Justine Greening grubs around for grammar school support after disastrous consultation

[noblegiraffe]

Despite the grammar school consultation only closing recently, the results not yet being published, and many high-profile education organisations condemning the plans, Justine Greening has decided to try to whip up Tory support for grammar schools by sending an email to Conservative party members and backers asking for them to support a grammar school campaign.

Ignoring all the evidence that this is a stupid and costly mistake, with real implications for parents who want to send their children to comprehensive schools and for disadvantaged children, she has described how 'popular' they are with parents, who perhaps aren't as well informed on education issues as the organisations and professionals who publicly responded to the consultation.

schoolsweek.co.uk/government-launches-pro-grammar-schools-campaign-just-days-after-official-consultation-closes/

Is this pigheaded or just desperate?

It's far easier to discover faith than prepare your child for a superselective grammar school exam. You also stand far better odds of being the right sex for a school than passing an entrance exam for a superselective grammar school. Being rigorously prepared for an entrance exam is a colossal help in passing it - family background still matters hugely. Faith, sex and entrance exam are all ways of screening out those considered undesirable.

It is far easier to discover faith than prepare your child for a superselective grammar
Not if they need a sex-change first!

Still a 50/50 chance of being the right sex, though. Those are quite good odds.

But you have to fit the rest of the criteria for the girls' school as well - faith, postcode etc.

FSM going up at the same time as the wealthiest pulling out to go to private school is just indicative of the real problem, though - being intelligent will never be quite enough.

Clavinola that is interesting, why do you think parents are starting to swing away from grammars to private seconday schools in your borough? Is it the extra curricular things, or a perception that grammars can be too pressurised, or some other reason?

Fitting the criteria of the entrance exam and being able to get to the school miles from home are humongous obstacles most easily scaled by the wealthier and better prepped.

There's no question that if children from DS1's school went to DS2's school instead, they'd do better.

Not if they all did. If you swapped all the kids around from best comp to sink comp, what do you think would happen?

"Clavinola that is interesting, why do you think parents are starting to swing away from grammars to private seconday schools in your borough?"

Could well be because some grammar schools are trying to broaden the their demographic.........

What will happen when the private schools are forced to broaden their demographic?

Green ginger - hat half the national average that still means the worst top comps admit three times as many dc's on FSM as grammars!

And I'd bet my house on it that the intake of top comps is vastly more representative of the area in which it's situated than your average grammar.

Private schools will never broaden their demographic that much. If they do, grammar schools will start to look a bit more attractive again.

Fitting the criteria of the entrance exam and being able to get to the school miles from home are humongous obstacles
You are right - half the anti-grammar school posters on this thread send their own dc miles away from home (up to an hour's journey each way) to avoid their local 'good' comprehensives and access much better comprehensive schools elsewhere.

'It's far easier to discover faith than prepare your child for a superselective grammar school exam'

That would rather depend on the child...

Private schools are being told, per the green paper, that they will have to admit significantly more poor kids on bursaries than they are at the moment.

Which is why they said 'sure, but only if the DfE pays for them'

How can you send your DC miles away on a bus to access the best comprehensives if the problem with the best comprehensives is that you have to buy an expensive house on their doorstep?

In our area people pay more to live in the better towns which have catchment to the better comps. When the perceived even better comp in the town with even higher prices has spaces( low birth rate year) the more wealthy pay best part of £300 a term to bus their DC there.

Clavinova - that, I think is a statistic you have entirely invented for yourself. And if a child is malleable enough to prep for an entrance exam, they are plenty malleable enough to be brought up attending church every Sunday.

GreenGinger2 - this may make sense to those people in their own minds, but travelling a long way to avoid a good school in most people's minds makes them idiots.

Ciutadella
Parents are worried about lack of funding, overcrowding , continued access to specialist teachers at the grammars. Some parents are worried about cultural differences - the private schools have a more balanced cultural intake. Also, the grammar schools are starting to look a bit 'tired' and the facilities at the private schools are getting better and better.

Yes, it's amazing what facilities money can buy, isn't it? Such a shame the government underfunds state education.

This is why the well-off shouldn't be allowed to opt-out of state education. If the facilities are crap, the teachers quitting and so on, it's usually the well-off that have the power to do something about it.

noble
How can you send your dc miles away on a bus to access the best comprehensives if the problem with the best comprehensives is that you have to buy an expensive house on their doorstep

'There is more than one way to skin a cat' - I can certainly name 3 posters on this thread who send their own dc out of borough to much better schools than their local comps - as well you know. Faith schools, for example can have massive catchment areas - The London Oratory, Coloma, Grey Coat Hospital School have catchment areas up to 20 miles across - I know/know of dc at all three schools. Dozens of schools in London and elsewhere have partial selection tests, academic banding tests, music, art, technology aptitude tests etc.

Grammar schools are (relatively) skint because funding formulas rightly prioritise pupils entitled to pupil premium or with SEN/low attainment on entry.

The private school arms race to have the best facilities is all about attracting international pupils from oligarch families and seems to be one of the main reasons why boarding schools are no longer affordable by anyone since the super rich. Ugh.

Clavinova how does that work if comprehensives aren't usually able to select from outside their catchment?

Only a minority of comps use partial selection which enables them to take kids from out of catchment.

My dc's school does this. Its intake is still vastly less privileged than its immediate catchment would suggest.