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.

And I think you may have a hard time denying there is any such thing as an exam which students will need to prepare for - and silly old teachers for thinking there is - oh but there is, by the way, an aptitude test for which many will be tutored!

that's like telling them it's balderdash that it costs more.... And your schools are hampering you by not contradicting that silly mistake.... It's just that you have to hand over some more pounds!

nit he was talking about the old exams that had their own syllabus! He was twenty years out if date!!

He didn't even know the aptitude tests had been introduced!

Jeez you really will defend any old crap if it's to do wit comprehensives. His lack of knowledge was indefensible IMVHO. And meant that high ability students were not getting the info they needed.

By the same token, I think you will say any old thing is crap if it comes from out of a comprehensive or anyone connected with them!

That teacher was wrong. That's bad. But you can't say that state school pupils should be disabused of the malign notion that there's an exam and then in the same breath say, oh yeah, aptitude tests, Obvs.

nit they are not remotely the same thing!

The old tests definitely advantaged private schooled applicants as their teachers would often run extra lessons to cover the syllabus . Comps often didn't.

Aptitude tests are completely different. They test raw aptitude and are actually helpful to spot applicants whose education may not be the best but who has huge potential. They absolutely do not favour the wealthiest applicants.

They have also been introduced in lots of universities. Schools should know about them and encourage their brightest pupils to be I afraid of them.

TheWordFactory They absolutely do not favour the wealthiest applicants. Yet you said that you turn away a lot of comp. applicants because they don't get the grades. Why do you care what their grades are if there is a test you can administer that will identify those with huge potential. Perhaps invite comps to suggest students put themselves forward for the aptitude test (free if charge) and if they score well then they know they should apply? This is how the 11 plus/CEM works.

No, they're not the same thing, obviously, but isn't your work about understanding the kinds of things which intimidate and put off applicants? Ever seen the huha on here when a year 7 child has a CAT test? And that's not to help determine their place, it's just to help set them! And an 'aptitude test' which, as you say, many will actually seek tutoring and advice on, is going to be something which may very well be intimidating to some potential students! I'm not saying such tests are a bad thing, not at all, but surely you can see why that would be the case?

The law test isn't something you're supposed to be able to revise for, but its 'cambridgeness' is nonetheless daunting, for example. And functionally, it is going to look and feel pretty much like an exam to those who are sitting it.

Word, you say only 25% of kids at Oxford come from comprehensive schools. Clearly the % of kids from comps at Oxford is never going to match the % of kids who attend comps because comps, by their nature, include all the kids who won't achieve the necessary grades, as well as some of those who will.

Is there any modelling to show the % of kids at Oxford that were high attainers at primary school then attended selective secondary schools, compared with the % who were also high attainers at primary then attended comps? It wouldn't be perfect, but it would give an interesting perspective on the effects of selective vs comprehensive education on the life chances of bright kids.

Back to this later... Which is probably for the best!

Cambridge must have given a lower offer or let the DC in anyway having missed the grades. Possibly in recognition of unusual achievement at the given school.

Maybe, maybe not. My grammar school educated niece missed her grades for medical school, but they let her in anyway. Not Oxbridge mind.

The old tests definitely advantaged private schooled applicants as their teachers would often run extra lessons to cover the syllabus . Comps often didn't.

Nor did (girls) grammar schools. It usually required part of a third year sixth, and that put off the majority.

Sorry will reply to points later.

Need to deal with some work calls.

LaVolcan it's clear that Cambridge made an exception for this DC one way or the other, given the grades the DC got in with. And Cambridge isn't known for its leniency with slipped grades. If Cambridge makes an exception that's because it recognises a problem which has been overcome but which drags down achievement. So possibly the DC had personal difficulties or possibly this is Cambridge's recognition that a school is crap. Either way, this wasn't a normal case and certainly it isn't a case where one can extrapolate that everything in the comprehensive garden is rosy and that the sky is the limit for every child there.

No one is saying that everything in the comprehensive garden is rosy, but nor was everything in the grammar school system.

