Nikki out, Justine in

[bojorojo]

Will the new Government be more supportive of new grammar schools and change the law to allow new stand-alone ones? Theresa May wants one in her constituency and all the anti grammar school brigade have gone: Gove, Morgan, Cameron and Osborne. The BBC is reporting this could be on the agenda.

[Peregrina]

One of the things we can learn here I think, is that different areas need solutions to suit them. If you live in a rural area children travel long distances to get to the only school available. In this case, you want to make sure that the local school is good. The idea of choice is a non-starter, because there isn't anything else within 10 miles.

[HPFA]

King Solomon Academy is the most successful non-selective state school in the country. 67% of its pupils are disadvantaged yet they achieve 93% 5 A-C. Nor is this about pushing everyone through the C barrier, high achievers get an average A grade, middle achievers a B. For comparison this is higher than Invicta Grammar (Girls) School in Kent which is the highest scoring non super selective in Kent.
So this is what comprehensives can achieve (how many of their kids would have passed the 11+ I wonder)
But would we want all our schools to operate like this:
www.learningspy.co.uk/featured/learned-visit-king-solomon-academy/

[TaIkinPeace]

thethings
My problem with Teach first is that it does not work.
It does not fill the teaching shortages.
Its cohorts do not stay in teaching.
The university based courses had their problems, but they made sure the staffing rolls were filled.

[TaIkinPeace]

ohtheroses
One of the reasons that rural comps are truly comp is that everybody uses them - even the super rich.
In parts of London 40% of kids go private with pretty obvious results.
Also the head of education in Kingston has never been punished for deliberately undersupplying state places.
If more middle class Londoners used state schools they would get even better.

By exam results, top kids at state schools already out perform most private schools anyway.

Government policy should be around the 80% of parents who have no option but to use the local school.
Make it better.
Not twiddle with imaginary "choice"

[SugarPlumTree]

There's a bit of an anti Grammar backlash going on where I live and I personally would not want to see more. We are over the border from our local ones and DC out of catchment need a higher pass mark but traditionally a number of local children have gone.

As our local school is improving with a change of Head the number who go each year are falling. This year it was about 10 whereas 5 years ago it was 24. One of the Grammars went from outstanding to requires improvement at last Ofsted which I suspect will cause a rethink for some parents this year and I expect the trend of lower figures to continue.

[MangoMoon]

YY TalkinPeace.
Our Comp is great, but the pupils range from well off to FSMs.
That's why it works.

[OhTheRoses]

Talkin the majority of people I know who live outside London send their children to the independent in the next biggest town or to boarding school.

The problem is that until London schools improve, those who can afford to opt out will continue to do so. Dd's London comp was living on its reputation. There were pupils there who were super rich and pupils from unimaginable estates and plenty of diversity across the class divides. There was also poor teaching, poor pastoral care and no handle whatsoever on disruption and behaviour.

That was at a "holy grail" London school. No other comp across three boroughs offered a sufficiently academic curriculum to convince me they would reach the academic aptitudes of an old fashioned grammar school cohort.

Until that changes, then I can never support a comprehensive system. Too often comprehensives are just dressed up secondary moderns.

Kent was much better in the 1970s than London post 2000 now. I honestly don't believe there was an alternative to an independent education for my children unless we had moved outside London and we didn't want to.

[TaIkinPeace]

the majority of people I know who live outside London send their children to the independent in the next biggest town or to boarding school
Well frankly your friends can look after themselves then.

The government's job is to look after those who cannot afford a bus fare let alone private school fees.

I'm about to send my second kid to Symonds because I can afford the £800 bus pass.
Lots of people cannot so they have to settle for colleges they can walk to, regardless of the academic reputation.

[Stickerrocks]

Even that is getting harder in some parts of Hants, since Totton College was taken by NACRO & is only providing vocational courses now. Hants seems very keen on the super-college approach now due to funding cut backs. It's bound to push some kids into courses they didn't really want to do.

[Peregrina]

I must say that the majority of people I know who live outside London send their children to the local comprehensive? Many of which are very good, so why waste time bussing children 20 miles to an Independent or spend money on boarding fees? The only exceptions I know are Service families, where boarding is done to provide continuity for the child's education.

