Would you send your child to a grammar school ?

[HeGrewWhiskersOnHisChin]

This is going to be quite long and rambling but I wanted to find out how much of my own experiences are clouding my judgement.

Okay, where we live there are not any great schools unless you are in the correct feeder schools, which we aren't as we moved to the area after Reception.

I know people say that all the time, but it's true - I'm not a snob I promise!

There are a few grammar schools within a commutable distance, and after researching all the local schools, look like the best choice.

I say choice as they are not necessarily an option for us. DD is bright, on the top table (apparently), but as I said already we live in a really deprived area. Half the children don't even wear the uniform let alone turn up for school. If she were at a better performing school she might be more average, I don't know.

So anyway I was going to do a practice verbal and non-verbal reasoning test with her just to see if she had any natural aptitude or not, and then consider whether we should try for a grammar or not.

BUT... She doesn't want to go to a school like that, she wants to go to one with normal people.

Oh the irony! Her words are exactly I said to my very working class parents and my head teacher after turning down a place at a grammar school. My dad was angry but my mum let me make my own mind up.

Subsequently I went on to a 'normal' school and academically I achieved as well as I would have at the grammar, but but but I can't help thinking that if I'd have mixed with girls from the other school, I may have not ended up pregnant at 18 living in a council flat !

I know my DD is very easily led, even more so than me (she gets it from her dad's side) and I think when she goes to secondary school she'll be more interested in boys and makeup than getting As.

So what should I do?

I said it'd be long!

What can be catching is attitude - whether it's cool or swotty to study etc. Positive and negative attitudes are not determined by the system of the school - I expect there's some GSs where there are kids who swan through and disrupt the grafters which could be a problem relative to a normal well-run comp. You really can't generalise.

Is there a link between IQ and likelihood of being disruptive?

If they are lazy and easily led then they may 'catch' disruptiveness.

Mine however, never reported any disruption. They've both left now, as of last year, but that was 14 years of secondary/sixth form education between them, in a non-leafy town and neither of them ever told me they couldn't do their work because of disruption.

"If they are lazy and easily led then they may 'catch' disruptiveness."

How sad to have such little faith in your children........

I think very bright people can also, very often, be disparaging about hard work though. The cool thing is to be effortlessly brilliant (and I've seen this actually on MN), not to have had to work or try .... Cuts both ways.

"But, you can equally have loads of teenagers who really don't give a toss about their education, or anyone else's for that matter."

Unlikely to be in the top set, I would have thought......

Laqueen that is so insulting as you are implying that those saying their children went to amazing comps are lying.

Again, only in Mumsnet Land do most (if not the majority) of comprehensives easily match the behavioural standards and academic levels found in grammar schools

Did anyone say that? I didn't see it. I hesitate to call straw man, but....

I think what we are saying is, children don't expire if they're in a building with some children who aren't as bright, or even who sometimes misbehave.

Nobody is saying their child is at an 'amazing comp' though?

OH, and we're also saying that we actively like having that diversity and proximity. Because overall, this type of provision is a Good Thing. It means that, say, if your daughter fails the 11+ and goes to a school that caters for all abilities she'll still have the opportunity to move up and do well later.

noddy That was precisely the point of my post. There is NO link between IQ and likelihood of being disruptive. There are children who disrupt lessons every single day in my DD's superselective grammar.

The point is that state schools cannot exclude children for behaviour issues. And like most state schools, grammar schools do not have good resources, quality libraries, good sports teams or anything else. DS attends a very good public school. The difference is huge - just immense. And the biggest difference is - disruptive kids get told to bugger off. Manners and behaviour and resources are the difference between state and independent schools.

I was privately educated and plenty of disruption there too My son had a superior education in every way and I found all his class mates to be great.

Curlew I was responding to Beers post about disruptiveness being catchy.

Anyway I'll leave this now. I don't know why I get involved in these threads.
There's so many generalisations and untruths believed that it's like talking to a brick wall.

Comps have served my DDs, my nieces, nephews, god children and friends' children very well. I only know 5 children at grammars. ALL of them have done less well than my DDs and several of my nieces. I also know that grammars are no way immune to bullying, laziness, disappointing results and bad teaching.

I always though grammar schools were for those who couldn't afford private. The fur coat no knickers brigade !

Agree completely with Wuldric. My mate is a head of dept at a super selective grammar and she says there are still plenty of bullying issues and naughty behaviour to contend with. It's not just naughty comp kids that mess around!

Apropos of nothing, except hopefully a little light relief, my ds was quizzing me about dh and his grammar school career and telling me about a girl in his class whose parents are hoping to send her to a grammar (there are none local to us, so she would be going as part of a super-selected cohort to one of the Kent ones if she gets in) and he said "A is going to do her elevenses".

Oh I just wanted to grab him and squeeze the very life out of him!

Its terribly difficult trying to explain our weird and fucked-up schools system to a 10 year old, even a very switched-on one.