Another thread about tutoring

[PooshTun]

Elsewhere there is a rehash of the usual tutoring versus no tutoring arguments.

There are those who argue that schools should not select kids based on a 11+ since it favours kids that are tutored as opposed to kids who have natural ability. As the saying goes, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions ie how would you fix the selection process?

Please, if you want to simply ban selective schools then start your own thread. I am interested in ideas from parents who are in favour of grammar schools but think that there should be a better way of allocating places.

I agree that the existing process is unfair but in the absence of a machine that measures true intellence or a test that you can't possibly be tutored for I don't see what can be done to make the whole selection process fairer.

I think I will leave the whole topic which is going over the same ground!
You support the grammar school system for others, PooshTun, having opted your DCs out of it. I don't support the grammar school system and have opted my DCs out of it. It appears that it is OK for you but not for me! Or maybe it is just that I am supposed to do it quietly, not mention it and say that I that I support grammar schools ( for everyone else).
People are not 'choosing' a grammar school education for their DC - the grammar school is choosing the child.
If someone is telling someone else what they should be doing I do expect them to practice what they preach!
It is the first time that I have heard that you are only allowed to have an opinion on 11+ if you have a DC younger than 11.

One last word in answer to OP - use the Dutch or German method and the problem is solved.

"@seeker that is just not true. I am not 'people like us' for a start. You are the one who is being dishonest since despite having had it pointed out to you many times that the Kent model is not the only model in place in the UK and in fact is in a minority when considering areas with grammar schools rather than grammar school areas, you persist in claiming that it's 23/77 or nothing. And that is clearly not the case. If I lived in Kent I'd want to change the system too, although not in the way you want to change it."

I've said loads of times that the super selectives taking 5% leaving a near as dammit comprehensive for the rest is a possible compromise.

"You support the grammar school system for others, PooshTun, having opted your DCs out of it"

Nice try. We didn't opt out of the grammar school system because there are no grammar schools in our catchment area to opt out off.

If someone is telling someone else what they should be doing I do expect them to practice what they preach!

Sounds a bit hypocrital coming from a person who is commenting on an issue that doesn't impact them and who then questions my right to comment on the same issue because it doesn't impact me.

Doubly hypocrital coming from a person that is telling other parents that they shouldn't have the right to choose the education they want for their DC.

It is the first time that I have heard that you are only allowed to have an opinion on 11+ if you have a DC younger than 11

You have a short memory. You was the one that told me that, since I don't have a DC taking the 11+, I shouldn't be commenting on the issue.

The German system is effectively the 11+ but it's even more rigid and prescriptive.

In a comprehensive school the kids currently in grammar schools would carry on having a similar education in the top sets

Didn't you upthread put on your Ms Pedantic hat on and insisted that I get my terms right because grammar schools are paired with secondary moderns and that it was therefore ridiculous to talk about merging comprehensive schools with GS schools?

Well, you seem to be talking about what if a comprehensive was to be merged with a grammar school.

Assuming that you meant secondary modern, the GS kids won't have a similar education because the ethos will have changed.

My DC's state primary was all about inclusion. The HM avoided activities which had winners because that would have meant that someone would have to be the loser. Sports Day became a glorified PE session since the kids weren't competing to be first. And this was a school rated as Excellent by Ofsted.

If the LA were to insert a class of academic prep boys into the school the competitive ethos would be eliminated almost overnight as the school assimilated the prep boys into the school's ethos of inclusion.

The difference is that everyone else in the school would have the chance to be an academic winner too

Do your seriously believe that creating a new top set for the incoming GS kids will make the SM kids more motivated such that they will work harder so that they can join the GS boys in the top set?

If your SM kid felt a failure for being in the 2nd set, wait till the GS kids take over the top set and he realises that now he is in the 3rd set.

I can'r see why anyone could object to that- unless secretly it is that the parents of grammar school minority don't like the idea of them mixing with the minority

Pass over your Ms Pedantic Hat please. Thanks. You can't have a situation where a minority doesn't like the idea of mixing with the minority. They can however dislike mixing with the majority :)

"Didn't you upthread put on your Ms Pedantic hat on and insisted that I get my terms right because grammar schools are paired with secondary moderns and that it was therefore ridiculous to talk about merging comprehensive schools with GS schools?