[Stickerrocks]

One of the key elements of supply side economics is to improve education & skills across the whole workforce, regardless of where they live, faith or household income.

If you can afford private school fees, you do not need your school to have charitable status. Remove the tax break and pump the cash into the rest of the education system to increase their funding per head.

Allow the church to fund schools, but don't allow them to discriminate within their admissions policy. Make them open to all.

Scrap free school meals for all infant school children & put the money where it's needed, allowing each school to prioritise how to spend the money instead of facing criticism from parents because they don't offer kale & quinoa.

Ban ludicrously expensive school trips in state schools (over £3,200 for meeting an oran utang in Borneo, anyone?)

Bring back schools providing copies of English Lit set texts so no child has to pretend to forget it lesson after lesson.

[HPFA]

Funnily enough the four London boroughs I checked for results all outscored Kent in the headline 5+ A-C (maths and English) figure, including Wandsworth. So if the Kent grammars are so amazing this rather implies that the 80% at the secondary moderns are doing much wo rse than they would in comps doesn't it? Don't that 80% matter? Incidentally my DDs comp offers 4 modern languages plus Latin on an after school basis. I really don't think a secondary modern would have offered that. And as she wouldn't have passed the 11+ (poor maths) and we have been told she seems to have a natural gift for languages this would mean her not fulfilling her potential wouldn't it?

[Lurkedforever1]

hpfa If all comps did offer a comprehensive education as yours presumably does, then more people would think it was the best system. But whilst there are comps offering one mfl, no seperate science etc, with academic dc not achieving anything near potential, then people will want grammars.

I don't know what the stats are for eg Kent versus London, but last time I looked, the figures for state school dc going on to rg unis, Oxbridge etc was not even vaguely proportional. Which can only mean that a large number of comprehensives are failing their high achievers.

[TaIkinPeace]

The job of a comp is not just to try to fill top 200 unis.
It is also tasked with producing the plumbers and mechanics and cleaners and veg pickers and nurses that the UK has been importing by the million for decades.

With the Brexit vote that will no longer be possible.
So hopefully Miss Greening will ignore the loud and sharp elbowed middle class and focus on the ones they try to avoid by sending their kids to private.

After all city traders are a bit nadgered if the electrician is not there to connect up their kit
and the office will stink without cleaners
and Tarquin's nursery will close without cheap labour
and the wait at casualty will be even longer without nurses and porters

[HPFA]

Lurked I agree that all comps should be offering triple science and two MFLs but I suspect this is more about resources and teacher shortages than anything else.
On the Oxbridge stats 60% of students have been to state schools. Of these an estimated 15% come from grammar schools and 85% from comprehensives (Sutton Trust). Given that about 15% of high achieving students attend grammars this is what you would expect, in fact the Sutton Trust believe that students from grammars are slightly underrepresented. Incidentally, in 1964 when comps barely existed only 37% of Oxbridge entrants attended state schools.

Where we can all agree is that socio-economic background is way too important in determining educational success. A relevant example: in Skegness Grammar (in a deprived area) the average high achieving student gains a B grade at GCSE. At Wellington College a secondary modern in wealthy and fully selective Trafford the average high achieving student gains B+.
Wellington also offers three MFL whereas Skegness only offers two.

[Lurkedforever1]

talkin I agree it's not their duty to fill them, and they have a duty to also open doors to other equally valid routes. But they also have a duty to offer the top uni route to those who are capable and might want it, and too many don't.

sorry hpfa I meant to say comparing the state school dc in terms of grammar/ comprehensive, the grammar numbers are disproportionate to comps. Rather than in comparison to private. I know in areas with grammars that of course it's logical they would be the dc most likely to attend top unis. But when you consider the majority of the country has no access to grammars, therefore in the majority of the country those grammar dc will be at comprehensives, you'd expect more of the state entrants to be ex comprehensive. I'm not willing to believe 1/4 of the brightest dc all happen to live in grammar catchment, and that fully comprehensive areas just happen to contain less able dc. Which can only mean too many are failing those able dc.

