Is everybody happy with their choice of a NON-selective secondary education over a selective one?

[AdventuresWithVoles]

Genuine question.

I don't want to be pedantic, but thank you.

"I don't want to be pedantic, but thank you."

Glad to be of some help.

I didn't say you could not discuss it, I wa explaining why it attracts different responses.

All political parties appear to be terrified of pushing a selective agenda, so I fail to see how any discussion of selective education is 'political'.

Selective is great for those who are on form on the day, have pushy parents or are old for their academic year.
For bright kids who do not match those criteria it fails them for the rest of their lives.

That is why I am against selection and in favour of comprehensives with setting
so that classes are not mixed ability but each child is in a set with those of the same ability for each subject.

If the selection was on writing ability, all of the geeks would end up in the lower ability school.
If it was on sporting ability then the "quirky" kids who proliferate on MN would be bumped down too.
Selection currently favours the aggressive types who populate the House of Commons and the Apprentice
so politicians will not expand it (they do not want REAL competition) and they will not remove it (as it made them)

On the whole I think I would much prefer DC go to school with mixed ability peers. I guess I lose track of that principle when I read some threads.

At moments like this I wish my mother was alive to talk to; she loathed elitism in all forms.

My DCs are at a comp. As we live in a semi-rural area, I'd say the catchment was very mixed - includes large rural area as well as the centre of a market town with great mixture of housing types. There are grammar schools in the next town, but they are single-sex. Pretty sure DD would have got a place - DS a bit more erratic. But having done single-sex grammar myself, I wouldn't have considered it in a month of Sundays for my own DCs.

I have been really pleased with my DC's progress at the comp. It's a big school (10 form entry) so lots of sets by the time they get to GCSE. And each subject is setted independently, rather than having fixed "streams". A few subjects like art/DT are not setted. Good pastoral care through a very strong house system. Reasonable class sizes. Great range of subject at GCSE and A level. Loads of sporting opportunities. Lots of friends close by.

The main thing is that my DCs are really happy. That was the most important thing for me after my completely miserable experience at grammar school.

yes, broadly.

I take issue with this point - everything is selective. A state school 'selects' kids from a catchment. If property prices are such that only the well off can buy a property within the catchment then that is 'selective' as well.

A state school serves its catchment. If there are more children who want to go than there are places, it takes them based on proximity. I know there are muddying issues like faith and siblings and looked-after children, and indeed moving for catchment to very popular schools, but the basic idea of a catchment is not selective.

That's right. Private schools (even those academically non selective) select on social grounds .....

OP we send our DD to a relatively non-selective independent. By non-selective, I mean by rigid academic entrance exams. Girls of mixed ability attend but are pretty much hand-picked by the HT.

To be honest, I had misgivings. She had places at two selective schools (one independent, one state grammar), but I was prepared to give it a go. And it has been a huge success. DD is so happy and doing so many wonderful things!!!

DS however, will go to an absurdly selective school. It will be right for him.

So I guess my answer with a foot in both camps is it depends on the child!!! Which isn't that helpful .

Yes, I genuinely am.

Maybe relieved would be more honest, but I am pleased as well.

I really want DC2 & 3 to go there too, even though it's a long journey, and the travel will cost £££ for 3 of them.

Yes, I think so. But then I don't know exactly what I expect from a school. I suspect any conclusions I might reach re DS1 will be different from those I reach for DD. I suspect DS should have been pushed harder but he's the one who wouldn't have been selected by any selective school. DD sails through because she works really hard all the time and doesn't need any encouragement to get amazing results.

THey both seem happy enough.

I think I will reserve judgement until they are happily settled into whatever life they choose before. Until that point I won't come to any conclusion about any decisions we made about their upbringing.

Good point about waiting, Orm.

The funky impressive alumni from the non-selective school DC attends, compared to the very selective school we avoided gives me hope. If nothing else, he is probably hanging out with future pop stars, sports personalities and fashion designers.

Pleased that dd2 will be joining her sister at a true comprehensive.

DS has got into the comp we selected - ie slightly further from home but better regared etc. Interestingly it is in an area which is not any more pricey or middle class than where we live it just happens to be a better school.
We have a grammar that would have been possiblr but a long journey so decided against it for practical reasons - decided against private for financial reasons.
Am I happy? Yes, i think he's going to a great school with good opportunities to do all sorts of extra curricular things and educationally good.
Would I have done it differently if the circumstances were different? Probably, but I'm starting to be pleased that we didn't ave to make those choices- we are fortunate that we don't have to woryy whether or not we 'made the right choice'.

@talkin I know several 'geeks' who are highly successful writers.

