Worst forms of selection in schools: Views of M'snetters

[thankgodimretired]

Interviews?
Questions concerning parental income?
Academic selection?
Previous school reports?
Decisions made by committee about whether to exclude certain individuals from attending?

Having just recently retired from the teaching profession, I am struck by how little things have changed over the course of my working life. There are certainly less overtly selective schools in the state sector than when I started out teaching in South London in the late 1970's. But the independents, grammars and faith schools appear to be more socially exclusive than at any time.

Molio DC is hopefully on her way to a future as a lawyer in Human Rights. I would be very interested in your DCs take on the point of exclusive rights to local schools based on wealth and/or academic ability (one of which you appear to have bought into).

amber no doubt molio will answer in due course but the reality is that comprehensives cannot divert the resources to the very bright in the way a super selective can. Nor can it provide the same like -ability cohort. Nor can it organise it's structure in the same way.

Nor should it of course.

A comp has to cater for all abilities, a super selective does not.

I'm not sure what's happened to Riis thread, but to answer the original question, the worse form of selection is covert. £100 blazers and £38/ 2 pack of blouses with no second hand shop.
'Twas ever thus. My uncle remembers one cockney/year in his south London grammar school in the 50s. Parents were interviewed and the 11+ was a MC screening tool.

Seriously - yes, to the covert selection by uniform. I know people who passed the 11+ who couldn't afford to go, because of said uniform: serge tunics which required 2 metres of fabric at £40 a metre in today's values, or £100 if bought ready made. Only available in the one shop. The garment then had to be dry-cleaned.

(Ghastly - in bottle green too, I have never been able to wear it since.)

Word - no, a comprehensive cannot and should not privilege the very bright over other pupils, in terms of resources, structure or anything else. I'd question your view that they can't provide a like-ability cohort for those pupils, though. Most comprehensives will have a critical mass of very bright kids, although clearly the number will diminish if some are being creamed off by selective schools...

Those issues are a different thing, though, from my objection to people claiming that comprehensive schools teach to the middle, or to the lowest common denominator. Where is the evidence for that?

amber an average super selective takes an ability range of about the top 5% or less. In an average comp, that would be what? 10 pupils per year max? In some comps it would be far less. That's not a decent cohort.

As for comps teaching to the middle, well common sense dictates that the majority of resources will and indeed should be used to benefit re vast majority of pupils who sit squarely in the middle of the ability bell curve.

Obviously resources should also be funnelled towards those who struggle to access the curriculum at all ( though the SN boards attest this is not consistent).

The last concern will be those DC who are bright and already achieving well.

A super selective recognises that these DC need something different and channels resources that would otherwise be unjustified.

Talkin if Peter Symonds is a Sixth Form college then how does looking it up help me to find out how large your DD's Y11 cohort was? .

So again (and why is this so contentious?): please can you say what percentage these 40 students are of the entire GCSE cohort at whichever school your DD attended, and when you say 13 A/A, is that 13A/A full GCSEs? It's not possible to reply to your 'challenge' unless you supply that info. If you recall, you were the one to issue this challenge, not me or happy or Word.

Amber I'm absolutely certain that none of the comps we would have access to would have given my DC anything like the same education or results or opportunities even though at least two are good comps, and not in any way touched by the grammar which as a super selective has a very limited impact on schools locally, unlike Kent. The students at those schools just don't emerge with anything like the results my lot have got, and it's a fact that although my DC are clever enough, they're not off the scale on the whole. Word is spot on about resources. Very able kids do best in a selective environment. They might do fine in a comp, but they do best in a grammar.

Mum to be fair, teaching kids in the way which is most appropriate to their ability is hardly contravening anyone else's human rights! That's a touch dramatic. I'm pretty sure the DC in question would have significantly more issues with selection for leafy comps by wealth than selection for grammars by ability. Why is selection by ability an equality of opportunity issue? It isn't really, is it?

The uniform for our grammar is as cheap as could be. Nothing special at all and no expensive blazer and plenty of second hand stuff available through the PA.

How many 'super-selectives' are there though? A handful in London, and possibly Birmingham? So they are not really going to be applicable to the vast majority of children.

I do wonder about those who offer opinions as to 'comps do this, or that', (usually derogatory), actually know what happens in a comprehensive, and send/sent their children to one.

I second everything Word has just said :)

lavolcan the concern over how high ability children fare in comprehensives is long standing.

I work at Oxbridge and it's a massive issue for us!

Word, I am not sure that it was any better in the average grammar school. I remember that we had a couple of girls who were clearly off the scale compared with the rest of us. They were not served well at all.

I note that you haven't answered my question about how many super-selectives their are. Unless you live in London, and I think Birmingham, they are non-existent. So how does the very, very bright child in Cornwall, Northumbria, Suffolk, etc. fare?

All academies lack standards

Even the Liverpool Blue Coat OP?

OP you asked mumtryingherbest if she was familiar with the chools you had listed. Well I am. I am very familar with the Liverpool Blue Coat. It does not give a chance to the children from the "rough side of town" at all. It's demographics claerly show it has a middle class intake with neglible levels of SEN. It is an academy, it could do whatever it wanted with its admissions policy. It chooses not to. It goes purely who does best on an exam one morning in October.

