URGENT! Government education proposals: you seriously won't BELIEVE number 14!

[noblegiraffe]

Click-bait title, sorry!

But today's really the last day to tell the government their plans for grammar and faith schools stink contribute to the government consultation 'Schools that work for everyone' (except poor kids, those with SEN, the less academic and atheists)

Consultation document:
consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/supporting_documents/09.12.2016%20%20Publication%20%20Schools%20that%20work%20for%20everyone.pdf

Online Survey:
consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/

It's a really long document with lots of confusing questions but they will have to record all responses as there will definitely be a FOI request put in to find out the results. Even if you just head straight for the grammar section and say that you are against the creation of more secondary moderns, please just fill out that bit and leave the rest blank. Ignore the questions and write what you want to. Oh, and if you can point out that Northern Ireland which is a selective system did worse than England in the PISA results, that would probably annoy them

Unless you are in favour of the proposals in which case the consultation ended yesterday

[HPFA]

My answer to the question about selective schools helping others was "A Head of a grammar cannot go into a school and tell them how to educate those children it has rejected"

[PiqueABoo]

@ MumTryingHerBest is there any evidence to suggest that Grammar schools are fulfilling the potential of the "most able"?

Depends on what is meant by 'evidence', 'potential' and 'most able' because they're all very vague, a bit like 'gaps'. It’s similar for 'Grammar' because that label on the outside tells us little about what happens inside e.g. how selective, do they set, what subjects do they teach, do they have accelerated GCSEs in some subjects, fit here or there on the prog. v. trad. spectrum etc?

I don't think there's any really compelling evidence for anything much from both extremes of this debate i.e. people bring their very strong existing views to the table and will settle for any mud they can find to throw at the other side, regardless of its credibility or any caveats.

Pragmatically I doubt this will amount to much and for the part I'm interested in, the top few percent who spend a lot of their childhood marking time, I suspect it may be harmful i.e. they’ll reach a small fraction of them via not many new grammar places (or not many MDS-like places in shiny schools), tell us how they’ve done a wonderful job and ignore the rest. Much like how they pretend we all have a "choice" of state school etc. I’d be for something that looked like it might work, but I don’t believe this will.

[TalkinPeace]

THe Institute for Education report earlier this year was pretty thorough

Grammar schools improve the results of the brightest, richest kids by 1/3 of a GCSE grade
which is not worth the stress

the top school systems in the PISA tests are all non selective before the age of 16

[DrudgeJedd]

Just completed the last 2 sections only with the same answers
"I oppose the creation of more secondary modern schools" and "I oppose the use of selection by faith in our state education" respectively.

The dreadful layout of that consultation didn't deserve any more effort on my part.

[HPFA]

Drudge The evidence against this proposal is so overwhelming that it hardly seems worthwhile for the majority of us to repeat it, especially when you already have responses like this
www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news-events/pdf/schools-that-work-for-everyone-response

For the rest of us I think it's just important that we add our votes to the "No" side. I spent weeks reflecting on the best way to answer and then realised this was the only thing that mattered! I wasn't abusive of course, but sarcasm much in evidence.

[SixthSenseless]

The consultation closed at 11.45 am, Deepan!

C&P your responses to your MP.

[SixthSenseless]

Sorry, that was to Drudge.

[noblegiraffe]

The consultation closes at 11:45pm not am! Still time to put in your 'no!' votes!

[Peregrina]

If it did close at 11. 45 am them I am stuck. It allowed me to complete it, so I just did so. What an appalling survey. There was no space to add other comments, so I added them in the last box about faith schools.

On more than one occasion I asked them to define what they meant by a 'good school'. I found spaces to say that they hadn't got a clue about technical and vocational education. I told them that schools like Eton were so far removed from the State system that they would have nothing to offer. Otherwise, I said why did they assume that fee paying schools were good. And on and on.

[Peregrina]

Ah, thanks Noble - I thought that must be the case, because it gave me a reference number.

[Peregrina]

I did have some fun with the 'how could we make faith schools more inclusive' or whatever. I suggested they put that question to the schools themselves and looked forward to their response.

[TalkinPeace]

My response was rather full of the point that "faith" schools

• discourage social cohesion
  
• allow extremism
  
• encourage discrimination
  

and are based on the wishes and ethnic background of the parent not the child

not that I have strong views on it mind

[noblegiraffe]

I said something along the lines of if you wanted schools to be more inclusive and multifaith then why were you arranging things so that the Catholic Church could exclude anyone who wasn't Catholic.

[Peregrina]

I wonder if this whole thing will be quietly abandoned, as the 'all schools to become Academies' plan was, when the Tory County Councils started kicking up a stink?

