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!

OK, fair dos.
In LaQs post 'somewhere with a very good comp' would have been better.

I was thinking about how its often used, in the context of the many causes of unfairness of admissions, I would more often say just 'the sort of school people move house for'. Along with 'oversubscribed faith school'.

Which are not the only type of good state/comprehensive school - comforting though it is for people who've chosen other options to believe that.

Yes, I am no fan of leafy either!

I never really understand the argument that it is a problem that only the top set in a comprehensive will be on a level with the grammar children. How many sets can one child be in at once?

Erebus. Is a non selective school in a grammar school area a secondary
modern if 79% of pupils achieve 5 A* t C Maths/English and in one of these schools the top set can do Latin GCSE, Is that school a secondary
modern?
The reason i question , is because there are so called secondary
modern schools around the country achieving upwards 70-79% A*to C
at Gcse.

Not every non grammar school in a selective area is a modern

people need to get away from the stereotyping of some excellent schools that are technically secondary modern schools but are a millon miles from what the perception of those schools are.

Well, there you go: leaves are no indication of anything (assuming you meant that, not that all comprehensives, even ones in middle-class areas, are shit?).

I just worry about what happens to performance in the 'leafy comps' between round about the end of November, and April!

TOSN - have you never heard of Evergreens? The only thing that happens is that the trains slip on snow for a while instead of leaves.

Yep, you need grime to achieve.

Just by the by - the super selective grammar school that my daughter attends is less than half white. Our alternative option (and it was a close call) was our local comprehensive school which is VASTLY less ethnically diverse and probably less diverse in terms of income. It is also much, much more leafy. The only thing it it is more diverse in is ability - and it is genuinely comprehensive.

I heard a few slightly negative comments from the comprehensive school parents about the number of Asian girls at the grammar school and those comments were one of the factors that pushed me slightly in the grammar school direction. It's not a nice attitude and I wanted my daughter to step outside her white MC village bubble.

So the white, affluent grammar school stererotype can be very wrong.

Yes, 'leafy' has been banned, and also you cannot sing baa baa blacksheep, you cannot say 'blackboard' and you are only allowed to send Winterval cards now, you know. It's health and safety gorn mad!

(Alternatively, of course, some people have raised their problems with the term as used in a catch-all manner to describe any comprehensive school which appears to be doing well for its intake.)

Really? I thought "leafy" was code for saying "complacent."

Well to me it seems like a handy term which manages to imply middle-classness, suburbia, affluence, rural not urban, and catchment-area anxiety... and it's generally used in a somewhat deprecating way which concedes that some comprehensives are quite good but that this is only because they're in such areas.

I don't actually know of any catchment which has either entirely affluent or entirely deprived intake, but that may be vastly anamolous with the rest of the UK.

It is used as code for "posh area with large houses and gardens".

I am always bemused by these comforting comps which are exclusively white middle-class while the nearby selectives/private schools are a riot of ethnic and economic diversity. Possibly they exist but frankly they're bnot in south-east London.

I don't agree with Grammar schools. I think a good Comp should be able to set or stream effectively so that all children are able to reach their potential.

There are a few children at my sons school who are very bright but obnoxious with it, putting children down who are on lower tables etc. Children like that might benefit from being at a Grammar school as they would probably thrive in a more competitive environment.

I think there is a place for super selective schools like Tiffin and those of that ilk but I am against Grammar school counties where the top 25-30 % are creamed off to the detriment of the non selective schools.

MI- Yes, 'leafy' is shorthand, same as 'MC' is.

I don't for a moment imagine that the only comp that can 'do well' and allow DC to leave with a fistful of A's is a leafy, MC one- but, the reality is, you increase your DC's odds of success if you remove from the equation factors which are known to reduce those odds. Sorry, unpleasant reality.

My chief criterion when choosing this secondary (yes I chose, via house-price) was the very low number of 'non-school ready' DC who go into Y7 at it. Yes, the great GCSE results are a plus but DS2, in particular, isn't very academic, but at this school he gets to sit with well-behaved (by and large) DC of similar ability (or even mixed! Remove ill-discipline and yes, it is possible to teach DC of different ability in the same class in some subjects) and learn in a focused, structured, disciplined environment. There are no chair chuckers. GSs can pretty much guarantee that every class will be focused and disciplined, with DC of a high academic ability, adding even more 'value' to that learning experience.

I'd want that for my DC but seeing as I can't necessarily access it for DS2 (all except the high academic ability!) I've gone for a very workable alternative: leafy and MC comp.