1/5 of the children in my DC's nice, school in an affluent South Liverpool suburb are doing the exam this Saturday. Every single one of those kids has had tutoring (mine included). Multiply that by the number of schools across Merseyside and edges of Cheshire and Lancashire - because parents will travel that far to get a private standard education for free - and do you really think the bright kids of Norris Green and Croxteth are getting a level playing field? Do not kid yourself that the old style interviews gave options to those children through any sense of benevolence; TLBC did exactly what it was obliged to do to maintain its status.

I wrestle with my conscience over this. My child is bright. If he gets in is it because he is one of the brightest? Or is it because I could pay for someone to give him an advantage in learning the skills needed for the exam and covering those bits of maths he hasn't yet covered in school. Will I have "stolen" a place from a brighter child with less advanatages?

I say it again, for the third time, TLBC has excellent exam results but splitting out the results for high attainers at other South Liverpool Secondary schools shows that TLBC is not significantly better and cosndiering the other schools are factoring in more disdavanatged children and more with SEN it makes me question whether Blue Coat's results are based purely on having considtently bright cohorts than anything to do with the teaching and learning?

You may ask why I am putting my child forward for the exam when I have ethical objections to how it selects and operates. DC wants to go. REALLY wants to go.

Mine went to, or still at, a comprehensive. 2 at Oxford, 1 at Cambridge, 1 wants to be a vet and the other hasn't a clue ! Never tutored, from good old working class stock and school has been fab for them and their friends. And I am very glad they have learned that people are lovely regardless of money, race or educational achievement.

lavolcan I don't know the exact number, but there are more than you say.

Devon, Colchester, Walsal spring to mind.

No doubt someone else will know.

But there are too few. That I will accept.

What we do know though, is where they do exist, they are extremely successful. The LEAs which have the most pupils going to Oxbridge and RG universities have selective schools in them, the LEAs with the least pupils are all non-selective.

Sorry, I have to laugh at the thought of a child from say Northumbria going to Walsall, or Penzance going to a super-selective (i.e Colyton) in East Devon, near the border of Dorset, on a daily basis. I grant it would be possible if they took boarders, but not everyone wants their child to board.

Talkin, I too had assumed from the writer's style that it was a he. I'm not sure why, and I'm intrigued that words on a screen, about a gender-neutral subject, can suggest this.

Well said Mintyy.

Think OP has gone in on supply today with such commitment and interest in education

You know what, having watched two DSs go through GCSEs at different schools, I'm buggered if I care that one got As and Bs rather than A*s.

Maybe a pushier school would have made him up his game. Or maybe the happy life he led at his chosen school meant he did better than he would have otherwise.

Actually, I'd love to know the best forms of selection in terms of achievement but also mental health and happiness.

Kitties I can't remember which thread it was on, (might have been this one higher up), but one poster took another to task and said words to the effect 'but just think how much better they would have done if they had gone to a selective school'. An other came back with something like '3 A*s and a place to do medicine at Cambridge, could they really do better?', thus shutting them up. I had to laugh!

Molio I'm pretty sure the DC in question would have significantly more issues with selection for leafy comps by wealth than selection for grammars by ability.

Perhaps in your experience that is the case. However, my experience is very different. My local selective schools (all 7 of them) have catchment areas and wealth is buying an advantage in gaining a place (they all but one offer distance places). The properties surrounding those schools have an inflated price tag. One such example is a housing development next to one of the most sought after selective schools (distance catchment of 230 meters). Depending on proximity to the school the price of a two bedroom flat ranges from £650 pcm to £1,250 pcm (identical size and design I might add). I do class this as selection by wealth.

Molio - Why is selection by ability an equality of opportunity issue? It isn't really, is it?

Where I am those who achieve the highest marks in the 11 plus have a choice of 7 schools. Those who either don't sit the 11 plus or don't score high enough have a choice of 1. Do you see this as equality of opportunity?

The thing is lavulcan there are always children who do exceptionally well from Comps.

However, what we're talking about is the general pattern.

25% of Oxbridge undergraduates are from comps. Given that this is the biggest cohort of children in the UK, it's not that great.

We've done shed loads of widening access stuff and contextualised offers. But we've reached the point now where the biggest barrier are the schools themselves.

Molio I'm pretty sure the DC in question would have significantly more issues with selection for leafy comps by wealth than selection for grammars by ability.

I will also add that many who have DCs sitting the 11 plus/CEM to gain entry into a grammar have the financial means to pay for tuition for their DCs. I appreciate that some DCs are tutored at home or sit the exam without any tutoring (the latter most definitely not being the case in the area I live in). However, if you take a look at the www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/11plus/viewforum.php?f=64
you'll be hard pushed to find an area where private tuition is not the norm. Again, I would class this as selection by wealth.

*TheWordFactory 25% of Oxbridge undergraduates are from comps. Given that this is the biggest cohort of children in the UK, it's not that great.

We've done shed loads of widening access stuff and contextualised offers. But we've reached the point now where the biggest barrier are the schools themselves.*

Interesting, in what way are the schools a barrier?

Do you not think the actual cost of the degree course and the extras that go with it are off putting to many families with DCs attending comps? Not to suggest that there are not wealthy families with children attending comps. However, I suspect that there are a higher percentage of higher/middle income earners at private & selective/grammar schools. Perhaps I am wrong?