They want us to talk about grammars so we're not talking about this

[noblegiraffe]

Everyone interested in education is talking about grammar schools.

Is this debate a smokescreen to divert attention from the absolute disaster that is facing UK education?

Fairer national funding formula postponed
Delayed report into the Ebacc
No information yet about Y7 SATs resits
Scrapping of levels with no replacement leaving schools and parents confused
Heads threatening to boycott KS2 SATs
Massive budget cuts
The imminent plummeting GCSE pass rate
Last minute syllabus releases for reformed GCSEs
The mess that is decoupled AS-levels
The teacher retention disaster
The teacher recruitment crisis - latest news is that targets have been badly missed for teacher training this year in key subjects
Calls for more financial regulation of academies

That's off the top of my head, I'm sure there's way more.

And it is infuriating that with all this going on, the DfE will be spending their time fannying around with a proposal from Theresa May which is purely political.

"schools are already silently managing out pupils with Sen/SN."

That is definitely happening in our LA. IMO ofsted needs a good shake up because schools shouldn't be judged on results. They should judge them on levels of progress. Getting some students to a D (or equivalent grade) might represent a huge leap in progress for those students.

It is nonsense to suggest huge numbers will fail the new GCSEs. Grade boundaries will simply be readjusted to prevent this.

No, it's not nonsense, it's fact. Grade boundaries will be set so that the proportion of students who currently get C+ will be roughly the same as those who will get a 4+. However a 4 isn't a pass, a 5 is, so the pass rate will fall.

Where the 5 grade boundary will sit is at the upper third of a C to the lower third of a current B grade. So two thirds of students who would have got a C and passed will now get a 4 and fail.

The 23% was a calculation for those who would have passed both maths and English who will now fail one or both.

Laura McInerney writing for the Guardian has described grammar schools as 'the dead cat on the table' to distract the public from what's really going on. She suggests that as well as distracting attention from the massive problems facing education (as in my OP), they are also diverting attention from the mess that is Brexit. She points out that because the announcement is only a Green Paper, not a White Paper, that the government probably intends to eke this out as long as they can.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/11/theresa-may-persists-with-survival-of-fittest-grammar-schools

Definitely a diversion from Brexit. The other massive issue is the NHS. By squeezing local authorities, govt has created nightmare social care situation leaving patients stuck in hospital. Added to that is row with junior doctors. Grammar schools created a very useful diversion even though chances of the law being changed are low.

Well we better make some fucking noise then so that the tories cannot destroy our public services.
Education
Health
Local authorities

All going to shit

Make some noise

We need to familiarise ourselves with the Tory manifesto, so we can start attacking things which were not in it. Reintroducing Grammar schools wasn't. Supporting the single market, although vaguely defined, was.

The manifesto is irrelevant in the case for teacher retention and recruitment though. That's just a Tory fuck up right there.
Didn't this happen in the early 90s?

Didn't this happen in the early 90s?

I think it did. I went on a demo protesting about cuts in education in the early 90s, and someone was holding up a banner saying "This is not what we voted for" above a picture of a big pair of scissors. I remember thinking to myself that if they had voted Tory, then oh yes it was.

But then Major's Govt got an absolute drubbing at the next election and for all Blair's faults, much more money did flow into education.

maryField

I understand the catholic education system has been pushing for the 50% cap to be lifted for a while. Any new school opens as a free school, and with a 50% faith cap the catholic education body refused to do so. Given local authorities can't open new schools, and nobody has any money to do so and how the government is hugely reliant on the churches for providing about a third of the schools in the UK I can see why they did it.

I am scared about my children since the cornerstone of teaching of Evidence not Ideology is being undermined. People twittle on about 'choice' but to me it is such a weasel word if the 'choices' are fork out for private, lie about religious status or inflict a long commute on yourself and your child.