So if the person achieved their objective of a Cambridge place, does it really matter that they didn't get the extra A*. It didn't matter to my niece, once the anxious moments of whether she would get in or not were passed.

I would certainly argue that for someone studying medicine, having to mix with as wide a cross section of people as possible can only be a good thing.

No you're quite right about the A LaVolcan. Of course it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. I simply picked up on what you said because you mistook the GCSE grades for A level grades and the situation wasn't as straightforward as you suggested. Cambridge made a concession in that case. Cambridge won't make concessions in the majority of cases. That's where able comp students who don't reach their grade potential miss out. Given that the mum said the kid had 3A at GCSE and no A* at A level it was completely fair to ask whether or not she felt the kid might have done better at a grammar.

Incidentally, it's pretty insulting to ordinary grammar school kids who get in on merit that their places are 'bought'. It's also insulting to suggest that they don't know how to mix with a wide cross section of people. And it's insulting again to suggest that the top grades they get fall out of the sky, with no particular effort from the DC involved.

I would say the social mix at my DCs school is pretty good, particularly given the crass stereotype portrayed on MN. It's certainly way different from the private schools in the county. The knee jerk re-action of 'But what about FSM students?' is slightly missing the point. Only a tiny proportion of those on FSM reach high L5s at the end of primary, so in a sense the grammars aren't doing too badly. I certainly believe the tutoring issue has become a problem in disincentivising the large numbers of kids in the band above FSM , but even attempting to articulate support for the changes to the tests provokes ire on MN, both from the tutoring classes who are worried about the threat and from the anti grammar posters who won't have it any way other than that the grammars themselves are trying to entrench privilege.

The Grammars themselves are not trying to entrench priveledge
( we'll leave that to the private schools that have raised their fees by double inflation every year for the last 20 years and allowed themselves to fill up with expats and NonDoms )
But the perception of failing at 11 has resulted in an arms race among ambitious parents to avoid the alternative schools.
They do not choose for a grammar, they choose against the sec mods.
Some of the SecMods (like the one that Haks son attends) are getting great results from some of their kids
Others are little more than holding pens

The grammars have little control over them and are not forced to work with them (esp with Academy status rolling out).

And despite what the state Superselective supporters say, the kids left behind are probably VERY aware and demotivated by the fact that the four or five who would have made good headlines for their school are elsewhere.

Molio - your second paragraph is totally your own construction on what I have said.

I am not in a grammar school area, but I am absolutely sick to death of hearing how all comprehensive schools fail. Clearly my own children don't exist, nor the friends' children who are Cambridge graduates, one Harvard graduate, doctors, plus a sprinkling of teachers, because all comprehensive students are thick, and all comprehensive schools only teach to the middle, so they can't possibly have got to those places or positions. (Or they were lucky, the rules must have been bent for them, or somehow getting all As, or A*s is just a fluke - grade inflation of course, but not if they had been grammar educated.)

When I talk of my own grammar school, I know it wasn't nearly as good as it thought it was, or should have been, and I know that there were a lot like it. My own two children did go to fairly average comprehensives, and on the whole had a better education than I did.

LaVolcan my second paragraph was completely unconnected with anything you might or might not have said, so there was no construction.

I'm assuming that your own second paragraph, likewise, is not a construction on anything I've said, because that would be wrong.

Whilst I agree that private schools are for the wealthy, if we set aside the 10% that get bursaries (it should be more like 50%), I don't understand how their ever increasing fees makes a difference. They were not affordable for 99% of the population 20 years ago and they still aren't - the price is immaterial - £1 per term is too much.

As discussed ad nauseam, it isn't schools that perpetuate privilege, but parents. Abolish private schools and grammar schools and what you will discover is that wealth and success will continue to be inherited. The utopian ideal of perfect social mobility is false. Chucking Tarquin into the local comp will neither increase the prospects of the other 29 kids nor stop his accelerated progress in society. Parents do that, not schools. The only way to overcome that sort of privilege is to cap wealth and aggressively redistribute, like Marxism.

