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!

[curlew]

"Isn't there bound to be, curlew? On account of the number of children who don't make the grade according to the entry system?

There must be lots of parents whose DCs didn't quite get there with some arbitrary exam weighted towards those with time and money who are nonetheless committed and engaged."

Of course. But the supporters of grammar schools always refuse to accept this fact, and continue to claim that the system does not discriminate against children from disadvantaged families. The image of grammar schools as engines of social change is long gone. If it ever existed.

[curlew]

Kharma- he will be fine. He might need more support from home than he would if he had gone to grammar school. But he will be fine. Stop crying and have another look at the local schools. Ask them what they do to support their high achievers. And know and tell him that he will be fine.

[curlew]

Sorry- forgot to say. Before you look at schools, look at the league tables and see how your local schools do in the "expected progress" section.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Anybody who says that there is an equal spread of socio-economic classes in grammar schools and secondary modern schools is in denial.

I don't think anyone has been foolish enough to claim an equal spread, as its clearly untrue, for all sorts of reasons. But there is a spread, which is what's relevant in the context of this thread, with the OPs DD having a strange perception that GSs didn't have 'normal people'.

[TallulahMcFey]

I must say, I would look upon it as mainly my decision where my daughter went to school. Obviously I would try to agree on it, take her to open days etc but would choose the more academic school every time IF I felt it was the right decision for my child. After all, they are children and it is a big life-changing decision. However, I would also listen to admission who made a very good point. You wouldn't want to send a child there who was out of her depth so would need to be sure.

[ErrolTheDragon]

LaQ - the trouble with going on SATs levels is that they're attainment rather than aptitude tests, so that would work even more against kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Erebus]

I must say I find myself smiling when I read of how normal and inclusive GSs are, with intakes across the entire spectrum.

Now, I'm aware there are county-wide GS systems and stand-alone super-selective, thus there'll be different types of GS; but the reality is that if there's an option, not a compulsion to sit the 11+ where you are, the mere fact a parent, be they Boden or Primark wearing decides to put their DC forward for the 11+ (where they will use the word 'prepping' their DC for the exam, not 'tutoring' because although it's the same thing, one sounds pushier than the other ), already you have cut away a fair slab of the 'local demographic'. And once at GS, 'clever enough' isn't always enough. There has to be ambition, commitment, a certain standard of behaviour, because of course, GSs can not only select in, they can select out, even covertly (reading up-thread about a non-GS which gets '8-10' enquiries a year from current GS parents where 'it's not working out'). 'Selection' is the thing behind just about every consistently 'good' (by which I mean 'achieving academically') school in the country, be it by entrance exam, 'commitment' to a religious observance or house-price.

For me, the reason I'd've sent my DS to GS is because of one of my latter points; that the GS can refuse to tolerate certain behaviours which the all-comers comp can't. He would have passed the same 11+ I did (in 1973 ), but the boys GS, like mine, have gone quite 'super-selective' so, even had he passed this 11+, I'm not sure DS2 would have so he'd have been consigned to a very average SM instead (oddly, though the GSs in the town are super-selective, the girls 'SM' (and it is, sorry!) is very good, the boys SM and the 2 coed ones are dire.

I have to also add that sorry, but the girls at the GS now are not 'normal' in the sense of 'being very like the vast majority of other girls of their age'. They are cleverer, they are taught to value what many teenage girls would mock as being 'geeky', they celebrate academic success, they are completely aware that their future lies in their own hands, they are focussed, they are driven (not always in a good way- quite a lot of anorexia there) and dare I say, like we maybe were, they are a little bit dismissive of the non-GS DC. I know a lot of these girls personally which is why I can comment. If you use the term 'normal' to mean 'what the central majority are like', the girls populating the top of the bell curve, maybe, just maybe orange-TOWIE is more 'normal' than the GS girls I've just described!

So we have gone for selection by house-price; where the local comp is very leafy, very MC and gets stellar results. So we get the double whammy; the 'my child goes to a comprehensive which by definition educates the entire academic and social range of DC' kudos and a very impressive academic record .

[Erebus]

Oh and as an aside, the majority of the girls in the GS I mentioned went to private primaries. The town in question is heaving with them, their chief advertising point being their 11+ success rate.

So another reason why getting into this GS can be beyond a 'normal' family's reach, maybe?

[motherinferior]

Oh can you all please stop with the leafy. DD1's comp - which I have seen described in really quite denigrating terms on MN before - is utterly unleafy. Grimy, yes. Leafy, no. (It is, at the moment, quite literally a building site.) It admits - shock horror - poor girls and black girls and asylum seeker girls and girls whose family background means they would simply never be put in for the 11+ (and quite a few kids from round here are, despite the massive out-of-borough journey this entails) whatever their innate ability. I would put money on the non-leafiness of the other comps mentioned on this thread too. Doesn't stop the a number of the kids coming out clutching fistfuls of As, despite their terrifying proximity to those whose results are different.

[ErrolTheDragon]

MI - its just a shorthand for a certain type of comp which does exist - the sort that people who can move catchment for. Doesn't imply that there aren't also excellent schools such as you describe.

[motherinferior]

I am totally aware of the stereotype, thanks: what I resent is the widespread assumption that this is the only type of comprehensive which drags its pupils up from their natural state of feral illiteracy; and that there is, therefore, effectively no difference between comps that do well and selective/paid-for schools. We have, we're firmly told, selected our school by virtue of paying for our postcode. Yes, there are schools with highly sought-after catchment areas. They are not the only ones delivering well.

[curlew]

"Leafy" might be a shorthand, but it a lazy, ill informed and misleading shorthand.

It suggests that the only comprehensive schools which are even worth considering are those in expensive, middle class leafy suburbs. And that the only people who support comprehensive education are those whose children have access to such schools.

Which is, of course, complete bullshit.

[Charlottehere]

My dd has just started at grammar school. If dd's not willing to play ball, don't bother.

[Charlottehere]

Of course grammar school discriminate against children from poorer backgrounds, v. Unfair.