The basic idea of a catchment is completely selective and motivated purely by social exclusivity. The whole concept was designed by the middle classes to ensure that oils like me no longer had the opportunity to go to their leafy schools but instead roamed no further than a few streets away from our council estates.

metabilis
when I was at uni it was the running joke that the engineering graduate job search forms were multiple choice as forming sentences was not a strong point.
The number of inarticulate tech billionaires shows that ANY system that selects on a perceived ability will exclude those that the selectors are too narrow to perceive

and as EVERYBODY on Mumsnet is aware, teachers and inspectors are not always the best judges of character or potential.

Therefore a "selection" system slap bang at the start of puberty based on very narrow criteria is destined to fail in the long run because it is reacting to what was wanted years before
rather than what will be wanted in the future

and FWIW I think the CBI and the IoD should be told to take a hike about their views of academe.
The "point" of higher education is to learn how to learn, not how to tick the box of a mediocrity.

metabilis
catchments : utter bilge.
point is to get children travelling the least distance to school and to stop the founders excluding the poor areas
there WERE no council estates when catchments were invented
look at the USA to see catchments work in all their glory

@talkin I do not disagree with you that many graduates cannot form intelligible sentences. This is something that I have spoken about not only on mumsnet but professionally. To people who have paid to hear me say it (well, I don't know what they think I'm going to say, but, you know....). My issue was with you tarring all geeks with the same brush. As I said, I know several complete and utter über geeks who are very successful book and screenwriters. I was the least geeky of the group of ne'er do wells with whom I misspent a lot of my youth (although I was bloody geeky for a girl) and I am conspicuously not a successful book or screenwriter (although I have had stuff published, it's all professional/academic). Do not assume geeks can't write.

When catchments were introduced in the UK there most certainly were council estates. Anyone who tries to argue that they are not agents of social exclusivity in this country is either possessed of a vested interest in maintaining social exclusivity or an inability to read maps.

I have no experience of very large towns or cities, but where we live, there really is no "social catchment" issue for senior schools. I accept there is for primaries, but not secondaries as the catchment areas are very large and the housing mixed. I guess it's all a question of scale. Outside of large towns, the social housing may originally have been built separate from private housing, but you are only talking a couple of streets rather than vast estates.

No experience with independents so can't answer that.

No selective state schools here. Very happy with this. It means gifted dd and average ds both benefit from a mix of students and learning styles- ds gets to see that it is possible to take more of an interest in your studies than he does (which is something he needs to see!), and dd gets to learn that not all people have the same ambitions as she does and that you can still communicate.

Actually, chances are they might both have ended up at the comp, as dd - a straight A student- was quite ill in Yr 6 and probably couldn't have coped with an entrance exam; she was unable to either sit upright or hold a pen during SATS week, so had to dictate to a TA whilst lying flat on her back.

They hauled your DD in from her sick bed to do KS2 SATs?

I would just like the opportunity to send my children to non selective schools. Where I live you are selected in to a grammar school or selected out to a "secondary modern" at the age of 10.

Where I live, there is one grammar school for the whole of the city. It takes about 160 pupils per year. The school is 90% full of children whose parents could afford private tuition to pass the exam. The other 10% have undoubtedly been coached at home. About 650 children sit the exam for160 places.

When DD was young, i did consider this school for her. She was in the top 95% in her class dispite being one of the youngest. However, when I realised to give DD a chance I would have to pay for tuition, I decided against it.

My reasons for this was partly financial, it would have crippled us to pay £30+ per week for a tutor. But we could have done it for a short time.

At the same time, I had DS1 who was really struggling to grasp reading and writing in year three. How could I justify paying for tuition for a bright child when my DS could barely write his name. Also DS would need long term support which we definitely couldn't afford.

So DD went to the local state faith school. She is doing GCSEs right now and is below target in most subjects. Her target grades were straight A's. She is likely to get B's and C's.

I honestly believe this is a mix of DD not putting the effort in, (she had a bit of a teenage meltdown during year 10) and teaching methods at the school.

State schools are so focused on league tables, that as long as pupils are on target for a grade C, they are happy. Pupils who could achieve A's but are on target for B's and C's like DD, can be forgotten about because they will not affect the league table IUSWIM.

So when DD got a C in English language at the end of year 10, the school did not want her to resit but pupils who got a D where encouraged to resit. We had to kick up a fuss to get them to allow DD to resit and then they said she wouldn't receive any help. DD did resit and managed to pull her grade up to a B.

I'm sure if she had gone to a grammar or selective school, teachers would have pushed her to achieve her best and not allowed her to sit back because she wasn't affecting the league tables.