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.

Some children might not benefit from an orderly education, really? Who are those? and who are the not so decent kids?

Happy retirement!

BoffinMum , I think there is a lot to be said for educating by height . We could save a lot of money by building schools that don't waste all that unused ceiling space above the heads of short arses. Teachers would have to allocated accordingly , of course.

I am a bit worried about the long term impact though . Many people develop long term networks during their school years that influence the marriages they make and the kids they have. We could end up with a polarity between the short getting shorter and the tall getting shorter .

Although that has never happened in any other selection process such as public school v state, so maybe I am over thinking it.

I mean the tall getting taller, of course.

But the tallest 10 yos don't necessarily become the tallest 14 yos! Nobody would be so ridiculous as to think that selection in Y6 is a good idea, would they?

Hmmmm, I smell shiiiiite.

Good point, Massa, selection at 10 or 11 would be idiotic and take no account of the way a child grows as she or he matures.

Also, inter-school basketball matches could not be fought on a level playing field, and parents would look at the overall sports league tables and assume that the Tall schools were better without realizing the results were based on intake.

Think of the families who moved to an area where the '110cm plus' schools were excellent but then their DC failed to eat enough Ready Brek and just missed the mark . They would be stuffed.

I'm hoping to God that you didn't teach literary at your highly selective schools OP!

As the parent of a child who will be sitting the Blue Coat exam next week, I sincerely hope the OP is not representative of the people who currently teach there.

Interestingly, although Blue Coat is the only wholly selective school in Liverpool, it's outcomes for high attainers are not dramatically different than for other secondary schools in South Liverpool, which considering the other schools have a larger proportion of children with SEN or qualifying for FSM makes Blue Coat look less impressive. I mean they take in the cream of the crop but don't have a significantly different impact on the high attainers. I wonder therefore if the teaching and learning standards are actually as good as the results imply or whether they are just reaping the rewards of a gifted intake each year?

In my opinion a school needs to either be highly selective of pupils or highly selective of teachers.

There are some sweeping statements on here

e.g. 'all forms of selection disadvantage working class kids'

simply not true in every case husbands parents were as working class as they come miners kids from Scotland, no one in the family had been to University EVER both got into grammar school and their lives were totally different as a result.

South London faith schools selecting in the way you describe, is simply not true in every case, I thought it was widely recognised that some do exactly the opposite they are full of lower socioeconomic group immigrant kids whose parents have aspirations or expectations for them, my former local community schools however were full of the offspring of Eurobankers renting houses that cost way over 1,000000.

the trouble is people feel very passionately about this subject and that tends to be reflected in their statements

what really needs to be found is a way not to manipulate the system, I offer you Shirley Williams whose daughter went to Godolphin and Latymer after she moved into the area at just the right time, Blair and the lib dem guy with kids at the Oratory, Cameron whose daughter was/is at a primary school (State Faith) which teaches Latin, Diane Abbott whose son was sent to the City of London school (private)

I am sure they didn't feel that selection by bank balance disadvantaged their childen (although I accept they don't really represent the working class)

so how can you avoid selection ban private schools and make all admissions a lottery with widespread bussing?

"both got into grammar school and their lives were totally different as a result."

Yep, same for my Dad. His miner dad wasn't even literate.

But that was then. When every kid in every school sat the 11+ within school time and was allocated a school as a result.

Now, competition and tutoring and self-selection in choosing to enter such a competitive process ensures that the vast majority of kids in grammars and super-selectives are middle class, or working class with a work and education ethic that would ensure that they were supported wherever they went.

Now good comps serve bright children of non-wealthy or non-educationally aspirational parents far better than an 'exclusive' grammar system.

Which is rapidly becoming elite state funded education for the middle classes.

Anyway, this is a bollocks thread, with a goady OP written in a confusing way, not laying out any theories , proposals or well argued critiques, and seemingly based in a rag bag of rather bitter anecdotal subjective experiences.

By a teacher.

Back to selection by height.... and other sensible proposals.

There were many bright kids, usually girls, who were forced into poorly resourced, largely demoralising secondary moderns in order to allow all the goodies to land in the laps of those who by some fluke had passed the 11+ through whatever combination of circumstances. I wish people would stop holding the system up as a success simply because their Uncle Jimmie or whoever was rescued from blue collar work by it. It wasn't a success. It almost killed large industry and engineering in this country and doomed a generation of girls to be typists when they should probably have been going to university.

Tall girls or short girls?

I would add to that post that demographically speaking the kids who went to grammar schools as a whole were those whose parents would have been able to pay for secondary education prior to 1944, ditto those who go now. Never was a group of parents happier than when their school fees were effectively abolished overnight once the 1944 Education Act was passed. When direct grant grammars were abolished in the 1970s,demographically simply stayed at the same schoolspaid once again.

Typing went adrift as using iOS update - anyone know how to get rid of stoopid autocorrect crap on keyboard?

My school was a GPDST one : they were geared up to prepare us to marry well or become teachers ; everything else was beyond their imagination.
And yyy to the demographics of selective schools in the halcyon era.

Well said Minty.

Sorry, Just realised OP is just on a wind up. Sad.

For anybody interested in a return to more selection in schools will find the following link of interest.......

www.francisgilbert.co.uk/2004/08/the-select-few/

Francis Gilbert, the eminent education journalist advocates selection by interview, this and other types of selection were prevalent in the schools mentioned in the article, including Blair's Oratory, Cooper's Company School and The John Fisher School in Croydon, North Surrey.

In the article Mr Gilbert offers a touching account of one young boy who benefitted enormously from the type of orderly education on offer.

benefitted?

Parents want selection, whether its fair or not (it will always happen), I think it is part of the an evolutionary drive to gain advantage for our own DNA. Nothing is going to stop them trying to game the system and I dont think it is even fair to do so.

So I think we should get rid of the worst types of selection and allow the ones that are most fair.

Ban selection by income eg private schools, expensive houses in exclusive catchments. Ban religious selection. etc.

Allow academic/artistic/vocational (etc) selection, which gives disadvantaged children the best chance for improving their life chances.

Unlike previous decades we should ensure that our efforts effort are put into ensuring all types of school are as good as the best.

I would be content with 70% of the population receiving some form of selective education, whether it be private, grammar, Oratory-style selective faith schools and 30% going to basic schools.

Let's not kid ourselves here, but instead ensure most succeed!

Thank God. I agree with what you say that 70% of the school population. However, I said on the "To really regret the grammar school thing" thread, that they should be three types of school Grammar, High and Community offering different types of education. This of course was not liked by the vast majority of posters on here.

I am intrigued how The Blue Coat School in Liverpool managed to stay a selective school from the 70s to the present day. This is remarkable considering its location in the most Socialist City in England.
I am also amazed that Derek Hatton and Militant Tendency did not destroy such a school as Blue Coat.

We managed to maintain selection for many years using interviews and a protracted application process, only fairly recently did we begin to only examine applicants using none of the other selection tools.