There was a lot of investment under Blair in education and health but it was to undo years of underinvestment. And it's being undone just as quickly because it's about ideology, not economics. Governments make choices about how to spend our money and this government has wasted a lot of its education budget. We're going to drive away the doctors and teachers and end up spending far more in hiring replacements.

Yes I remember being at secondary school in the 90s and we used to worry about the ceilings falling on our heads as the place was crumbling.

Anyone stupid enough to vote Tory has a short memory or have not a clue.

Where is the money for these new grammars coming from?

Investment should be ploughed into the schools we already have instead of the govt constantly messing them around!

What has happened to Performance 8? I thought this new measure was supposed to put GCSE results in context with the school's intake (both ability and social context). The press are still talking about 5 A*-C GCSEs even though this is supposed to be replaced. Am I being cynical in thinking that this has been shelved because data doesn't fit the government's new plans.
What about the policy of making pupils resit GCSE Maths and English. This has probably affected grade boundaries this year. My dd was told that the same Maths UMS for the last few years would have been a B but it was "only" a C in 2016, so have no confidence at all that grade boundaries will be adjusted to be "more generous" for the first cohort of candidates taking new GCSEs (or the new linear A levels either).
I can appreciate that universities wanted the changes in A levels (the new linear ones) so that they can choose the "best" candidates. However the basis for changing GCSEs was flawed as it was linked to countries e.g. Singapore where not all pupils are entered for exams at 16 in the first place. Although the new system could mean fewer top grades, actually it isn't the pupils at the top of the ability range who will miss out, as others have said it's the pupils who are currently considered "average" who are going to be affected the most (and schools where most pupils are average too).

cats I went to a talk by Ofqual on Saturday who talked exactly about making grade boundaries more generous on the first years of a new spec to account for teacher unfamiliarity with the test. They released a document last week called 'the sawtooth effect' showing how they have measured the predicted dip and how they will protect against it (comparable outcomes). So that's something at least.

Catslife maybe Performance 8 will be published in January when they normally update the DFE tables?

Yes, progress and attainment 8 can't be published yet because they will be calculated based on national data which isn't even available yet because of remarks.
Some schools have estimated their progress 8 scores using last year's data.

That's useful to know noble even if they are being a bit vague as to how many years this transition will apply for.
However this only seems to apply to complete qualifications taken at the end of the course. Students who have taken the new linear AS qualifications aren't being told their UMS marks and grade boundaries haven't been published, which is making it harder for teachers to make grade predictions for unis etc and to work out whether a grade C is closer to a B or a D for example.

Don't fool yourselves that these grammars will be shiny and new and well funded. The current grammars (while ours certainly) is in desperate need of more money. Big spends such as new buildings seem possible (money comes from different pots), but we too have departments where we have no money to replace the text books (both A Level and GCSE needed). We also have a lot less technology than other schools locally.
It actually seems like a bit of a divide and conquer issue - take grammars out of the list and I think we all agree that these are problems that need solving. It seems that parents are being sold the hope that their child will be saved from these problems by attending a grammar school. Not the case at all.

I agree OP - and also to distract from the idea of new faith schools. I find it quite appalling that an employer and a service provider cannot discriminate on grounds of religion (think of the B&B or bakery cases where they did not want to provide a service to gay people on grounds of religious belief), yet a school can. Adults are protected, children are not. It is totally unacceptable that the government is going to do this.

There was a thing on Twitter the other day about the right of children to an education at a local school and the fact that refugees should not be refused because they don't have the right piece of paper (ie they should be in school even if they have not been granted asylum yet). Yet my son could be refused an education at a school in the same street because he's not Catholic. Because he does not have the right piece of paper.

As for all the other issues with schools, well you are right. Where do you start? Teacher retention is the biggest issue.

And then we come to Brexit and the effect that is going to have on our kids' life chances generally.

"My dd was told that the same Maths UMS for the last few years would have been a B but it was "only" a C in 2016"
I'm sorry I really cant see how this is possible, UMS marks have always been the same. Always. This year is no different.

I should have said Raw marks rather than UMS.