Are superselectives for the very able or only for geniuses?

[Ouluckyduck]

because my dd is very able, but not a genius or a prodigy. Will she fit in?

Yes bread me.

My father was another East European refugee whose wealth (a suitcase with a few clothes) gave him no option but to aspire through education to a new lease of life.

In response to your 17.10 post.

Oh yes, people get all excited about the idea of more and more grammar schools.

I rarely hear people wishng that there were secondary moderns again.

And that is the problem - the more grammars there are, the more top slicing that occurs and the more 11 year olds who don't perform on the day of the test or are just simply not as clever are relegated to the bottom tier before their secondary education has even begun. :(

@pooka but right now we have the problem that too many students aren't receiving an appropriate education because one size does not fit all.

I don't really agree. I went to a comprehensive school, properly comprehensive so not in a grammar area or near one. With streaming/setting one school can I think fit all. The problems arise when the comprehensives are competing with the grammars/super selectives for the band 1 top ability pupils, when top slicing occurs.

Where I live now, it is expected that the more academic pupils will aim for grammars in neighbouring boroughs or the super selectives in borough. There is loss of confidence in the comprehensives because of this and I suppose the expectation or assumption is that a clever child cannot achieve top results in the comprehensive which should not be the case.

From my perspective it puts me in the position of feeling crap for thinking of applying for grammars because I don't fundamentally agree with the two tier system but at the same time being concerned that the top set cohort in the comprehensive would not be large enough to balance the school and provide challenge for dcs if you see what I mean.

Is a thorny issue.

@Pooka you may not agree, but nevertheless you are wrong. One size does not fit all. It doesn't fit the very top percentiles and it doesn't fit the very bottom ones either. Comprehensives are an exercise in pragmatism and the art of the possible. Everything tends to the middle range. Outliers are tolerated to an extent but not at the very ends of the bell curve.

Aaargh. Pressed return too soon. The other problem with comprehensives which operate a distance based admission criteria is that they are really operating selection by bank balance. Which is fundamentally wrong.

comprehensives can and do work. There are lots of dynamic schools doing really good things. What doesn't work is poverty - all sorts of educational difficulties centre around poverty.

Social class is also relevant - a far smaller proportion of working class children really thrive at school for all sorts of English cultral reasons and some more probably.

Trouble is, when you value education, where do you put your own children? It is tricky and I took the priveledges my area offered.

Will just have to agree to disagree thetasigmamum. :)

I hate the idea (only an idea - it doesn't thankfully happen in our area) of dd's classmates being routinely tested and sorted, of 10 year olds being dumped in a secondary modern or elevated to grammar school on the basis of their performance on one day.

Far better in general to offer enrichment/differentiation and help for the most able/most challenged within one school IMO.

As it is, I may choose for dd to sit out of borough tests or for the SS in borough when the time comes. Makes me cross and feel like a hypocrite, but if these schools seem like a good fit for her, then so be it.

I know my dd spent her entire primary years bored because the work was too easy - is that fair? why should she not receive work at a suitable level, same as kids at the bottom end of the ability range receive extra support so that the educational experience is appropriate for them?

Quite right - the comprehensives should challenge the brightest as well as help the less able. I'm not a genius, but was very able and went to Russell Group university (didn't even know what RG was pre-mumsnet :) ) from my comprehensive.

What about the middle achievers? Neither the top 10% nor the bottom 10%? I cannot understand how the split between the old grammar/sec mod pupils was achieved. You could have two children, marks apart, and one got the chance to do O' Levels and the other CSE's. Isn't fair.

Do "the bottom end" receive lots of support? Who are they? They are often children that can't afford to live in my road.

Schools can cater for all children but it is true, if there are a lot of kids with difficulties or switched off from education, the teacher has to work extra hard to keep them in line.

I think it is a big problem which nobody can afford to solve, so those with privileges use them to allow their own children to thrive - I do.

At my dcs' primary there is ample support for those struggling - but virtually nothing for those finding it way too easy. Can't speak for all schools.

@andisa without selection testing you have no idea who the "bottom end" are. They may very well live in your road. But in a system with selection by depth of pockets rather than selection by ability you can continue to kid yourself that the people in your road are bright and the people living where you wouldn't dream of living aren't. I grew up in a council flat. Based on where I lived you would have assumed that I was at the bottom end, probably. Couldn't have been farther from the truth. But if I'd had to go to my closest secondary school I definitely wouldn't have ended up at Cambridge.

@bread Exactly the same with us.

I do not think the people are brighter in my road than the children I taught in a summer riot-torn area - far from it. What I do think is that lack of opportunity means they had less chance of achieving.

Just for the record, I do not think that there are huge variations in people's innate ability but I do think that a supportive environment nurtures potential.
I think that it is a lottery if you are exposed to a good education.

I'm not convinced that grammar schools pick the brightest pupils, quite often just the lucky ones.

I myself am a docker's daughter and I think I got to university by luck.

I think that there are huge variations in innate abilty, but I'm no scientist.

I think there are definite variations in ability - but also that we all have different strengths and weaknesses and everyone has strengths, some academic, some not, that can and should be brought out by our education. I am in favour of grammar schools as a means of lumping together those with similar academic strengths - I'm very not in favour of labelling those who have different strengths, that are not particularly brought out in a grammar school education - as 'failures' in any way or seeing themselves in that light. eg I'm v v good at English but you could leave me with a pack of flat pack furniture for ever and I'd never, ever be able to turn it into what it was supposed to be, and I can't drive. Someomne else might struggle to write a correct sentence but be a maths genius, or a great artist, or a brilliant engineer etc etc etc.