As surveys go, it's one of the worst I have seen. An undergraduate producing one like that to gain information for their dissertation would be ridiculed.

[MumTryingHerBest]

Peregrina Mon 12-Dec-16 20:52:23 As surveys go, it's one of the worst I have seen.

The people who designed and produced that survey should be sacked. It takes incompetence to a whole new level.

[noblegiraffe]

I saw a similar one on A-level reform when they were talking about scrapping AS levels. I was going to respond to it, saw the style of questions that assumed you already thought that scrapping ASs was a good idea and just wanted to say how to go about it. I didn't respond because I thought they didn't want my views. Then when the consultation responses were published it said 'we only had (hardly any) responses and they were mostly positive, negative comments were blah blah blah' and at that point I realised I could have written 'your premise is shit' and it would have been counted. I wish I had because that was another terrible idea.

[TalkinPeace]

Noble
I regularly have to do ones for Local Government.
One of them I typed You do not understand the sector and your ideas are cloud cuckoo land into every single box

[MumTryingHerBest]

TalkinPeace the same response is just as applicable to every question on that survey.

[flyingwithwings]

The thing about the proposed government plans, is that they will gain traction with a number of parents . These parents are likely to be the ones who were pro 'Brexit'.

This means the grammar school proposals are likely to be applauded by the very people whose children may suffer from them.

The families that feel dissatisfied with a lot of things least of all being education. Therefore when a mirage appears in the shape of grammar schools are to believe that this will change their children's life chances .

The reality is the children of these families are the least likely to gain entry to the grammar schools.

I think a lot of 'hype' regarding grammar schools has come from the fact that most areas have not had them for 40 years , so the idea seems fresh and exciting to some parents.

The reality of course will mean 75% of children will get an education no better than they currently do and possibly worse.

These 75% are likely to be the children of the families who are positive to the idea believing their children to be grammar school ability. This perception being brought on because of little or no idea how grammar schools select or operate.

My 4 children have benefited from grammar schools but that was because i was able to support them through tutoring and their middle class existence.

[cardboardPeony]

What a leading survey... I've just put "don't create selective schools" into somr of the boxes

[TalkinPeace]

Kent Secondary Modern heads put the boot in ....
www.theguardian.com/education/2016/dec/12/grammar-schools-plan-kent-headteachers-tell-education-secretary-deep-opposition

and they REALLY know what they are talking about on this issue .......

[MumTryingHerBest]

TalkinPeace The comments below that article show a shocking level of ignorance:


So , what's all the bother about segregating academically gifted kids, and sending them to the Grammar School?

It's all about 'class' (to be fair they got this right)
It's about pushy , middle class parents. (and they got this right)
It's about kids being tutored to pass the exam. (and they got this right)
Little sods aren't they , posh accents !
It's the politics of envy .

Can't wait for the torrent of abuse.
Priveleged Tory bastard , bet you went to some posh school !

No , just a Grammar School where the brightest boy in my class by far lived in a run down , single storey council house on a grotty estate. This was 1956.

We didn't all have mobile 'phones and our own computers. (I imagine not in 1956 FFS).
He went on to do well. He was good at sport as well.
Another boy lived in a council pre-fab. He did well.

Give the Grammar Schools a fair chance.


This is the type of person who will support these proposals. They have not idea what they are actually supporting.

[TalkinPeace]

Mumtrying
The Gruaniad comments section is a corbynista stronghold that rubbishes most articles they allow comments on ...

have a look at the Brexiteers on the BBC comments

its rather amusing in a sad way

[DeepanKrispanEven]

The bother is about making decisions that vitally effect children's future based on their performance in selective exams at the age of 10 and 11. There is ample evidence of the harm this did in the past. Why would we want to do that again?

It's noteworthy that parents who support grammar schools inevitably assume their children will go to them. Given that a relatively small proportion of children ever went to grammar schools, many of them are doomed to bitter disappointment and I suspect would remove their support very quickly if or when their children have to go to secondary moderns.

[Peregrina]

No , just a Grammar School where the brightest boy in my class by far lived in a run down , single storey council house on a grotty estate. This was 1956.

This was 60 years ago! Where did the other 40 odd from his primary class go? This survey hasn't addressed this. This is where the problem with our education system lies - a long tail of underachievement.

Sixty years ago Council housing was viewed rather differently - quite a lot of it resulted from slum clearance programmes, so had things like central heating, bathrooms with loos, (instead of going down the yard to the loo), so was looked on favourably rather than looked down upon as it would be now.

If he had said, this boy came from a slum - family of six to a room, damp running down the walls, unsafe electrics, etc. etc. then the case might have been more convincing, but he didn't, because someone like that didn't get to the grammar school. They won't now either.