Well, you seem to be talking about what if a comprehensive was to be merged with a grammar school.

Assuming that you meant secondary modern, the GS kids won't have a similar education because the ethos will have changed. "

A comprehensive school is what you get when you merge a grammar school, with a secondary modern. That is what I am talking about. If you look back over what I wrote, you will see that it is completely consistent.

I can't resist one last word as it seems to boil down that you like the 11+ system if yours passed the exam, PooshTun. I get the impression that you would be willing to send them to the grammar school, but that if they failed you would pay school fees-and the rest of us should either do the same or 'shut up and put up' telling ourselves that our DCs are in the 'right school for them'.

@seeker

I stand corrected about your choice of words. But I see that once again you have avoided my questions. If you are not prepared to defend your points then why make them in the first place?

@exotic

You are stating the obvious. Of course I favour the 11+ but I accept that its not 100% fair. Hence this thread.

Since we are doing the 'one last word' business ....

I failed the 11+ and my thoughts were 'oh well, at least I'll be with my mates'.

Your thoughts, when you failed, was that you was on the scrap heap and that the adults thought you was a failure. You made it clear what you think of kids who don't get into a grammar school.

Today, that 'chip' is evident in everything you post.

I mean in my posts upthread I mention that there is a faith based comprehensive where I live that I would have loved to have gone there but we are not of faith. There are other good comps nearby but if you bothered to my read my posts you would have known we were outside that catchment. We went private because there were no suitable comprehensives where we lived and moving to the area with the good comp was not an option.

Yet you blank this out and select comments that confirm your 'chip' about people with DCs at selective schools.

And once again you demonstrate your hypocrisy. I am not the one telling people what schools they should send their kids to.

Well, exotic? Was the above really your last word? Can you resist the urge to return to this thread and bitch-slap my elitist, snobby indie parent face? :o

Not sure what I haven't answered over the course of the thread. However, to address what I think are your most recent posts. Merging a current gs with a sm would not be just dumping the gs kids on the top. They would all have to reassessed and reset- many of them would stay in the same place- some sm kids would move up and -shock horror- maybe some gs kids would move down. The mythology about no competitive sports would be blown out of the water by a visit, for example to the football tournament locally- 13 primary schools fighting very hard indeed for a cup. Everyone got a medal for taking part- but there was no sign of non- competitiveness in the battle for the cup. And why shouldn't
Sports days have things non sporty kids can do? Winning is fab. But having fun is good And being made to do things you
Consistently come last at is not as character forming as those who don't have to do it seem to think!.

Apologies, I haven't read the whole thread but:

I think we are all very biased according to the education we received/didn't receive.

My own belief is that comps don't work. I went to one and got into Oxford so that should be a success story. If I'd relied on the impetus from the comp, I'd not have even applied. They don't work becauase all people aren't the same and don't need the same things.

Our local outstanding comp draws from two wealthy villages and one of the poorest estates in the UK. After year 7, they stream. Guess what? the posh kids get put in the top streams and the estate kids into the bottom streams. It's openly discussed that year 7 is hairy but after that the darlings won't need to mix with the oiks, because segregation has occurred. I'm guessing here but having that rubbed in my nose every day if I came from the wrong side of the tracks would be more hurtful than just going to school with people I felt at ease with.

What secondary modern models lacked was the insight to encourage academic excellence in the bright kids who slipped the net. There's no reason why a grammar/secondary modern model shouldn't allow for excellence in both schools. I also think feeding in at 13, year 10 and sixth form would help a lot, so children's entire future doesn't ride on how they performed for a couple of hours when they were 11.

As to fairer system (sorry Poosh, I went off topic a bit) it would seem the fairest one is to have exams that are based solely on the national curriculum.
Of course children would still be tutored. Right or wrong, the world works that way - children who are encouraged at sports, music, drama, academic work succeed better than children left to their own devices.

