do think I kind of owe it to the schools my children go to and to the state system generally to contradict assumptions that they don't do proper academic gcses, or that behaviour is terrible, or that everyone spends all day doing circle time and HNDs in catering or whatever.

That said, as the bog standard comp thread suggests, not many people would say they never have any issues with their children's schools, or there's nothing they'd like to see done better. The point is that what the vast, vast majority of people just send their children to schools they don't particularly have a choice about, celebrate what's good about those schools, try to do what they can about what's not so good, and get on with it. Not because they moved somewhere on purpose with an outstanding school, not because they happen to have awesome provision that poor old people who have to go private don't have, just because that is how it is.