Please can someone answer this simple question about state selective schools?

[Hakluyt]

If selection at 11 is such a good idea, why do wholly selective authorities not produce significantly better exam results than demographically similar wholly comprehensive authorities?

Specialist teachers teaching with specialised rrsources targeted manageable sized groups. Not groups of 35 - with half a dozen kicking off in the lesson, the handful of clever kids desperately keeping a low profile while the teacher sweats and really just provides crowd control.

And while schools sweat so frantically to get pupils to attain that magic C grade at GCSE, then the far ends of the spectrum will drift

Until very recently I taught in a rather unremarkable bog standard comprehensive/secondary modern. My position in that school meant that I visited many other schools in the country. I have also taught in inner city schools in deprived areas. I just do not recognise this picture of a classroom. Schools are also judged on the progress that pupils make, not their A* to C rate.

Our school had bullying, I cannot remember dealing with bullying about merits and who was good at maths.

Our local girls' grammars have much more of a problem with bullying, I would never send my girls there, even if I approved of grammar schools.

Do grammars really bother to set that much? I went to a very good girls' grammar and they divided us into 4 sets for maths and 2 for French, and everything else was mixed.

Mumtrying - I've no idea what it's like at laQueen's primary but certainly for the one my DCs were at, during the time I was interested (so, the last 6 cycles) it was easy to predict which kids would get into our superselective. The most that have ever got in was 4. It's usually 1 or 2 and most people (not just staff, but parents and kids too) could have picked them out by about year 3. They all really stood out from an early age. Some years nobody got in and that wasn't a surprise either (the first year of success - Dd1's year - encouraged more applications in subsequent years).

I also don't understand why people on both sides of the debate talk as if grammar schools really do represent the top 20% or 5% or whatever proportion they take in that area, and what's left in the comprehensives is therefore the bottom 80%/95% and therefore we have to call them secondary moderns. It's just nothing like that clearcut.

There are the kids who don't pass the 11+ but could have done, the ones who don't want or whose parents don't want them to go to the grammars, plus the ones who pass who shouldn't really have done.
Then there's the fact that even in fully comprehensive areas a large number of the brighter kids will be creamed off by the private schools, so the mix you get in the comprehensive depends partly on what private schools there are in the area - many of the grammar school kids would have gone to private if there hadn't been a grammar, so they'd never have been part of the comprehensive school mix anyway.

Can someone explain why they think that the Kent system is flawed ?

Because it doesn't work. And most people seem to be unhappy about it.

"half a dozen kicking off in the lesson, the handful of clever kids desperately keeping a low profile "

Not a picture I recognise in DS's S London comp, either. There are many (as in a representative number) of clever kids, some from the kind of family background LQueen and jbx seek to closet themselves amongst, some from those they are trying to avoid. Being clever / getting good grades is actually seen as being something to aspire to, and there are good friendships across sets / streams. Behaviour is well managed and vulnerable children are well supported.

I think that these days, when the Grammars and super-selective are socially selective in a way they were not in the Golden Age of grammars, a GOOD comp is a better facilitator of social mobility than a grammar system.

But then the phrase 'social mobility' - it's a bit outdated, isn't it? Surely we are after educational mobility, in terms of people not being constrained by the educational limits of parents? That young people of all classes and demographics be educated to the top of their potential?

The grammar I went to was "super selective" and took the highest scoring children wherever they lived. I was not in a grammar school area and travelled to it. There were no issues with having to live near the school to get a place. To me this is the fairest and best way as desirable postcodes are irrelevant.

I am not in Kent but I think possibly some people's issue with that system may be that they select too many children, meaning the grammar pupils are not necessarily even that exceptional and they cream off too many bright pupils from the other schools. However I do think something similar to this happens in lots of areas, just with people going private rather than grammar.

Of all the types of schools I mentioned, probably the best are the 'Chelmsford' grammar schools when everything is taken in to account. I think the education Niece 1 got and Nephew 1 is getting is better than even what Niece 2 is getting at her girls boarding school. DD2 and DS Kent grammar schools are a bit 'ordinary' for grammar schools in terms of achievement and Russell group numbers.

The make up of 'east Kent's' grammar schools is not that selective at all, there has to be something wrong with the process if my clearly academic DD1 failed with a combined score of 380. My DD1 achieved far better A2 results than the 3 girls who got in to the grammar from her primary. DD2 was deemed selective 'just' she would have got nowhere near the typically more selective West Kent grammar's yet now is on course for 4A* and 5A grades so is clearly a 'grammar' school girl.

The problem is the system in Kent at the moment is 'biased' towards Private Prep schools , there is little help given by Primary schools (by law) towards the 11+.

LaQ, without meaning to sound arsey; you say that you don't want a state education for your DDs because you were privately educated, but, IIRC it hasn't done you many favours career-wise. Why so adamant on that?

Does anyone know what the comparison between high achievers results are? I understand that across the board there is little difference in grades.

What is interesting though is that the LEAs that send the most students to the most selective universities have selective schools in them .

Perhaps if you are a parent keen for your child to go to v selective university, you are more likely to settle in or move to a selective area? Just thinking Kent, and bits of London, though really. I don't know where all the selective areas even are, come to think of it.

nit yes that's a possibility, though Kent isn't one of the most 'successful' LEAs in this regard .

I can't check the stats at the mo but think the top contender is Sutton or Merton (don't quote me on this).

One problem with comparisons is that they are capped at the a, so any child who could theoretically achieve beyond that doesn't get counted. And numbers wise, a lot get a, and some must be capable of more. Statistically, this is a comparison problem.

I'm in Kent, it's not that bad. Many of the "high" schools are very good, especially if you pray rather than tutor. Easy to teach VR and NVR at home, research shows that after 10 hours of practice that's it, no more improvements.

However I went to a bog standard comp in the 80s and I would pay or pray to avoid that for any academically minded child.

We made comparisons with high achievers in our school and the grammar school. At GCSE level there was no real difference in how they did, although we offered a wider curriculum. At A level we tended to do better with our more able students than the grammars. A small comparison between one comp/secondary modern and a few grammars admittedly.

LaQueen is always saying that she lives in a luffly, affluent area so I'm wondering where all these buttheads who she claims populate her local comp come from? Are they bussed in from far away sink estates to intimidate the clever few who didn't pass the 11plus and get to join her DD at the Brightest and the Bestest Gels' Grammar?

at the idea that you can't make comparisons because some A* kids could have done even better if they had been at a different school!

Tanaqui. You will need 'prayer' if your children end up at the 'Castle' or Swan valley..

Marthas. Funnily enough there is a 'Comprehensive' in a 'Rich' bit of East Cheshire that does exactly what you say....

Well, I don't think that's true of the local comps in LaQueen's patch of our green and pleasant land.

How can you do better than A*? My school days are long behind me, but surely that grade is pretty much 100% on a paper? If it isn't, it should be....

A varies, I have taught pupils for whom we have been almost certain that they will get an A and therefore we have taught them far beyond the GCSE criteria. The number of pupils to whom this applies will be fewer in a comp than a grammar school.

Although we have had some students start some A levels early.

Some A* students have been taught to the curriculum and the exam.

Some will have been introduced to much greater depth and breadth.

The stats can never reflect this.

at the sound of goal posts being rapidly shifted.