@seeker - Taking your scenario, everybody is reassessed and some former Sec Mod kids go from top set at their old SM to the top set of the new comprehensive. Your arguments stops there. You don't say how this will benefit the newly promoted former SM kids? Are they supposed to be more inspired now that they are in the top set with former GS kids and not with their old SM top set?

With regards to your what I consider to be contradictory views about self esteem, IMO your proposals will damage self esteem instead of enhancing it.

For example, the SM kids that previously had the satisfaction of being in the top 20 of their year will now have it thrown in their faces that it was a hollow achievement because most of the top 20 will now be taken by the former GS kids. Then there are the academic prizes. Guess who will be taking the prize for best end of year results? Not the SM kid that won it last year for sure. How about the school's Maths Olympiad team? Move over because here comes the expensively tutored GS kids.

This thread can go round and round for several more cycles and I still won't understand why you and exotic post what you post. You, because of the above, and exotic because the DS isn't academic. Yet instead of being happy that DS is in a presumably practical as opposed to academic environment, exotic wants DS to be in a comp where the emphasis will be on academic excellence.

IMO the sec mod/GS model works fine if SMs aren't the poor relation in terms of funding and resources AND the SM isn't regarded as an inferior product.

Unfortunately the fact that exotic described going to a SM as being thrown on the scrap heap suggest that proponents of the cause think that its unfair to have GSs because a crap product is being pushed onto the 73% you've mentioned.

You are talking as if the secondary modern kids are somehow unaware of the presence of the grammar school kids down the road! And that my proposed combined school will remain permanently in transition.

@racingheart

A test based on the national curriculum is IMO an even more unfair option than the current test.

At least the current test isn't dependent on how well your primary school has taught your kid. DCs state primary wasn't very academic and as a parent there was no way I could match a prep school in teaching the NC to my kids. At least with VR and non VR I could tutor them enough for them to be competitive.

Option a) Feel 2nd class to clever kids at the GS in the other part of town.
Option b) Feel 2nd class to clever kids in the top set in your school.

As Chris Tarrant would say - press your buttons now!

As for your point about how I am assuming that things will be permanently in transition, the kids in my top set at the start of my school life were the same kids at the end . So much for the opportunities to move up.

The horrible truth is that some kids underperform for reasons that have nothing to do with the school. At my school we had kids that just couldn't be bothered to carry out assignments or to revise for tests. You can close down the GS, put the kids into my school and those kids would still underperform.

You haven't answered my question as to why you think SM kids would benefit from merging with the GS beyond that they would no longer feel inferior to the GS kids in the other part of down. Surely that can't be the crux of your argument?

Pooshtun - educational standards haven't slipped - most kids left school at 14/15 with very little in the way of educational qualifications when the grammar schools were in operation!!!

Poosh,

A fully-separated GS vs SM system, run well and fully funded (ie much MORE funding for the SM as they will by definition have by far the higher number of SEN children - which is the reverse of the way it worked in the past as many grammar schools had endowments to give them extra funding per pupil whereas the SMs did not) could work well for the children at the extreme ends of the ability spectrum, where those abilities are consistent across all subjects.

The chilldren for whom it doesn't work well include those in the middle. Your argument about the top set in your school is not really the point - the big impact of a comprehensive vs segregated system would be on the children a set or so down.

Say if it had been a 50;50 split in an 8-set structure - so initially, the bottom 4 sets would be 'secondary modern', the top 4 'grammar school'. While the bottom set and the top set might well remain relatively static, there would be significant merging between the middle 6 sets. Those children who just didn't make the grammar cut - or who developed late, or who were EAL pupils at 11 - might well move up into the 4th, 3rd, 2nd set once the artificial ceiling imposed by a segragated system is removed. Equally, those children who might have been tutored to the nth degree would gradually settle to their more appropriate 5th or 6th set.

Equally a child who might have been placed in the SM because of e.g. poor english language skills due to recent arrival in the country might well be in the 6th set for English but the 2nd for Maths and Science.