I do agree, andisa, that opportunities that kids have make a huge difference - I'm aware of how my abilities depended in large part on growing up in a middle class home with loads of books and a well-read family given to intellectual argument over the dinner table. Linked to this is the effort kids put in - whilst I do think there are definite variations in ability, the major factor as to whether that is translated into achievement or not is the effort put in by the individual - I think academic success is a habit as much as anything; if you're used to working hard and seeing the results, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But clearly, like all habits, it must be learned from somewhere - harder for a child who comes from a family with no role models.

Is that enough sitting on the fence?

I think there are huge variations in natural ability but I agree with the argument that given lots of support and encouragement most children will achieve at least enough to go to a good university.

Between my eldest and my second child there is only 1 academic year, and despite my second child being an August born boy I was shocked at the innate ability he has. My DD1 has to work twice as hard on everything, still top of her class but with huge effort and hard graft. My DS1 finds everything massively easy, especially literacy, he was one of those children who taught himself letters at 18 months old whilst we were struggling massively to get my 3 year old DD1 to memorise some before starting school, he learned them straight away just by overhearing. This has just continued and I know that if he does put at least half the effort his sister puts in, he will reach great academic heights.

Despite the huge variation in innate ability though, both children are doing very well at school and I do wonder very often if my DD1 hadn't had the huge support at home where she would be today. Probably somewhere in the bottom set, not in maths but certainly in literacy.

My third child is even worse, he is 4 and has found everything massively hard, he doesn't get colours, letters or numbers and I know he will find school a huge challenge. I am confident though that with loads of support he'll get there in the end. My fourth child is only 2 but looks like her second brother, he seems to grasp things very quickly. So I do believe children from the same family with the same input can demontrate huge variations.

The huge challenge if grammars were to be re-introduced would be to provide fully for those other strengths, which weren't catered for before. There was very much a 'failure' label attached to those in the secondary moderns.

bread, why don't you start an e-petition through MN for a debate in th HoC on grammars? You're quite clearly eloquent enough and political enough and you've pretty much made the suggestion. At the moment there's tinkering - existing grammars can expand - but all so timid. Plenty of MP's would support you. These other endless reforms are a nonsense.

Er... scared. Hold my hand please as not sure where to start? But am also not clear if there is widespread support for more grammars or not - hence my question yesterday.

Other than us two, yellowtip, does anyone else here support more grammars (not exactly reintroduction as they are obviously still here, albeit in tiny numbers)?

As you say, yellowtip, too many people remember what happened with secondary moderns and see it as inevitable that that is the only possible alternative for non-grammar kids. I imagine something more like the second stream, the technical/vocational one they have in Germany which works well there - I know they have a third stream too that is less successful, where they dump immigrants, so I'm not recommending that one...

Yellowtip, the results from her less selective school are very good lots of girls go on to RG unis and Oxbridge. The results from the SS school are better but that?s because they only take academic children.

Ywllowtip and bread. It would be great if we had more Grammar style schools the amount of children applying for GS indicates a dire need for more academic schools.

@bread I do, of course. :) But it will never happen. And the reason it will never happen is because the grammar schools worked. It's not because of the secondary moderns - that is the story that was spun by the entitled entrenched middle classes who were horrified at the number of people from backgrounds like mine who were getting places in the schools they regarded as 'their own'. The system was far too successful at providing social mobility for bright working class kids. So it had to be stopped and we had to retreat back into selection by bank balance and accent and the most perfidious thing of all - the core Tory voting base (thick posh, basically) persuaded (most of) the rest of us that it was for our benefit!

How depressing. I'm sure you're right.

But... I think the numbers applying to grammar schools indicates the huge undercurrent of support they must have - i simply don't believe the majority of applicants have parents like pooka, who are applying against their own judgement, to a system they actively dislike. Or are they?

If that genuine desire for a good, free education to be available to the brightest who will benefit from it can be harnessed...?

bread there's massive, massive support out there, across a spectrum of classes and ages. I think a lot of people are looking to the German model. Your background seems ideal to start exactly that sort of petition and spark a specific debate in the HoC. During the Academies Bill debate the discussion touched briefly on grammars but I don't believe that there's been a proper debate about bringing them back. It's too touchy a subject, so it's skirted around, which is an absolute cop out. Many academics would support a petition (and I'm guessing you know some who would), many successful peole in the legal world, the HTs and retired HTs of the best of the grammars and many, many politicians. It may be that the most vocal aren't those of your own political persuasion but in a sense that's good. There are certainly highly regarded Liberals who benefited from the system and are strong supporters too. Much of the opposition to them must lie in the paucity of provision for those in the old secondary moderns and also the perception of a middle class anschluss of the remaining grammars - a perception which a lot of MN threads bolster. That's the main reason for opposition in the academic world: that grammars currently 'operate through social and cultural exclusion and elitism' (that last is Rowan Tomlinson, a New College don). The Sutton Trust would presumably also be in favour. Quite recently the HT of St. Olave's wrote a piece defending the meritocracy of even the current system compared to the 'buy your way in' tactics that some parents use to get into the catchment of the best of the comps.

I don't know the technical procedure, but it'll all be there on www.parliament.uk under 'e-petitions. You only need 100,000 people to sign up!