You speak of the 'terrifying proximity' of those who results are different. Yes, I know 'jokingly', to make a point but I have no problem whatsoever with 'different ability; in fact, I like the fact that my DC do break and lunch with the whole gamut of ability (MC doesn't necessarily = academically gifted, does it?!) but they don't have to be out there with the terrifyingly dangerous, the 'feral and illiterate' because in a MC, leafy comp, you get very few.

FWIW your school has also practised selection (and in doing so removed 50% of a possible intake): it's single sex. It has been endlessly shown that girls tend to do better in a single sex environment than in a coed.

Both ds1 and ds2 went to selective grammar schools in Essex. With ds1, we didn't get him tutoring - my thought was that if he couldn't get into the school without being tutored, he would struggle once there. Then, a fortnight before the exam, we gave him a maths paper to do, and he scored 40% - and dh panicked. Ds1 got lots of maths for the next fortnight - and he passed the 11+ (to be honest, I suspect that was despite dh's tutoring, not because of it).

With ds2, we got him tutored - and again, I don't think he really needed it, but it made the whole process a lot less stressful.

Ds3 did start the tutoring, but had a total melt-down because he wasn't keeping up with the work he had to do for his tutor, so we let him drop it, and accepted that he didn't want to do the 11+. In the end, he did decide to do it (I think we must have kept his name on the list in case he changed his mind), but didn't pass high enough up the list to get a place - and tbh, he was happy with this, as most of his friends were going to the local comprehensive.

In the end, we moved before he finished year 6, and we chose our new house based on its proximity to a really good comprehensive school - the ideal that Elibean talks of - that is inclusive, works hard with all its pupils, and helps them all achieve their best - and I believe that that school was the best for all three of the dses.

Ds1 is reading law, and got an unconditional offer based on his Highers (a scottish exam somewhere between AS and A levels, I believe), and ds2 got 4 unconditional offers to read advanced Maths, and has just finished Freshers Week at Edinburgh - and I am sure that a lot of the credit for this lies with the school and their teachers. But it is ds3 who has benefited the most, I believe.

I think parents are caught in a very difficult dilemma if they live in a grammar school area. The grammar schools have excellent reputations for academic, sporting and artistic achievement, and in my experience often have truly excellent facilities and staff, plus good discipline (so teachers can teach rather than having to do crowd control), and as parents, we all want the best for our children. But both the selective grammars that my boys went to (they didn't go to the same one - oh no, that would have made my life far too easy ) were very hothouse atmospheres, and that doesn't suit everyone. And if a child has been top of their class all their primary life (as ds1 was) and finds themselves in the bottom third of their secondary school year (as he did), this could be quite disheartening (luckily ds1 is pretty oblivious to stuff like this, and it didn't bother him).

Having been raised by a very socialist father, I did struggle with the idea of a two-tier system, and whether I should be perpetuating it by using it for my dses - but I wanted the best education for them, so they went to the grammars.

To the OP I would say, let your dd visit all the schools that she has to choose from, and let her see what they all have to offer. And you can tell her from me, that the girls who went to the partner grammar schools of the ones my dses went to (it was all single sex where we were), were the polar opposite of ugly and geeky. And my friend's dd, who started at the grammar school the same time as ds2, had a wonderful time, made lovely friends, is a fabulous dancer, and is about to start an art foundation course, so she certainly didn't find it to be all about the academics.

tiggy- fair comment about 'leafy' but the thing is, OFSTED rates by comparison, GCSEs rate by absolutes.

So as far as I'm concerned, if my MC, leafy comp add 1025 of value (i.e. 'not spades'- or is it? I don't know!) that's OK by me: A DC goes in as a DC capable of straight As and lo, exits with straight As,

Job done.

Yes, yes, there's 'extra curricular', there's extension, there's well-rounded individual but the straight A*s don't preclude all of that, but the VA score doesn't measure that, either!

I am always bemused by these comforting comps which are exclusively white middle-class while the nearby selectives/private schools are a riot of ethnic and economic diversity. Possibly they exist...

yes. (not exclusively but predominantly) - hereabouts they do seem to exist - some of the CofEs. However, when you dig beneath the surface of the league tables they aren't necessarily so great. Perceptions of 'good' schools are often way out of whack with reality.

Mother inferior - I can help you with your bemusement if you like. I don't mind saying that my daughter is at Kendrick in the centre of Reading. There are plenty of villages, including the one we live in, in nearby South Oxfordshire/Berkshire that are very white middle class and have white middle class comprehensive schools. On the other hand the comprehensives in Reading itself are not generally white middle class. I wasn't saying that all grammars/comps look like this, but it was the case for us.
I'm also very ambivalent about grammar schools tbh, but that's another story - I just wanted to counter the grammar stereotype.