Your post reads as if you believe there to be are two clear, static groups of children - GS children and SM children, with a clear, discernable distinction between all the children in each. A segregated system would indeed be a very suitable educational approach if that was the case. However, it is not the case. There are likely to be 20 children at the top of the SM and 20 children at the bottom of the grammar who got within 1 or 2 marks of each other in the 11+. A test taken on a different day would have resulted in the destinations of those 40 children being entirely different. A comprehensive system allows those 40 children - and indeed the many more around them aho were within 5 - 10 marks of the 'magic score' - to have the same education, and the same educational chances. A segregated system does not.

@Red As of today, standards have very much slipped in some subjects (eg Maths) - while they have raised in others (eg music) by this I mean you either have to do/know much less or much more to get the same grade (or indeed a better one since we now have A). Of course, most grammar schools were converted to comps or private schools in the 70s. Standards didn't start to slip until the introduction of the GCSE and the national curriculum in the mid 80s, entirely coincidentally that was the point at which norm referencing was abandoned in marking and reported attainment started to rocket. Entirely coincidentally. Entirely. None of this had anything* to do with the conversion of grammar schools in most areas.

Thinking about RedHelen's point - does anyone have figures for the AVERAGE educational attainment across ALL children when they left school, comparing the end of the universal grammar school system vs now? Obviously it would have to be at school leaving age, as taking an arbitrary age e.g. 16 would eliminate many of the lower-qualified in the past, as they would already have left school.

I suspect that the truth was the minority who went to grammars did very well, but that the majority who didn't, did much worse than they currently do at comprehensives...which would rather reinforce the idea that the grammar school / SM system did well for the very able, but failed those in the middle and below.

However, I am reluctant to assert this without data....

I am aware that this analysis would be flawed, as if we see school as 'preparation for the world of work', a lack of qualifications in the past (where the destination for many unqualified young adults was manual work, factory work, apprenticeships etc) was less devastating than a lack of qualifications now (where there are very few opportunities for youngsters without any formal qualifications). However, it might serve to indicate whether 'educational standards FOR ALL have slipped, or whether the reverse is the case.

@teacher Plenty of young people with SEN can thrive at GS. My DD1s GS has pupils with dyspraxia, dyslexia, AS.......... I get very annoyed when I see people sweeping assuming that SEN is shorthand for not academic (or worse).

Metabilis,

As half my current class has SEN, I definitely do not assume that SEN = not academic, and that was absolutely NOT the point that I was making. Profuse apologies for lazy shorthand.

The piint I was very clumsily trying to make was that all the current grammar schools have small percentages of SEN children compared to the national average, and therefore by definition SMs would have more, especially when it comes to areas such as moderate to profound learning difficulties.

Teacher- thank you for that really clear explanation- I've been tying myself in knots trying ti find a way to say whet you've just said.

Metabilis- of course some children with sen can do well in grammar schools. Sen is a very very broad church. But if you look at the actual figures, the number of AEN children in grammar schools is vanishingly small. Which could well suggest that the selection at 10 process is even less suited to these children than all the others.

@teacher of course there is a difference between SEn and learning difficulties, I completely accept that GS are far less likely (if at all ) to have many children with learning difficulties due to the method by which they select their intake. It is worth noting though that due to current governmental and LEA attempts to massage the figures - for whatever reason- many children who would ordinarily have been diagnosed with SEN, especially dyslexia, on the basis that they do in fact have these conditions, are now not officially dyslexic because they are attaining the minimum national level in SATs or teacher assessments and therefore they 'cannot' be dyslexic. The government is attempting to shift the goalposts so that the term 'SEN' does indeed mean low attaining.

Just to be clear, I only gave MLD and SPLD as examples. There are many other kinds of SEN where the learning needs of the children involved make it very much less likely that they would pass an 11+ test (in some cases regardless of their underlying ability) and therefore their destination in a segregated system would be a SM.

As Seeker says, the number of children with AEN of any kind in grammar schools is statistically very small - which would by definition mean that the percentage in SMs would be larger than the 'comprehensive average' IYSWIM?