[minifingerz]

Ohtheroses, so did none of the bright children at your dc's old comp achieve highly or go on to university?

Many people wouldn't touch my dc's school with a bargepole, and luckily for them it's in a borough stuffed with elite private schools so most don't have to.

I do wonder how someone feels though, when they see newspaper pictures showing a line up of happy kids who've just got 10A*s at a comprehensive, (something that happens every year at my dc's school) when they themselves have spent 80K on their own child's education at a private school down the road.

I suspect that the more you pay, the more you convince yourself that your child would have been an unhappy failure at a state school. Must give some people such a headache trying to maintain that illusion when they stumble across happy, clever, high achieving kids from comprehensives, of which there are many.

[TaIkinPeace]

My main hope for Justine Greening is that she is less averse to the views of experts and educationalists than her two predecessors.

Admittedly she did part of her degree in the Murray Building at Soton Uni - about which we BSc bods were extremely rude - but hopefully the attitude of
evidence based decision making
will have seeped into her brain

then again Theresa May is a fan of scientifically impossible legislation
and has just made Penny Turkey will join the EU in a year Mordaunt a DWP minister

so maybe we are doomed to watching the same mistakes be made for many more years to come.

[minifingerz]

"Which can only mean too many are failing those able dc."

Or it could be that the bright kids at comprehensives don't have parents standing over them monitoring their homework and revision, and are less self-motivated in relation to their school work, which is why they either didn't apply to a grammar in the first place, or why they failed the 11+.

All the children I know who passed the 11+ have very motivated and involved parents. They are also not allergic to doing homework/maths practice/essay writing practice. My dc's are bright enough but they would rather have teeth pulled than do extra work outside school or homework for that matter

In other words it's the attitude and work habits of families and children, not the quality of the teaching that accounts for the differences in outcomes between bright children at grammars and in comps.

[OhTheRoses]

Actually mini, dd was friends with some extremely clever girls at the comp. Girls who were intellectually ahead of her. At GCSE dd did as well or better. Also there were boys as clever as DS at primary who went to the comp - they are at Newcastle and Nottingham. DS is at Oxford.

In any event education is not all about GCSEs. IME too many comprehensives do not have high enough expectations.

[TaIkinPeace]

There is also the issue of kids do what their parents did

• one of the reasons why such high numbers of medic students went to private schools
  

and if parents are low skilled, debt averse, they are not going to want their kids taking on £50k of debt to move away to do some strange course at Uni.
Schools can only do so much when parental aspirations and the state of the economy are stacked against them.

London state schools have disproportionately high numbers of

• immigrants who push their kids to do well
  
• professionals who expect their kids to do well.
  

therefore the kids do well.

Somewhere like Skegness has very little of either because such people moved away when the jobs went.
And the bright kids have very few role models to encourage them.

Remember of course that in a selective school, the whole 6th form will be on the A level track.
That makes careers advice a darn sight simpler
the most extreme case is a certain top boarding school where half the boys do the same A level combo and half of them go to Oxbridge

In a comp less than half will be on the A level track
and only 1/3 of them will be headed towards RG
which makes getting destinations right much, much harder

[HPFA]

Lurked I'm not sure of your point here.

About 25%-30 of students attained Level 5 in SATS. Obviously the vast majority of grammar school pupils will have attained this level. So as 4% of students nationally attend grammar schools this represents about 15% of the high achieving students who (allowing for a few late developers) will be overwhelmingly those who go on to Oxbridge. So the Oxbridge figures don't reflect any "added value" given by grammar schools, they certainly don't challenge private school dominance of Oxbridge entrance and historical statistics show that they never have done.

[Margrethe]

Surely there are families with that same ethos in comprehensive areas minifingers. They haven't been strained out through the 11+ process, so they blend in, but statistically, they must be there.

[Margrethe]

Surely, you've just made a practical argument for selective secondary education TalkinPeace.

[TaIkinPeace]

margrethe
Golly, I hope not.
Because at 11 you have no idea which kids will end up on which track at 16.
Let alone 18.