PS - can't help it but "privilege" has two "i"s .... soz, mega-petty of me ....

Dad164
whoops : my spelling is normalley better than that (thanks to my private school education

Private schools are as they are : if you dive down into the detailed economics they are in fact useful for the redistribution of wealth ( I'll save the details for another thread but the combination of several Economist articles shows such )

It is the fact the state schools actively and deliberately impede equal access that should be dealt with : not only by the 11+ but also by religious and sex selection, let alone the nasty covert stuff that the OP was so in favour of.

State funded schools should try to offer equal chances - even if outcomes will not be equal.

It does not make much sense, that on the whole most posters are anti state school selection, but have no problem with private schools.

"Hang on a Minute "EUREKA" I've worked it out, It must be that posters who are anti state school selection are in favour of "Double Jeopardy" . This of course allows them to try the Comprehensive (spout out all good Socialist theories and feel "nice and warm inside" that little Sam is friends with Tracey or Heaven).

This despite Heaven being Poor and in set 9 for Maths/English. The Double Jeopardy though is of course there should "god" forbid the Comp is shit and against all their socialist "principles" but because of the Evil Tories, (GOVE, Sorry Morgan) They had to send Samantha to the Private Girls School, not out of choice , but out of desperation!.

Talkin can I take from your silence that you've conceded the point that the results of the top forty students at least at some selective schools, including some state selective schools, are distinctly better than those at your DD's comp (whichever it was). And that's on the basis that the 13 exams they take at your DD's old school are all full GCSEs - though you're quiet on that point too. I'm not quite sure why you issued that challenge; it was bound to fail.

Going back to the FSM, isn't it more worthwhile to focus on why certain comps have such a low % of kids on FSM when they're intended to be entirely inclusive? Given that the representation in grammars matches up fairly well with the numbers on FSM getting high L5s, I'd have thought the concern about discrimination should shift elsewhere.

Molio
DDs school and courses are easy to find for anybody on MN with the analytical skills to do a search. I CBA to help you out.

smoke
no country has abolished private : its a different - and non taxpayer funded -battle

It does not make much sense, that on the whole most posters are anti state school selection, but have no problem with private schools

Smokepole your 'eureka' moment is a little premature, I think - which posters are you even thinking of here?

Talkin you're ridiculous. What on earth is the silly cat and mouse about? You keep posting 'CBA' posts which take longer to type than answering: a) how many kids? And b) are the 13 subjects full GCSEs? It's quite sad tbh, especially since you posed this rather pointless 'challenge'. Instead of requiring me to scan through your prolific number of posts, could you at least give me the name of the school in question, the one where your DD sat her GCSEs? Why be so petulant about it?

And what's your take on the leafy comp FSM intake? Not such a social idyll after all, I wouldn't say.

Molio And what's your take on the leafy comp FSM intake? Molio this is not directed at you in particular but people keep referring to "leafy comp". Which schools are they, can anyone given any names for such schools.

The point I would raise on this is that if the "leafy comp" is surrounded by properties with a hefty price tag then it is unlikely to actually be a comp as there will have been selection by wealth. I make this point as the selective schools in my area ride under the banner of comps. but they are quite simply grammar schools with a different name tag.

molio
Oh FFS : you are clearly too idle or too thick to read what I posted on the big GS thread the other week, or the GCSE results thread, or the comp / grammar threads ad nauseam I've been bored enough to post on.

~300 per cohort, fully comp so a fair few do only the bare minimum of GCSEs
in with their NVQ
the top 60 do
Eng Lang, Eng Lit, Maths, Further/Stats or in three cases further and stats, Latin Lang, Latin Lit, Phys, Chem, Bio, Geog, Hist, MFL, tech/music/RE
All GCSE/iGCSE (the Latins)
the moderated results are still ongoing due to a massive re-mark in two subjects : but most of that 60 got more than 10 A/A*
so its pretty average for round here TBH